For Dwyane Wade, basketball has become more a vehicle than an end. The new Chicago Bull and long-time Hall of Fame shoo-in is 34 now, with a body that’s been through many fires. Even with Wade coming off his healthiest, most productive year as a Miami Heat since the halcyon days of LeBron James, signing the veteran superstar to two years of service for nearly $50 million was a questionable move for the Bulls, competitively. But Wade’s unusually confident and outspoken tone, even for him, has quickly assuaged many skeptics since he’s inked in Chicago and been thrust into a role that might feature a lot more public speaking on difficult topics than it will crossovers. Wade has been evolving into a more of a statesman than a player for years, and making his first switch of NBA teams such a bold and narratively rich one has solidified that metamorphosis as he nears the end of his career.

Coming home to a city with a gun violence problem that’s known around the world, as a diplomat of Wade’s current level, is a beyond-basketball endeavor. With the Bulls’ previous native son Derrick Rose out the door and struggling to define “consent” as he faces trial for gang rape accusations, Wade steps in as the new and much more willing political face of a brand that— through a confluence involving Michael Jordan’s rise coming parallel to global capitalism’s explosion—is about as powerful as they come in sports. Wade’s embrace of Bulls lore was total and holistic at his introductory press conference, where he described himself sitting cross-legged on his family room floor (“when I still could [sit that way]”) as a nine-year old as Chicago won their first NBA title in 1991. “That’s what I want to be,” he remembers himself thinking.

If such a thing is even impossible, it seemed through the rest of the intro presser that Wade was even more eager than the pens of the media to begin a feel-good narrative, one that gladly absorbs each of the cliches and side stories around it. He even spoke fondly of Bulls management through his two previous (failed) courtships with the Bulls, in the 2002 Draft and during free agency in 2010, when he famously joined forces with James and Chris Bosh in Miami. The sentiment of Wade’s Odysseus turn didn’t last long, though, with his cousin being shot to death on the south side a month later. 32-year-old Nykea Aldridge was slain while walking with her baby the morning after Wade held a Town Hall meeting on the south side, to address the local violence during a historically awful August, which saw 472 victims and 90 murders in Chicago. 

The issue was quickly politicized, with presidential nominee and billowing orange flatulence pipe Donald Trump tweeting about the murder as an example of what wouldn’t happen under his fantastical and opulent reign. Wade was thrust into one of the nation’s most fraught political issues as news networks began picking up the story as a talking point. Days later Wade appeared on Good Morning America to add a human voice to a conversation that had turned into a bad and unnuanced intersectional parlor game. “It hurt me to be the name that they talked about,” he said, noting that many of the reports about the tragedy didn’t even mention Aldridge explicitly. Wade went on to exercise some empathy for his cousin’s murderers, suggesting that better prison-work programs might help young men from the community avoid returning to the cycle of violence they know. He described his sons’ fear of the police, which is much like the pre-fame trepidation he says he himself felt around the cops.

“I want eyes on the city,” Wade said, when asked what he made of the extra attention Trump brought to the story. “I think my purpose at the end of the day is to come to Chicago and be a voice that can help bring people together.”

That voice is as clear and pointed of one we’ve seen in the modern NBA, with Wade flexing it on Kelly Ripa’s morning show as a guest co-host mere hours after signing with the Bulls. Likely taking P.R. cues from shrewd celebrity wife Gabrielle Union, Wade was smooth and relatable on the fluffiest of television air. The same everything-proof armor he once wore on the court, making miraculous things happen for championships in 2006, 2012, and 2013 is now guiding Wade through the maze of colloquial associations, storytelling, style, and body language that is being a high-level public figure. From south side bloodbaths to Bed Bath & Beyond on daytime talk shows, Wade is showing a feel for discussing human American life that makes him feel fitting in your family room, in his street clothes as well as his jersey. His transfer back to Chicago endears him to just about everyone—even sad Heat fans have to respect the move—and elevates his voice to higher, more audible air as he makes his graceful transition to post-basketball relevance.