Dwyane Wade posted a video of his daughter Zaya Wade singing and dancing during a school performance which is the first footage released since the father publicly announced his daughter identifies as transgender. His wife Gabrielle Union also shared the event on social media.
The former Miami Heat player has been opening up about his personal life in a series of interviews and his new ESPN documentary. After announcing his 12-year-old daughter is transgender the Wade family has received an outpouring of online support but Zaya has been absent in recent posts.
Over the weekend, the father-of-four made two Instagram posts centered on his daughter performing. The first was a video of several clips edited together showing Zaya singing and dancing in a choir. In between clips of his daughter is footage of the former NBA All-Star and his wife joyously clapping in rhythm along with the crowd. Then Zaya is shown singing the closing number of a song along with fellow choir members.
The three-time NBA champion added a caption saying how joyful the experience of seeing his child perform was. His post received more than 99,000 likes with over 2,000 comments. Most of Wade’s Instagram followers had words of encouragement for the preteen, including her older brother Zaire Wade who commented with heart emojis.
“Go Zaya!!! Get your praise party on sweetheart!” actress Essence Atkins wrote.
“Greatest dad award goes to you,” a fan commented.
Not all the comments were positive as some followers tried to correct Wade by saying this was not his daughter, and referred to her as “Zion” instead of Zaya.
“You mean Zion,” a follower wrote.
“9/10 singing from your son,” one Instagram user replied.
There were plenty of people making “9” jokes in reference to Wade’s judging of the dunk contest at this year’s All-Star Weekend.
“I’m gonna go ahead and rate that a 9,” another fan wrote.
In a separate post, the proud father showed a picture of his 12-year-old holding two bouquets of flowers and flashing a giant smile after her performance. Union left eight heart emoji in the comments of this post. As reported by The Jasmine Brand , the actress shared several moments from the event on her Instagram story.
Both she and Wade posted identical photos with family members huddled around Zaya and captioning it as their “Village.”
As covered by The Inquisitr , in his ESPN documentary D. Wade: Life Unexpected , the basketball icon opened up about his “nasty” divorce from Siovaughn Funches who is the biological mother of Zaire and Zaya.