Wayne Simien, Former Kansas All-American, NBA Champion
Sports Spectrum Podcast
Sports Spectrum
4.9 • 685 Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2019
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Episode 281
Wayne Simien is a character coach with the Kansas Jayhawks. He played his college ball with KU, where he was a consensus All-America selection and Big 12 Player of the Year in 2005. His success in college led him to become a first-round draft pick in the NBA by the Miami Heat (29th overall).
Simien would play two seasons with the Heat and in his rookie season, earned an NBA championship ring as Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O'Neal helped Miami to their first ever championship in the 2006 NBA Finals.
In October 2007, Simien was traded by Miami to Minnesota but never played another game in the NBA. He would play a few more years overseas, before retiring in May of 2009 at the age of 26 to pursue ministry work.
On this episode of the podcast, we talk to Wayne in Minneapolis at the Final Four about his role as a character coach, his testimony of faith in Christ, the state of faith in basketball, and the biggest spiritual struggle now in college basketball.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Sports Spectrum, the Sports and Faith podcast that brings Jesus back into the conversation. |
| 0:17.5 | Here's your host, Jason Romano. |
| 0:20.1 | This episode of the Sports Spectrum podcast with Wayne Simeon, the Kansas Jayhawk |
| 0:24.6 | All-American and former NBA champion is brought to you by Compassion International, |
| 0:30.6 | the most trusted child development ministry in the world. |
| 0:34.5 | Go to compassion.com slash sports spectrum. |
| 0:37.9 | Compassion.com slash sports spectrum for $38 each month. |
| 0:43.2 | Your sponsorship provides safe water, education, medical care, safe housing, |
| 0:49.3 | vocational training, and it's all done in Jesus' name. |
| 0:53.5 | Check it out. |
| 0:54.1 | Compassion.com slash sports spectrum, the website to go to |
| 0:57.8 | today more than two million children are breaking the cycle of poverty for good because of Compassion |
| 1:04.7 | International partnering with more than 7,000 churches in 25 countries to deliver God's love and care to children in need, |
| 1:13.1 | one child at a time. |
| 1:15.2 | Sponsor a child today. |
| 1:16.4 | Go to compassion.com slash sports spectrum and release a child from poverty. |
| 1:23.0 | Today in the podcast, we welcome Wayne Simeon. |
| 1:25.9 | Now, Wayne played his college ball at Kansas from 2001 to 2005. |
| 1:31.9 | Had a really good four-year run there with the Jayhawks, which commenced in a first-round |
| 1:38.0 | draft pick in 2005 to the Miami Heat, which happened to be a team that would go on to win an NBA title the following year. |
| 1:47.4 | In Wayne's rookie year, he won an NBA ring, an NBA championship, played in 43 games that year, that first year with the Miami Heat, playing with Dwayne Wade and Shaquille O'Neal and that team that beat the Dallas Mavericks back in 2006. |
| 2:04.1 | And Wayne now is a character coach with the Kansas Jayhawks, which it's really just kind of a fancy word for saying Chaplin, although they do a bunch of other things with the team. |
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