‘I’ve gotten closure.’ U.S. soccer’s Trinity Rodman takes best from her father Dennis

Trinity Rodman has her father’s last name and fierce competitive instincts, but she has not had Dennis Rodman’s constant presence in her life.

A rising star on the U.S. women’s World Cup soccer team, Trinity knows her father best through viewing videos of his career dominating the boards with the “Bad Boy” Detroit Pistons and indomitable Chicago Bulls. He was a mold-breaker who dyed his hair different colors and partied outrageously but was almost frighteningly intense on defense, leading the NBA in rebounds per game for seven consecutive seasons and winning five NBA championships and two defensive player of the year awards during a Hall of Fame career.

Trinity and her brother, DJ, who recently joined USC’s basketball team as a graduate transfer, were born in Newport Beach and raised by their mother, Michelle Moyer, the third of Dennis Rodman’s three ex-wives. He kept Trinity and DJ at a financial and emotional distance. He didn’t let them get to know him, but they made a point of at least getting to know who he was as a basketball player.

“I watched my dad play a lot more than people really know. I mean, my brother lived watching my dad’s clips. He knows everything and anything there is to know about basketball,” she said. “I admire that about him.”

She particularly studied the anticipation that made her father such a great rebounder and defender, and she has put that to good use.

Trinity, who was the NWSL’s rookie of the year in 2021 and last year signed the league’s most lucrative contract at $1.124 million over four years, has adapted elements of her father’s game to her sport. But she won her roster spot for the upcoming World Cup in Australia and New Zealand purely on her own merits: her pace, finishing skills and an intuitive ability, at 21, to deftly read plays.

Rodman is one of 14 World Cup newcomers on the 23-woman roster and among six forwards entrusted with extending the American women’s World Cup title streak to three. Before departing, the team will play a friendly send-off game against Wales on Sunday at PayPal Park in San Jose, a preview of the short-term and long-term future of the U.S. women’s program.

Rodman described her biggest takeaway from her father’s game as “hunting.” That sounded odd, she acknowledged. It made complete sense when she explained it.

“It’s hunting in front of the goal. It’s hunting when you lose the ball. And I think that’s a huge part of my game — regains, tracking back and being the first person to get a foot, a head, a knee, a shin on something that pops up,” she said during a recent news conference for the World Cup team.

“Even if he wasn’t the first guy under the basket or he was next to Shaq [O’Neal], who was way bigger, way taller, he was going to get the rebound. It was timing, it was anticipation, it was body movement, it was positioning, it was everything. And I think he was so intelligent and I think people take that away. He was a freak of nature. He was an insane athlete, but at the end of the day, he, I think, was one of the smartest players at the time. He knew the game.”

Trinity Rodman is surrounded by reporters during media day for the U.S. Women’s National Team in Carson.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

O’Neal was an adversary of her father’s but is a friend to her. In a video U.S. Soccer created featuring cameos of artists, actors and athletes introducing each member of the World Cup team, O’Neal did the honors for Rodman. “Trinity Rodman, welcome to your first World Cup,” he said. “Go kick some ass and bring back that victory. Go USA, and congratulations, Trinity.”

She was thrilled. “It was definitely a full-circle moment,” she said. “Getting that message from him was amazing, and I want to continue to have that connection with him.”

She heard nothing from her father after the announcement. Not that she had expected to. They hadn’t been in communication for months.

That’s sad, but it’s nothing new. He’d show up occasionally — he appeared at a 2021 playoff game she played for the Washington Spirit and enveloped her in a big hug when her team won — and then he’d vanish from her everyday life.

“Like I’ve said before, I’ve gotten closure with it all,” she said. “I know he’s proud of me. I truly do. He has his own things to deal with but at the end of the day, he’s communicated to me that he knows I was going to be here, and that’s all I need.”

Trinity, who has scored two goals in 17 appearances with the senior U.S. national team, doesn’t follow her father’s example in terms of preparing for games. Or, in his case, not preparing for games. “Definitely not the same at all. Still got that performance to worry about,” she said.

But after becoming familiar with those clips of her father’s remarkable performances and championship seasons, she defended him and marveled at his ability to compete so ferociously after he had experienced so many late nights and early mornings.

“Even the days that he didn’t prepare the best for the games, when he was out partying — I mean, everybody knows that — he was there. It doesn’t even matter what he was doing the night before or the morning of. He was there every single game and you can’t take that away from him,” she said. “His mentality was insane.”

She credited her mother for supporting her along her unique path. “My last name has always been a factor, especially before I kind of made my own way,” she said. “But there’s always expectations and questions that I had before I kind of proved myself, but my mom helped me a lot with kind of tuning that out and being about my family and my success.”

She is Dennis Rodman’s daughter but she’s her own person, a star in her own right, with an opportunity coming soon to shine as never before on the world stage.