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Soccer player Trinity Rodman has opened up about her relationship with her famous father.
Rodman was a guest on Alex Cooper’sCall Her Daddy podcast on Wednesday (December 18) when she discussed what it was like growing up with her father, Dennis Rodman, a five-time NBA champion and member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
The U.S. Women’s National Team player admitted that she doesn’t even view Dennis as a father in a promotional video for the episode. “We never want to make him look bad and that is at the cost of holding in a lot,” Rodman said after she was asked why she felt this was the right time to speak out about her father.
“… I guess it’s just the anger that I haven’t been able to let out is like difficult for me.”
When the soccer forward and podcast host began discussing money, Rodman said she spent part of her life living out of her car in order to escape from her father’s treatment.
“We had an [Ford] Expedition and we kind of lived in that for a little bit… we tried to live with him but he’s having parties 24/7, he’s bringing random b****es in,” she said. “… He loves the spotlight, he loves the cameras, he loves bringing his children on stage and being like, ‘Oh these are my kids.’”
She said the relationship between her and her dad has been so damaged that she has “lost hope” in it being repaired.
“I lost hope in ever getting him back,” she said. “I answer the phone [when he calls] now for my conscience to be like, he needed to hear my voice before anything happens. Like that’s why I answer the phone, not for me… He’s not a dad. Maybe by blood, but nothing else.”
The soccer player also recalled one moment with her father back in 2021 when the former Chicago Bulls player showed up at one of her soccer games. At the time, she ran up to him in tears as the two of them hugged, but according to Rodman, it wasn’t out of love.
She explained that it was mostly a shock response as she and her father hadn’t spoken for months prior to his appearance at the game. When she walked up to him, he grabbed her head, and that led her to start crying.
“Then I walk over, and again there are cameras everywhere, he grabs my head and I just start bawling into his arms as if it’s a daddy-daughter-like…” she said.
Rodman’s mother, Michelle Moyer, was Dennis’s third wife. The two of them first met in 1999 before welcoming their son Dennis “DJ” Rodman in 2001 and Trinity in 2002. They were married in a small civil ceremony in 2003. Moyer filed for divorce one year later, claiming that her “wake-up call” was after the Hall of Famer gifted her a Harley-Davidson motorcycle for her birthday and got into an accident.
“I’m blessed to be alive. But I knew that I couldn’t take it anymore,” she said in a 2022 interview with ESPN. “I needed to be there for my kids. I decided to divorce and be done with the Dennis stuff. That was it for me.”
Their divorce was finalized in 2012.
