Tim Hardaway will have his number retired tonight by the Miami Heat, and this is a good time as any to look back at the career of ... actually, let's just stop right here.

Let's get this over with.

I've been aware of Tim Hardaway the basketball player for exactly two-thirds of my life. I've been in awe of Tim Hardaway, the basketball player, for that same amount of time, in spite of the typical end-of-career fulminations that Tim-Bug experienced.

I've also been aware of Tim Hardaway, the recovering homophobe, for the last 2 1/2 years.

I know, I know, Kelly. Ignore it. It's over. Just talk about the good stuff. He's done with it. He's grown, he's changed, he's not the same, and it's not worth bringing up.

Well, yes, it is worth bringing up.

Tim Hardaway made some stupid comments that he actually believed, back in February of 2007, and he was roundly criticized for such.

Guess what? This is part of the package. And this is part of what made Hardaway so great. This is part of what he's had to work through. Was he ignorant, back then? Sure.

Was he — in a society that often applauds willful ignorance and sometimes hands it a VP nomination — proud of being stupid?

Obviously, he wasn't.

He didn't kowtow. He learned. He stepped out of the bubble that had given him so much. He didn't need the money, he didn't need the exposure and he didn't need our attention. He wanted to, for himself. He took the lumps, and did something about it.

That's who he is. He's the guy that had to learn how to do well with a knuckleball jump shot, manufactured on outdoor courts, launched through whipping winds sent from Lake Michigan, meant to turn each attempt into an almost-there airball.

He's the one that had overcome size and space issues, to say nothing of a UTEP pedigree that hardly yelled "NBA All-Star!" A 5-11 guard who could crossover but couldn't send much toward the rim outside of the paint? Please.

This didn't matter to Tim Hardaway.

A Golden State Warriors team with an exacting coach and a group of vets that needed the ball, dammit?

This didn't matter to Tim Hardaway. He was the "RUN" and the "T" in RUN-TMC. Just bring his name up, and people smile. "Killer crossover, man."

An ACL tear? That mattered. It especially mattered in the 1990s.

This wasn't the Bernard King-era of players watching their careers go to pot once that most significant of ligaments snapped. But it was a major setback, and once Mitch Richmond and Don Nelson left the Golden State Warriors, it was Tim who was left to try and rehab on a team that fancied itself a playoff contender. A team that massively underachieved.

That didn't matter to Tim Hardaway. He kept at it.

Problem was, and I can't blame coach Rick Adelman, the 1995-96 Warriors should have contended. A rookie Joe Smith(notes), at his absolute peak (seriously). Latrell Sprewell, at his peak. Rony Seikaly and Chris Mullin. Hardaway off the bench. Only the Sacramento Kings to beat for the last spot in the playoffs.

And when it became clear midseason that it wasn't happening, the Warriors pulled the trigger. Sent Hardaway, who had been coming off the bench, to Miami. Tim was out of shape, unhappy, but damned productive. Didn't matter to Adelman, so Tim spelled B.J. Armstrong.

Shipped to Miami, Hardaway didn't exactly go off. His play improved, as it should with increased minutes, but he was more or less the same. That is to say, awesome. And on a stripped-down Heat team full of expiring contracts and one stud franchise player it was hoping to retain (sound familiar?), he just looked like another failed prodigy, just slumming in Miami until Pat Riley figured out what he wanted to do.

Pat Riley figured out that he wanted Gary Payton(notes). And he went after Payton, a free agent fresh off a Finals appearance, hard. Payton listened, but ultimately rebuffed Riles. And after the league put the kibosh on Miami's Juwan Howard(notes) signing due to Miami's re-signing of Alonzo Mourning(notes), and P.J. Brown(notes) turned out to be the prize of Riley's particular free-agent class, Riley had to lower his eyes (literally) and try to bring Hardaway back.

Hardaway could have moped. Instead, he signed, showed up to camp in the best shape of his life and played the best ball of his career. Led the Heat to the conference finals, where they fell to the Bulls. Led them to another strong year in 1997-98, where they fell to Mourning's temper and the Knicks. Led them to the first seed in 1999, where they fell to an eighth-seeded Knicks team that was probably the second-best team in the East that year.

After that, the knee sort of caught up to him.

Hardaway gamely tried, but by the 2001 playoffs, Baron Davis(notes) and his younger Hornets were too tough a matchup. The Heat sent him to the Dallas Mavericks that summer for the pittance of a second-round pick. He contributed, but was soon off to Denver in a trade-deadline deal that sent Raef LaFrentz(notes) and Nick Van Exel to the Mavs. He threw a television monitor on the court soon after, retired for a bit, worked on ESPN (and was pretty terrible), came back for a cup of coffee for Isiah Thomas' Indiana Pacers, and that was it.

No rings. His prime scarred by injury. His name tarnished by the comments from a few years ago. His TV-chucking infamy dialing up just as the internet was getting its sea legs.

It shouldn't have to be this way. He was the person I described in the previous paragraph, but he was also a badass.

He was also a player who turned the rocker-step and the crossover into league-wide phenomenons. He was the player who made it OK for the diminutive scoring guard to dot and sometimes dominate the league for a decade. And he had to do all this in an era where hand-checking was more prominent than it ever was.

Sure, they hand-checked for years without getting called before the 1990s, but by Hardaway's time everyone was playing defense and everyone was sticking a forearm into your chest as you drove.

Didn't matter to Tim.

That's why we loved him and his game. That's why we respected it so much. You don't get extra points added to your average because you're 5-11 or because your knee was once torn to bits, but we're human, and we can't help but add that extra credit.

Add all the credit you can tonight. Hardaway was an innovator, an All-Star and someone who had to work so, so much to get where he ended up. This man was a brilliant ballplayer, even if he had what could have been his finest years cruelly taken away.

The best part about all this? Sure, they'll fête him tonight; but I don't think we've heard the last from Tim Hardaway. That's something to get excited about.

Related: Raef LaFrentz, Alonzo Mourning, Baron Davis, Juwan Howard, Gary Payton, Dallas Mavericks, Golden State Warriors, Indiana Pacers