U.S. women’s national team star Trinity Rodman described a fractured relationship with her father, NBA champion Dennis Rodman, who she said was both emotionally distant and caused financial problems for his children during their childhood.
The footballer is reluctant to talk publicly about her father, citing a complicated relationship with the retired basketball star. But in an episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast published Wednesday, Rodman finally addressed her father. “He’s not a father,” she said. “Maybe by blood, but nothing else.”
“With the father situation, in terms of what I’ve filtered and what I’ve talked about, I feel like me and my brother have been very generous with the way we’ve talked about it and very selfless,” Rodman said. . “I think we never want to make him look bad, and that comes at the cost of holding on to a lot of the issues that we’ve been through and trauma in itself.”
Rodman, along with her older brother DJ and her mother Michelle Moyer, lived with her father during the early years of her life, but his lifestyle forced Moyer to move the family from his home in Southern California.
“My mother was very good at making any situation seem smoother than it actually was, and I think parents do that to protect their children, but I think even when he was young it was like he had the whole time partying,” Rodman said. “We tried living with him, but he throws parties 24/7, he brings random bitches… I still don’t think my dad ever loved anyone after my mom. I really believe that. I think he I don’t know how. I think they both felt the same way about each other, but it’s just, his demons were just too strong for it. I think my mom just saw the situation of, ‘We love each other, it’s not going to work and for my children, I I can’t have them see for you to treat me this way, embarrass me this way, and have a party scene all the time.”
Rodman said her father then essentially cut off the family financially, forcing them to live in a Ford Expedition at one point, later in a motel and eventually sharing a room with her mother as a teenager.
“Growing up in an affluent environment when you don’t have money is a different struggle,” Rodman said. “I think that was very difficult for me, my mother and my brother. We went to the schools where everyone had money.”
Rodman said she and her brother would see their father up to four times a year if they lived in the same city, and money remained a complicated issue growing up. He would accuse their mother of only being after his money, refusing to pay child support and offering his money in controlled environments.
“My dad likes to be in control,” she said. “He would take us shopping, get us phones, do this, do that. “I’m going to take you and your brother shopping!” My brother and I said, ‘We don’t want to go shopping. We just want to get money in and go out after school with our friends’ so it was like he wouldn’t do that He had to give us money to do that. He had to have the control to bring us groceries and use his own card, but when we asked, “Can we get $100 to get food, go to Claire’s to get my ears pierced?”, little. stuff like that, he was like, ‘No. You’re using me’, all these things.’
She attributed his strained relationship with his family and his money to the bad influences around him, as well as a substance abuse problem.
“I think given how successful he was and how wealthy he was, he was surrounded by a lot of toxic people who would take his money and take advantage of him. Because he was on alcohol, he was a bit brainwashed in that. not really in control of anything,” she said. “We tried to be that foundation and be the good people around him because in reality we never really asked for anything unless we really needed it. Me, my mother and my brother , it was like, ‘We want you just’. and I think he never understood the fact because he never experienced it. He also had confusing family problems. He never understood that people just want to be around him and just want to make him happy. ‘Money, money, money, money’.
Impact on her football career
Rodman said the financial struggles growing up sometimes made it difficult to be a young football player, which remains an expensive extracurricular activity for many families across the country.
“With soccer and stuff, we got a lot of help from one of my club coaches, Greg Baker,” she said. “He set me up and he helped me. Thank God I was talented, otherwise I don’t know where I would be, but he helped me and he gave me opportunities that I wouldn’t have had because I couldn’t. ” paying for certain things, so a lot of things, that we worked for, but in a way we got just because we were talented, so that helped. Especially with sports, it was very difficult to travel and go to hotels and travel these away and have the money to stay at these Marriotts. We were at Holiday Inn. That’s what we could afford.”
Rodman’s father remained uninvolved as she became a promising USWNT prospect and then became one of the NWSL’s first players to skip college football altogether, eventually getting drafted by the Washington Spirit in 2021. Her father surprised her by moving to the the Spirit’s quarterfinals in the playoffs against the North Carolina Courage, a realization they made midway through the game. It was the first time they had seen each other in months, which caused an emotional reaction. She leaned on then-teammate Ashley Sanchez during a water break in the first half, while then-head coach Kris Ward also asked her if she wanted to keep playing, which she did.
“When he showed up at my game, I was so angry,” she said. “I started crying on the field. So I’m trying to play a football game and I’m crying. … I was so angry. I thought, ‘You took this happy moment away from me. You’ve got my head again. I’m walking there like this angrily, like “F— you.” I walk over, he grabs my head and I just start bawling in his arms like a daddy daughter [moment].”
She later made an Instagram post about the moment, which went viral, hoping for a new beginning with him, but her father went months afterward without contacting her again. The pair still don’t speak often, partly because her father regularly changes his phone number, but Rodman answers his calls out of compassion, despite describing him as “an extremely selfish human being.”
“I think even hearing his voice is painful because I think it’s missing him, mixed with – he’s an alcoholic, and again, that’s something I don’t want to say, but I’m like, f… ” she said. “It’s the truth and even in the last five years, when I hear the difference in the way his sentences stack up, I think he’s gone. It feels like he’s gone and I hear him talking – I answer the phone now for my conscience, to If something happens, god forbid, I want to know if I did that, or if he had to hear my voice before something happens . That’s why I answer the phone – not for me.’