Besides his excellent rebounding skills and five NBA titles, Dennis Rodman is known for his eccentric life off the court. However, he was not the only eccentric in his family. His father, Philander Rodman Jr., also had a wild and bizarre life. It is believed that Philander Rodman had multiple wives and children scattered across the globe. Although Rodman currently has a net worth of only $500,000, he has built his way up to this level through hard work and instinct for survival. He had earned almost $27 million from his NBA contracts. However, that value tanked over the years due to Rodman’s eccentric habits. His fellow half-siblings wanted a piece of his earnings, knowing he was the richest and most famous of them all.
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Rodman grew up in Dallas, Texas, in one of the most impoverished areas of the cities. He lived in an all-female household with his mother and two sisters, Debra and Kim. He never felt the presence of his father in his life and had to work his way up from being a janitor to the NBA draft.
Dennis Rodman revealed his siblings’ conniving intentions after he became famous
Dennis Rodman’s rise to fame was his way of alleviating his family’s poverty and misery. As the only man in his household, he took up a job as a janitor right after high school. Dennis was not particularly great at basketball and was often benched or cut out from his high-school varsity team. But a tipoff from a family friend to a coach at North Central Texas College is what accelerated his basketball career.
In an interview with DJ Vlad, Dennis Rodman revealed how he had first met some of his half-siblings after he had reached the zenith of his NBA career. At that time, Dennis Rodman had built quite the fame and net worth for an NBA player of his stature. However, his siblings had ill intentions of grabbing a piece of his earnings for themselves. Rodman, revealing his true feelings, said:
“I met a couple [of his half siblings], you know. They wanted money, you now. I’ve got these women coming to as me ‘Uh do you know that this is your brother?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And she said, ‘That’s your brother from your dad.’ And I just say one dad, okay? great. I agree you know, his name is Robin. Like they got their hands out, I’m the famous one in the whole family. They expect me to just throw money out there.”
Rodman’s father is believed to have 47 children, with Dennis being the oldest. From his father’s side, it is estimated that he has 26 or 28 siblings. About his feelings for his estranged father, he expressed his emotions in the 1996 biography:
“I haven’t seen my father in more than 30 years, so what’s there to miss … I just look at it like this: Some man brought me into this world. That doesn’t mean I have a father”.
Dennis Rodman was disappointed with his dad wearing his jersey and feeling proud
Dennis Rodman would have an incredible NBA career with the Chicago Bulls and the Detroit Pistons. Given his incredible stats in rebounding and influence in basketball, Rodman was enshrined into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011. However, Rodman once revealed he was unhappy with his father wearing his jersey and feeling proud.
He refused to accept his dad’s resurgence in his life once his NBA career peaked. He questioned his father for being absent from his life during his formative years as a child. Rodman remarked that his dad had no right to feel proud, given his absence and negligence for the past 20 years of his life.
