WASHINGTON — Their unlikely friendship started under dire circumstances.
Nitin Ramachandran, a 13-year-old boy fighting brain cancer, asked the Make-A-Wish Foundation of the Mid-Atlantic to make one of his dreams come true: He wanted to meet Washington Wizards players.
Ted Leonsis, the principal owner of the team and Monumental Sports & Entertainment, felt compelled to grant that wish. Given the severity of Nitin’s illness, Leonsis knew he could not ensure a happy outcome for Nitin and his family. But Leonsis believed that he and his staff could help make that day — March 27, 2015 — one of the best of Nitin’s life.
The Wizards pulled out all the stops. Team officials signed Nitin to a ceremonial contract. They invited him to attend their morning shootaround. Point guard John Wall and center Marcin Gortat spent parts of their day with him. When game night against the Charlotte Hornets arrived, Nitin joined Wizards players as they ran onto the court at Capital One Arena. The public address announcer even introduced Nitin as a member of the Wizards’ starting lineup. When the game was over, and the Wizards had won 110-107 in double overtime, he sat with coach Randy Wittman during the postgame news conference.
That day remains a treasured memory for the Ramachandran family, but it now means so much more. A decade after Nitin was a Make-A-Wish kid, he is now a healthy, thriving adult. Surgery, radiation treatments and months of chemotherapy saved Nitin’s life, but his Wizards visit played an outsized role in his emotional recovery.
“I can point to a lot of small turning points in my journey, that being the biggest one for sure, a very big turning point in that crazy, long (ordeal), what felt like years of treatments,” Nitin told The Athletic. “That was definitely the turning point.”
Twice this season — during a mid-February game against the San Antonio Spurs and a game on April 3 against the Orlando Magic — Nitin returned to Capital One Arena as Leonsis’ guest. Nitin and Leonsis watched those games together from the same courtside seats where Nitin watched his Make-A-Wish game 10 years ago. After the game against the Spurs, Leonsis introduced Nitin to Wizards forward Anthony Gill, Wizards coach Brian Keefe, Wizards general manager Will Dawkins and Spurs guard Chris Paul.
At the game he attended last week, Nitin wore a pair of jeans, white sneakers and a Bilal Coulibaly Wizards jersey over a gray hoodie. His cancer is a thing of the past.
“He kicked its a–,” Leonsis said, smiling.
Before Nitin was diagnosed in 2014 with medulloblastoma — a malignant brain tumor that mostly affects children — he was an accomplished tennis player who aspired to play the sport in college.
Over the next year, he had a strong, loving support group around him, led by his dad, Ram Ramachandran; his mom, Jyothi Raghavan; and his older brother, Nikhil.
But the cancer treatments took a huge toll, making it challenging to feed himself and difficult to walk. He recalled that, in the middle of his chemo treatments, he would get sick two or three times each day. “It was a time when I really needed some sort of light, or some sort of hope, to bring me up,” Nitin recalled.
When his family received word that the Wizards would grant his wish, it felt like a shot of adrenaline. Knowing that he would soon meet his idol, Wall, gave him extra motivation to try to walk for five minutes each day; after all, he remembered, he did not want to embarrass himself on the court when he was meeting guys like Wall, Gortat, Paul Pierce and Bradley Beal.
Now, a decade later, he remembers every detail of his visit, which also was chronicled in a video. Gortat, a towering 6-foot-11 center, greeted him in a hallway outside the Wizards’ locker room. “So, how you doin’? I’m Marcin,” Gortat said, extending his hand for a handshake. “… You’ve got to eat something really quick. You can’t practice without eating, all right?”
Gortat introduced Nitin to Wall in the players’ lounge.
At times, 13-year-old Nitin sounded at a loss for words, telling Wall, “You’re such a legend that I watch on TV every day.”
“(I’m) trying to be like you,” Wall responded.
The Wizards even gave Nitin his own locker, between the stalls occupied by Otto Porter Jr. and Nenê.
Perhaps the most special moment — the moment that 23-year-old Nitin now recognizes as the key turning point — occurred that night, when Wizards players ran onto the court before the national anthem. As players ran carefully around him, careful not to knock him over, Nenê and Gortat gently tapped Nitin on the back of his shoulders, nudging him to join the rest of the team, and then ran past.
Nitin could not run, but he somehow managed to maneuver forward and not lose his balance. It was a remarkable achievement given how sick he had been feeling for months and months, and that accomplishment continued to inspire him over the ensuing months and years as he worked to become, in his words, a normal kid again.
“I hadn’t run in a year … since I was diagnosed,” Nitin remembered. “I lost all my strength to run or barely even walk. That was the first day in a year or so that I managed to shuffle my feet forward.”
And look how far he’s come since. Last year, on the 10th anniversary of his original diagnosis, he ran 10 miles during a workout. A few weeks ago, on the 11th anniversary, he ran 11 miles. He’s now training to run a marathon this fall.
Nitin said he’s feeling great, but he does have to be vigilant. He said he has to undergo an MRI annually to make sure the cancer hasn’t returned. He visits doctors to ensure that everything remains stable, including his eyes, ears and skin. He has check-ins at a long-term cancer survivors clinic. And because his radiation treatments impacted his hearing, he wears hearing aids.
On April 3, about 30 minutes before tipoff, Nitin sat on a leather couch next to Leonsis in the owner’s dining area and told the story of Nenê and Gortat nudging him forward — and also about his progress, about how he’s now running half-marathon distances.
Leonsis, 68, and Nitin, 23, have kept in touch over the years, often over e-mail.
Leonsis graduated from Georgetown University. Nitin graduated from Georgetown in 2023. Leonsis worked for tech companies during the early stages of his career. Nitin now works as a software engineer for a company called Yext.
As Leonsis listened to Nitin, he smiled.
“I don’t consider him the sick little kid,” Leonsis said. “He’s Nitin, and he is a fellow alum and he made us proud.”
Nitin’s made everyone proud in part because he’s now trying to carry forward the impact others (including Make-A-Wish and the Wizards) had on him. He volunteers for Make-A-Wish and the National Brain Tumor Society, telling his story to raise awareness and teach people about the healing power of kindness.
“When I see these organizations and their impact on me, it sticks with me that if I’m in the position and healthy enough to give back, it’s not even a question, and I feel indebted to these organizations to do anything I can to give back,” he said. “Because all I want to do is fight for the other kids who I know experienced what I went through.”
(Top photo of Ted Leonsis and Nitin Ramachandran: Stephen Gosling / Courtesy of the Washington Wizards)
