LET’S NOT REFER TO TRINITY RODMAN, AN AMERICAN HERO, AS DENNIS’ DAUGHTER

We saw her eliminate Japan with an astounding goal, as her mother celebrated in the Paris stands, and all the while, we wondered where Dennis Rodman has been during her life and why he wasn’t there

     She squinted, staring at the officials. What if they said Trinity Rodman was offside late in the quarterfinals of the Olympic Games? Her father once headbutt a referee, drawing a killer suspension, which came after he brought a shotgun to practice and before he kicked a cameraman and caused more ordeals and damnation than entire prisons of criminals.

     But Rodman, the youngest daughter of basketball’s greatest and most grotesque rebounder/wacknut, rejoiced Saturday evening because the call went her way. And because, let it be known, she’ll never ever be Dennis Rodman. Let’s revel in one of the most remarkable goals we’ll see in American soccer, when she trapped Crystal Dunn’s pass along the right side of Japan’s net, quickly sliced to her left and bashed a curling missile past the goaltender that gave Team USA a 1-0 victory.

     She wore pink braids. She grinned on the field, at 22, mobbed by her teammates. “I kind of blacked out!” Rodman said. “The last thing I remember is Crystal playing it and then I was like, ‘Ahhhhh!’ I have flashes of what happened. I got into the area, received a beautiful pass, then I took a shot. It wasn't that I didn't have confidence in my shot, but at the same time, I couldn't believe it."

     Up in the stands in Paris, her mother celebrated at Parc des Princes, while no one had any idea where Dennis might have been, though it could have been anywhere. Michelle Moyer has two children with Rodman, after they met in a bar, and they married a week before Trinity’s first birthday. He spent the 2000 decade in a drunken stupor, allowing Moyer to raise the kids for a time in a motel and inside a truck in Newport Beach, Calif. From house to house, they wandered, thanks to the eviction workers.

     Dennis was pulled out of a gutter several times, in the same Orange County beach town. Trinity began playing soccer at 4. Her brother, DJ, played basketball. Eighteen years later, she is a big-time Olympian, scoring goals in three of four games as the Americans prepare for Germany in Tuesday’s semifinals. Today or tomorrow, Dennis might try to call France, unless he made the trip and didn’t tell anyone. He hasn’t had much of a relationship with her.

     “Pretty close to nonexistent,” Trinity said. “He’s always proud of me. I know that. He’ll call here and there to let me know that. Now that I’m older, it’s a little bit easier to swallow, but him as a person, he’s a genuine human being that loves really hard for people. I know he supports me so much. I stay true to who I am on the field, trying crazying things, being expressive and just working my butt off.”

     It wasn’t long ago, though, when she and her mother spoke of rough times. Drafted by the Washington Spirit of the NWSL, she told ESPN, “People do know Trinity Rodman sometimes before Dennis Rodman now. That’s a cool thing for me. I’m not trying to overcome what he accomplished, I just want to build my own story, and I think I’m doing a really good job. He was an amazing athlete, and I got those genes from him, but I’m excited to known as Trinity Rodman and not just as Rodman’s daughter.”

     She is a bigger American hero already, though Dennis might argue his trips to see North Korean leader Kim Jong Un saved the world — via weird Worm Politics. “It was the best moment of my career,” she said. “I couldn’t have asked for anything better.” What was Dennis thinking on his solitary planet?

     Once upon a time, he said he wouldn’t live with Moyer when married, telling the Los Angeles Times, “I like it like that. She and the kids come over on weekends.” He tried a makeover in a documentary five years ago that he’s “trying to convince” himself that he’s “a good dad.” In November 2021, he shocked Trinity by showing up for a Spirit playoff game with earrings in his lips and nose. She said: “I remember thinking, ‘Is this the start? Is this his effort to start coming to more games? Is this just to pop in?’ I wasn't sure. I think that's why I was so emotional because our relationship has been so rocky that I didn't know what that game meant.”

     On social media, she said, “My dad doesn’t play a big role in my life at all and most people don't know that, we don’t see eye to eye on many things. Being in spotlights has been hard for us, him and me. We don’t have the best relationship, but at the end of the day he's human, I'm human ... he’s my dad, and I'm his little girl that will never change.”

     Now she’s gunning for a gold medal. The goal, in the 106th minute, was described by U.S. coach Emma Hayes as “a world-class finish.” Said teammate Mallory Swanson: “Of course, Trinity is going to do that. I think sometimes in games like this, it just takes a little bit of magic, a little bit of individual brilliance. And that’s what Trinity did.”

     Said Rodman: “Not all soccer is pretty soccer. But I think we kind of knew that it was going to come down to something brilliant like that. If it came from me or anybody else on the field, we knew that it wasn't going to be tiki-taka in the box. It was one moment that we had to capitalize on, and that's what happened."

     She also has spun her “Trin Spin” in the Games, gyrating on the turf before an easy score. Maybe her father could relate. “That was just an instinctual thing because I haven't really trained that. But it worked out perfectly,” Rodman said. “I think in that situation I knew that if I took a touch in front of me, it probably would've put me out of the frame of the goal. I was trying to just put her off balance, which worked, so I'm happy about that.”

     And to think her family, in the worst days, never knew where they were sleeping, as Dennis was making and blowing millions of dollars. “We were staying in a motel, but in that experience, I wanted the kids to think we were on vacation, so I booked a room right next to the pool,” Moyer told the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash. “Before school, they could go swimming. They’d make waffles in the morning. At night, we’d do dollar tacos or dollar burritos and Top Ramen. It’s made them who they are today — the humility.”

     They are together when it matters most, at the Olympics. A thrilled Michelle was on NBC. Trinity is two victories from a gold medal.

     Dennis?

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.