That’s just who he is.

Speak softly? You’d have better luck asking a bull to gait gently through the china shop.

So when a staffer at Children’s Hospital in Detroit reminded Wallace and six other Pistons to keep their voices low around the ailing children they were about to visit Monday, one could envision a boisterous Wallace going for the cheap laugh, dancing and cracking jokes while distressed nurses tried to shush him.

Except this wasn’t a game night.

Room One

Rasheed starts in the room of a 7-month-old girl resting in her mother’s arms. He places a white teddy bear in bed alongside the child, who is not much larger than the bear. “Isn’t it soft?” Rasheed coos. He tells the mother he also brought T-shirts, which she asks him to sign.

“No doubt,” Rasheed replies, rolling a black Sharpie between his fingers, pressing the T-shirt against his hand to write. The mother rocks her baby. “We got ourselves a treat, didn’t we?” she says. “You don’t even understand.”

Rasheed thinks she does. “Oh, I see that smile coming out,” he says. He does the baby wave - bending a long, bony index finger back and forth, the way an adoring stranger would at a couple’s newborn in the park.

Room Two

A 17-year-old girl is propped up against pillows when Rasheed peeks around the curtain. “Here’s a few gifts to help you pass the time,” he says, arms full of T-shirts and a handheld riddle game. “I’m not sure how it works,” he confesses. “You might have to read the directions.”

When Rasheed asks if she wants a picture, she shoots upright off the pillows and he meets her halfway, leaning over the foot of the bed. As teenage girls are prone to do when they meet celebrities, she lets out a giggle and covers her face. Rasheed laughs.

“I was about to cry,” she says after he leaves the room. Then she covers her face again.

Room Three

A young boy from an Arabic-speaking family has their doctor translate for them. “Rasheed, this is very nice of you,” the doctor says, over and over.

The father holds his son up, careful not to snag the IV tubes coming from his arm. Before they take a picture together, Rasheed encourages the mother to join them, waving her out of the rocking chair they had brought from home.

Room Four

A 5-year-old girl is drawing gingerbread men on Christmas-colored paper. “You’re very artistic,” Rasheed says, genuinely impressed. A smile shines through the clear plastic mask over her mouth and nose.

He holds up a pink box containing the Cinderella Tea Set from Disney. “I know everyone loves the Disney princesses,” says Rasheed, who has one daughter and three sons. When Rasheed moves to the next room, the girl rocks back and forth excitedly as her mother places the Cinderella box in front of her. They start to put away the coloring pencils.

Room Five

A toddler waddles almost 15 feet to meet Rasheed at the door. “That’s so cool because he doesn’t really like to go around other men,” the boy’s mother says. “And he went over to him, real comfortable and easy. It was really pleasant.”

As Rasheed steps into the doorway to leave, the 20-month-old follows him. “Ba!” he blurts out.

Rasheed’s ears perk up at hearing the child speak for the first time. He spins around, wearing a toothy grin from ear to ear, and waves. “Bye!”

“We met Rasheed”

Bed to bed, room to room, Rasheed went up and down the fifth floor of Children’s Hospital Monday. He visited close to three-quarters of the 40 children on the floor. For the kids he wasn’t able to see, Rasheed took a Polaroid outside their room and signed it, including one for a 17-year-old who had fallen asleep. “The brothers and sisters are trying to wake him up,” said a hospital staffer. Rasheed met the siblings and wished them well.

Similar scenes played out on other floors as Alex Acker, Arron Afflalo, Will Bynum, Amir Johnson, Rip Hamilton and Walter Herrmann each made their rounds through the massive complex. On any given day there are 250 children receiving treatment at Children’s Hospital for a potentially life-threatening condition such as burns or juvenile cancer.

“You are about to make this child’s life,” the hospital spokesperson told the players before the visit. Michallene Hooper, the staffer who followed Rasheed into each room with the Polaroid camera, will see the lasting effect of their visit in the coming days.

“They might be stunned and all they can get out is thank you,” she said. “But they’re going to tell everybody, they’re going to call everybody and show that picture and show that T-shirt. It really means a lot.”

Rasheed is at the other end of the fifth floor now, but the five rooms he visited earlier are flush with activity. Two families sharing the same room swap camera phones to see each other’s photos, other phones are calling family and friends. “We met Rasheed,” can be heard in the hallway. The Arabic family is still standing, showing their Polaroid to a nurse. The fifth floor is abuzz.

And Rasheed? He rarely raised his voice above a whisper. Two minutes, a toy here, a T-shirt there - very simple stuff. He smiled for pictures. He signed autographs. Heck, he didn’t even dance. And for every child, from infant boy to teenage girl, he knew exactly how to get a smile.

That’s just who he is, too.