'One Last Dance': Dwyane Wade will return to the Heat for a 16th NBA season

After his Miami Heat fell to the Philadelphia 76ers in the first round of the 2018 NBA playoffs, Dwyane Wade made it clear that he planned to take some time to figure out what would come next: a return for a 16th NBA season, or one final bow before the start of his journey to immortality in Springfield, Mass. Four months later, the 12-time All-Star and three-time NBA champion has made it official: he’s not done yet.

Wade tweeted the news Sunday evening, along with a 10-minute video explaining the thought he put into his decision:

Wade will suit up for a 16th pro season, and continue to add to his long-since-cemented legacy as one of the greatest shooting guards the game’s ever seen.

Wade, for all intents and purposes, is the Heat’s record book, ranking first in franchise history in games, minutes, points, assists, steals, field goals made and attempted, free throws made and attempted. He’s 31st on the all-time NBA scoring list, 35th in steals and 50th in assists, standing as one of seven players ever to log at least 22,000 points, 5,000 assists, 4,500 rebounds and 1,500 steals in a career, according to Basketball-Reference.com. The others: Karl Malone, teammate and dear friend LeBron James, Jordan, Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant and Clyde Drexler. (Decent company.)

Following a pair of brief, ill-fitting sojourns away from South Beach — a single-season dalliance with the Bulls after some long-simmering tensions with Heat president Pat Riley led Wade to return to his hometown, and a half-season attempt to rekindle an old flame in Cleveland — Wade landed back in Miami last February. After his return, he made it clear that Miami was his last stop, and that come season’s end, he was either going to return to the Heat or say goodbye.

In the closing months of last season, it was fair to wonder whether Wade might be leaning toward the latter. While he said he felt more at home at AmericanAirlines Arena than he had during his time away, and while Heat fans were ecstatic to have him back in the fold, Wade’s return to Miami saw him come off the bench in a crowded backcourt featuring established rotation players like Josh Richardson, Tyler Johnson, Wayne Ellington and Rodney McGruder. And while Wade definitely occupied a primary star’s role in that capacity, completely taking over the offense once he checked in to the tune of 19 shot attempts per 36 minutes of floor time after his arrival, he played less like the old Dwyane Wade than like, well, Just Old Dwyane Wade.

His shooting percentages plummeted as his usage rate soared; he wasn’t making up for that deficit on the defensive end, either, as he struggled with getting his conditioning back up to Riley and Erik Spoelstra’s standards. All told, Miami cratered in Wade’s minutes. The Heat’s offense averaged about 10 fewer points per 100 possessions with Wade on the court than when he sat over the final 21 games of the regular season, and conceded nearly four points-per-100 more, too.

And yet, Spoelstra stayed the course, giving Wade the minutes and opportunities the star had earned, believing that a Heat team scratching and scraping for postseason positioning would come to need the kind of contributions that someone with Wade’s “championship DNA” could provide come the playoffs.

And then came the playoffs.

The quickness and athleticism that helped Wade earn three All-Defensive Second Team nods earlier in his career have waned. So has the first step and burst off the bounce that left defenders breathless, and the wherewithal to take the physical pounding to keep attacking for 48 minutes. But even though Wade couldn’t fully dictate the terms of engagement anymore, he could still grab the game by the scruff of its neck for stretches, like he did in Game 2 in Philadelphia back in April, pouring in 28 points in 26 minutes off the bench and sealing the win with all-court excellence in the closing minutes:

The moment didn’t last. The Sixers would go on to a five-game victory, dispatching the Heat in Miami as Wade surrounded one last gasp (25 points in 26 minutes in a four-point Game 4 loss) by missing 19 of his 25 field-goal attempts in Games 3 and 5, as Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons and the rising young guns in Philly moved on to the next round. But the moment still mattered, still resonated, still served as a reminder of all the things that made Wade special.

“He’s the best player to ever come through this organization,” Wade’s career-long teammate Udonis Haslem told Michael Lee after that Game 2 performance.

Like fellow future Hall of Fame shooting guard Manu Ginobili, Wade spent the summer weighing his options, trying to decide whether or not he felt up for the challenge of preparing himself for another NBA season. Despite reported interest from China — and despite an apparel-based argument for entertaining said interest — Wade insisted it was South Beach or bust.

As Labor Day neared, word had begun to burble out that Wade “seem[ed] inclined to play this season,” and the man himself evinced a continuing love for the game by showing up to hoop with random dudes at various pick-up runs.

“Whether I’m playing this year or not, I will be prepared to play,” he said.

And now, not long after Haslem reached an agreement to come back for one more run, leaving Miami with one final roster spot to fill before training camp later this month, so did Wade.

How large a role he’ll play in that crowded Heat guard mix remains to be seen; that big playoff performance aside, Wade’s larger body of work last season suggests he’s due for an even more sharply curtailed set of responsibilities, despite his outsized stature in the Heat organization. But those are details that Wade, Riley, Spoelstra and company can start working out as the season approaches. We’ve already had to bid farewell to one all-time great guard this summer; let’s all offer a brief moment of thanks that we’ll get to watch Wade keep it going for a little while longer.

– – – – – – –

Dan Devine is a writer and editor for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoosports.com or follow him on Twitter!

Follow @YourManDevine

More from Yahoo Sports:
• Ex-Piston goes on TV to tell wife he slept with 341 women
• Thamel: 10 CFB takeaways on weekend that went terribly for Big Ten
• Iole: GGG goaded Canelo into ‘Mexican style’ fighting but couldn’t win
• Urban Meyer tiptoes around questions about Courtney Smith