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Every afternoon, as the middle-school bus was inching closer and closer to his Rochester, New York, home, Isaiah Stewart would push his head up against the window to see if he could spot his superhero.

Some days, Stewart could see him from down the street. Tired. Defeated. Searching for just a single moment of peace. Other days, when Stewart arrived home, he was nowhere to be found. The boy always knew, though, that he’d show up eventually.

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That’s just how superheroes operate.

“Every time he came home from work, he’d sit on the porch for a little bit before he came inside,” Stewart told The Athletic. “That was his way to relax. I could see how tired he was. He worked the jackhammer, so all the dry concrete would be on his boots. He’d be ashy from all the dust. He’d come home very dirty.

“I just saw my dad work so hard. At a young age, he showed me what hard work is like, what work ethic is like. That’s just something inside of me, and it’s the way I go about life.”

To understand where Isaiah Stewart is now, a rookie big man living out his NBA dream with the Detroit Pistons, a franchise with a gritty history that perfectly fits the 19-year-old’s style of play, you must look no further than the superhero who helped create him, Dela.

The older Stewart is a 63-year-old Jamaican immigrant who dropped out of school to be a fisherman in his homeland before coming to the United States in the 1970s to work on farms in South Florida. Dela left his family behind, not seeing his parents again until they passed away. He wanted a better life for himself. He didn’t want his children to share his experiences. He did, though, want his kids to carry the same values and work ethic that made him who he was.

In comes Isaiah, who after living with his mother, Shameka Holloway, as an infant, moved in permanently with his father and older brother, Martin.

Since his sophomore year of high school, Isaiah has been recognized as one of the elite prospects in basketball. It wasn’t so much his skill that caught the eyes of talent evaluators all across the country; it was the passion in which he played that made people line up to land his services. Stewart’s motor never stops. He’s aggressive. He doesn’t quit. Isaiah will hit you and then hit you again before you have a second to defend yourself.

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For all that some analysts said he couldn’t do on a basketball court going into the draft, some instead prioritized what he could do.

“Sometimes it’s just about kicking everybody’s ass,” Pistons general manager Troy Weaver said, per a source, when Detroit was considering taking Stewart with the No. 16 pick.

This is who Isaiah is. He’s someone who, at the very least, is going to kick your ass. He’s going to outwork you.

“All of that comes from Dela,” Isaiah’s mentor, Kevan Sheppard, said. “Dela’s whole life was based around getting his kids to school and himself to work. They’d see Dela come from work with boots covered in cement.”

According to a recent study, Rochester, New York, is considered the 50th-most-dangerous city in the United States. In 2019, there were 748 violent crimes per 100,000 people.

This is where Isaiah calls home.

When he was back in town this summer, preparing for the NBA Draft, Isaiah said “there were so many homicides and killings every few days.” Isaiah had an apartment in the city, and even though he was emerging as a man and had been on his own for several years — he left to play prep basketball in Indiana and one year of college at Washington — Dela was still checking in repeatedly.

“It was the most annoying thing,” Isaiah said with a smile. “I was just chillin’. He’d still call me and make sure I wasn’t going anywhere.”

Dela has always been protective. Growing up, Isaiah wasn’t allowed to hang out with friends who weren’t part of a sports team. He’d come home from school or practice, eat, do his homework and then go to sleep.

“That’s why (Isaiah) took a liking to sports,” Sheppard said. “That’s one of the things Dela approved.”

Dela kept Isaiah in sports from a young age to keep him out of trouble. Isaiah started playing soccer. “I was pretty good,” he said. He then graduated to boxing, a sport that Isaiah deems as his first love.

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Due to Isaiah’s size for his age, the 10-year-old was often sparring against kids two or three years his senior. His long reach and active mind allowed him to excel relative to others at the local boxing gym.

Apparently he hurt someone before, but…

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Isaiah said laughingly.

You can see the boxing influence in Isaiah’s basketball game. When you step inside the squared circle, it’s fight or flight. After, you shake your opponent’s hands and move on. On the court, Isaiah is a disruptor and nuisance. Already in his rookie season, he’s gotten into small spats with the likes of LeBron James, Dwight Howard and DeMarcus Cousins. Afterward, he answers questions from the press with the utmost kindness — “yes, sir” or “yes, m’am.” It’s a contrasting personality that not many people have. That switch isn’t always included.

“He always had to (box) against older guys to make it even,” Sheppard said. “Those guys didn’t know how to turn it off when they got out of the ring. They were losing to a guy three years younger than him. They were still mad after the fact.”

Isaiah, as he tells it, is able to have dual personalities because of how he was raised. When you’re in the ring or in between the lines, you’re at work. The blood, sweat and tears he sheds during the 48 minutes of a basketball game are the cement boots, busted knuckles and exhaustion he saw on that porch as a kid. Outside of the game, though, you treat others with respect. You see everyone as an equal.

“That’s the Jamaican culture, and that’s the way I raised him,” Dela said. “When you’re at work, you go give it your all. When you’re not working, you give respect.”

Isaiah found basketball in elementary school. His classmates always went back and forth about who was the best in their class. Basketball wasn’t big in the Stewart household. It’s not a prominent sport in Jamaica. Stewart gravitated toward it simply because he’s competitive, and he didn’t want to hear about how anyone could possibly be better than him at something.

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In class, Isaiah would play his classmates one-on-one. That first year playing basketball, he said, he’d lose every game, despite being the biggest kid. The next year, Isaiah said he beat a few more people. In that third year, however, Isaiah said he was beating the kids who everyone else thought were the best in class.

“I just stayed with it,” Isaiah said. “Once I found that competitive edge, once I saw how fun it was to get better at basketball, once I saw how fun it was to compete. I just continued to stay with it.”

