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The selfless superstar: Dwyane Wade has unique path of Heat sacrifice to Hall of Fame

ira winderman, south florida sun-sentinel
·6 min read
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MIAMI — Of the 111 former NBA players already in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and even including the four to be inducted Saturday in Springfield, Mass., Miami Heat icon Dwyane Wade arguably will stand alone in at least one respect: A player who stepped back into a supporting role while at the pinnacle of his game.

“And,” Heat President Pat Riley said this week, “it turned into back-to-back championships and three more trips to the Finals.”

Understand, this was a player two seasons removed from the NBA scoring title, one who had helped his team advance to the NBA Finals a season earlier.

And then he . . . deferred.

Many who will ascend the stage at Springfield’s Symphony Hall will discuss their basketball journeys in terms of sacrifice. Wade embodied it in the prime of his career.

“Some people are lucky enough to go through their career and get the ball in their hand, and that’s how they can ride,” Wade said ahead of his induction, “My journey did not start that way and my journey did not end that way.

“And so to be able to find a way throughout the journey of basketball to become a complete basketball player, whether you’re the No.1 guy on the team, or whether you’re the guy that just has to make sure you’re there before everybody gets there, to be prepared to get your team ready, as a scout player, I’ve done it all. So I felt that I gave the game everything that I had, and I did it every day.”

At the start, at Marquette, there was little choice, academic guidelines keeping him off the court his freshman year before he flourished into the No. 5 pick in the 2003 NBA draft.

But in the 2011 offseason, with the Heat coming off a sobering NBA Finals loss to the Dallas Mavericks and Dirk Nowitzki, who also will be inducted Saturday, Wade came to define the selflessness that Riley and coach Erik Spoelstra have preached since.

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So Wade not only looked in the mirror, but also at Big Three teammates LeBron James and Chris Bosh.

“We have to remember that in 2006 he was the MVP and he led us to a world championship,” Riley said of Wade’s performance in those NBA Finals. “At that time, at that moment, he was the greatest player on the planet during those Finals against Dallas.

“In 2011 when they failed, when the Big Three failed, we had a meeting and I said, ‘You guys gotta figure this out. You’re going to have to figure out the pecking order in how this is going to work.’ ”

A summit followed. LeBron would be the alpha. Wade and Bosh would complement after nearly a decade of playing as leading men.

“And everybody knew LJ was going to be at the top, Dwyane was going to be somewhere in the middle, CB was going to take up the third spot,” Riley said. “They went to the Bahamas, they met, and they had come to terms with it, and they lived by it.

“And, so, Dwyane was absolutely unselfish there. I think he was the one who said, ‘Hey, man, we can’t do it this way, where every night somebody’s going to have to be the guy. This is going to have to be the pecking order.’ ”

Riley had seen it before, from Wilt Chamberlain stepping back from scoring while with the Los Angeles Lakers to Bob McAdoo agreeing to play as sixth man under the Riley-coached Lakers.

But those were Hall of Famers further along, grasping for unachieved team success amid their next iteration. This was Dwyane Wade still capable of being a leading man on a contender.

“You just got to give Dwayne credit,” Riley said. “He was very unselfish.”

It was a meeting Wade reflected upon ahead of his 2019 retirement, particularly the discussion with James.

“I said, ‘I watched you play all year, you weren’t yourself. You weren’t playing your game. You were trying to make sure everybody was happy, ‘ ” Wade recalled of that 2011 offseason meeting. “It had to be done.”

From ball dominant, Wade worked relentlessly off the ball, Spoelstra marveling at the 6-foot-4 guard’s ability to master the nuances of subtle and not-so-subtle cuts. Three more Finals berths followed, but also championships in 2012 and ’13.

To put the degree of change into perspective, consider that in winning the Heat’s first championship in 2006 against the Mavericks, Wade averaged 34.7 points in those Finals. In winning the second, Wade averaged 22.6 against the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2012 NBA Finals, and then 19.6 in the championship-winning run through the 2013 NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs.

“Dwyane really went out of his way to make sure LeBron is the best player,” Spoelstra said.

Wade said it had to be done.

“A lot of people didn’t understand why I did that,” he said.

Bosh did.

“Dwyane put a lot of pressure on everybody,” Bosh said. “He put pressure on everybody else to aspire for greatness.”

Saturday, greatness — and selflessness — will be embraced at the sport’s shrine.

“I hope their memories of me was of someone who gave everything he had on the basketball court,” Wade, 41, said, “someone who was unselfish, someone who did it the right way, who did it his way, but in the midst of doing it his way, made sure he uplifted others, empowered others and brought others along the journey.”

Dwyane Wade’s Hall of Fame resume

  • Three-time NBA champion (2006, 2012, 2013), as MVP of 2006 Finals.

  • 13-time All-Star, as MVP of 2010 game.

  • Eight-time All-NBA.

  • Three-time All-Defensive.

  • 2009 NBA scoring champion.

  • 2004 All-Rookie.

  • NBA 75th Anniversary Team in 2022.

  • Six-time NBA Player of the Month.

  • 13-time NBA Player of the Week.

  • Received MVP votes in nine seasons.

  • No. 3 retired by Heat.

  • One of three NBA players to total at least 20,000 points, 5,000 assists, 4,000 rebounds, 1,500 steals, 800 blocks and 500 3-pointers (also LeBron James and Michael Jordan).

  • Heat all-time leader in points, assists, steals, games, minutes, turnovers, fouls, field goals, field-goal attempts, free throws, free-throw attempts, usage percentage, win shares, defensive win shares and value over replacement.

  • Regular season: 27th all-time in NBA free throws made, 33rd all-time in NBA steals, 35th all-time in NBA two-point baskets, 37th all-time in NBA points, 47th all-time in NBA assists.

  • Playoffs: 13th all-time in scoring, 14th all-time in free throws made, 15th all-time in steals, 25th in all-time assists. Also, 24th all-time in NBA career player-efficiency rating.