As Isaiah entered middle school and was inching toward high school, he became a household name in Rochester and was even starting to make noise nationally. People from all over were trying to get Isaiah to play for their team, to attend this camp, that camp. Dela, still unfamiliar with the AAU culture and deceptive attention that comes with youth sports, tightened up even more.

“Dela was like the neighborhood dad,” Sheppard said. “He didn’t just take care of his kids, he took care of a lot of kids. He saw the struggles those kids went through. It was all about protecting his son.

“Then it got weird; outta nowhere, everyone wanted Isaiah to play on their team. It’s one thing if you’re the average AAU parent … you anticipate this. You grew up in it. Dela had no clue. He was saying, ‘Why are all these grown men calling me and asking if my son can travel with them?'”

Even as Isaiah progressed and turned into one of the nation’s top recruits, any opportunity tossed his way took convincing for Dela. Isaiah would have everyone he knew calling his dad to tell him how big of an opportunity this was or that was. Thanks to the presence and experiences of Sheppard, whose son, Chino Obokoh, grew up in Rochester and went on to play at Syracuse, Dela would allow Stewart to travel across the country for various events and tournaments.

There was always one stipulation, though. Sheppard had to accompany Isaiah. Dela doesn’t fly. He has a fear of air travel. 

“Dela didn’t want him to get hurt and he wasn’t there to help him,” Sheppard said. “I was the only one he trusted with his son. Even though Isaiah was going for his dream, he knew Dela had to be comfortable for him to be able to do it.”

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In 2016, when Isaiah was 15, Dela’s worst fear came to fruition. Sheppard accompanied Isaiah to the Team USA under-16 tryouts. During a scrimmage, Isaiah exploded up for a rebound and his hamstring snatched his tailbone off. Isaiah was telling Sheppard that he was OK and just needed to stretch it out. After a while, though, Isaiah couldn’t hide his displeasure. Sheppard quickly realized that Stewart was seriously hurt. He offered to take Isaiah to a local hospital. Isaiah didn’t want to go to see a doctor until he got back home and was around his father.

When Isaiah got home, Dela took him to an appointment. Isaiah eventually recovered, but the next year, when Team USA came calling again, Isaiah had to do some real convincing for Dela to let him go again.

“Eventually, it happened,” Sheppard said while laughing.

By this time, Isaiah was one of the biggest prospects in the country. He went from unranked to a top-80 recruit between his freshman and junior year. It wasn’t until then that Dela truly began to understand the opportunity his son had in front of him. That’s when college offers were starting to pour in, and Dela allowed Isaiah to leave McQuaid Jesuit in metro Rochester for a well-known basketball prep school in Indiana called La Lumiere.

It took an offer from Georgetown for Dela to let his guard down. Dela didn’t know much about basketball, but he was very familiar with his fellow Jamaican Patrick Ewing and those Hoyas teams of the 1980s. Now invested, Georgetown was the clubhouse leader in Dela’s eyes.

“He was like, ‘Let’s lock in one of these colleges,'” Isaiah said. “I was like, ‘Just relax. I’m going to get some more.'”

Isaiah, according to ESPN’s recruiting service, finished high school as a top-three recruit in the world. It was a far cry from where he was four years before. Isaiah’s skills began to match the intangibles he carried from youth, the ones instilled by Dela. And as his love for basketball grew, he sought out opportunities to play against the best competition in the country in order to make a name for himself.

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Stewart would have his coaches set up games against the top teams and players in the nation.

“I played him a crazy amount of times in high school,” Warriors rookie and No. 2 pick James Wiseman said. “He’s a tough guard. He’s a great guy to play against. He challenged me all the time in high school. We challenged each other. I loved playing against him.”

Back in November, when Isaiah and his family learned that he’d end up living out his NBA dream in Detroit, no one had any idea how perfect of a fit Isaiah and the Pistons were. Well, no one except for Sheppard.

Sheppard, also from Rochester, grew up a Pistons fan. He admired the Bad Boys. His favorite player was Isiah Thomas. Sheppard knew what it means to be a Piston. To be a Detroiter.

So, when Isaiah got word of his new destination, Sheppard gave him some homework.

“He told me to start watching the documentaries,” Stewart said. “That’s exactly what I did. I saw them in the past, but now that I’m here, it means much more. He told me that everything I’m about — my work ethic, the way I play hard, the way I give it my all every night — that’s what the city and organization are about.”

Dela had never been to Detroit. He didn’t know that his son’s soon-to-be home and his current one shared so many similarities. He was just happy that his son accomplished what he set out to do. He was proud that his son didn’t fall victim to the temptations that high-level basketball and life in Rochester present.

He even was proud of himself, for helping instill what’s made Isaiah special at an early age and sticking to his morals.

“Big men don’t cry,” Dela said, “but sometimes I want to cry. I have love in my heart. I’m very proud.”

Isaiah is already beloved in Detroit. The fans watch him play and see a reflection of the franchise’s glory days. The DNA that made the Pistons three-time NBA champions also rests inside Isaiah. He’s unapologetic and relentless.

“I heard Will Smith say one time, ‘The difference between me and someone else is that I will die running on the treadmill. If you’re running next to me on the treadmill, I will die before I get off before you,'” Mike Hopkins, Isaiah’s college coach at Washington said. “That’s Isaiah.”

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And it’s all thanks to the superhero on the porch.

“My dad came to America to chase a better life,” Isaiah said. “I love to listen to the stories that he went through when he first got here to the States. His upbringing was tough. He worked hard here to provide a better life for me and my brother.

“All of this comes from him.”

(Top photo credit of Dela Stewart courtesy of Kevan Sheppard, photo of Isaiah Stewart courtesy of Getty Images/Leon Halip. Design by John Bradford)

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