Dwyane Wade is enjoying his NBA retirement tour to the fullest.
The fifth pick in the 2003 NBA Draft coming out of Marquette, Wade got the world’s attention in game one of the Heat’s first round playoff series against the New Orleans Hornets in 2004.
With Wade’s career winding down, where does he fit amongst the greats at the shooting guard position?
Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant are both shooting guards, ya know!
“I would say, of the three of them, D-Wade probably was the late-bloomer,” Wade’s ex-Miami Heat teammate, Quentin Richardson told me on the Scoop B Radio Podcast.
“When I say this, I don’t mean it in a disrespectful way, but like [Dwyane Wade is] a late bloomer-slash-the least talented who actually had to work and really work to get the abilities and talents and hone the things and get to the point where you know, Kobe and MJ [were].”
Quite fair!
LeBron James was even heralded out of high school. MJ was the man at North Carolina and Kobe Bryant was a phenom coming out of Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, PA.
“So I would say Kobe did that great,” said Richardson.
GettyYour thoughts on the fabled Kobe Bryant and Matt Barnes ball fake gif might be changing today.
“I mean, everybody saw how he emulated MJ and stuff like that, so I would say that’s the common thread between those guys, that they had the uncanny and the amazing work ethic that will not only get them to a certain place, but then take them to another level that nobody foresaw for them.”
The world got to really know Wade in the 2004 NBA Playoffs.
With 1.3 seconds remaining and tied at 79 apiece, Wade hit Hornets point guard Baron Davis with an ankle breaker crossover and drove to the basket making a running jumper amid the outstretched arm of Hornets center Jamaal Magloire. The basket gave the Heat a 81-79 victory and Miami would end up winning the series in seven games.
“I knew he was a special player even back then,” Wade’s former Miami Heat teammate, Rafer Alston, told me.
“Even though he was young and still developing even back then, he had that ‘it’ factor.”
“I think we did well that year even without a center,” said Alston. “We were a young team but we had big bodies that year with Udonis Haslem, Brian Grant and Malik Allen. We just couldn’t match up well with Indiana.”
The Heat would end up making a trade for the center they needed; swapping Odom to the Los Angeles Lakers for Shaquille O’Neal. Two years later, the super team Heat then-coached by Pat Riley and featured Shaq, Gary Payton, Antoine Walker, Jason Williams, James Posey would hoist a championship trophy after beating the Dallas Mavericks.
LeBron James and Chris Bosh would later arrive to South Beach and win two more rings with Wade.
“D-Wade wasn’t like that top-pick, you know,” Quentin Richardson told Scoop B Radio.
GettyMichael Jordan holds the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player trophy and former Chicago Bulls head coach Phil Jackson holds the NBA champions Larry O’Brian trophy after winning game six of the NBA Finals with the Utah Jazz.
“To take him number five, which is still high, but it was still like he wasn’t the projected superstar, the guy that they said was automatic and this, that, and the third, so I watched him, I was there, D-Miles saw a lot of it, too, he saw the summers in the gym and the different times, going through injuries, and how hard he worked, I got to physically see it, and how bad he wanted it and how much he put into it, so when I look at him and how he’s getting to go out in his 16th year and things like that, I think that the biggest thing, and when you listen to him talk, the commonality is their work ethic.”
Wade would have stints with the Chicago Bulls and the Cleveland Cavaliers before finding his way back home to Miami in a trade last season.
Wade’s return to the Miami Heat last season was a full circle moment after the future Hall of Famer left M-I-A in 2016 when the Heat refused to pay him what he thought he was worth.
Ironically, Dirk Nowitzki, also a free agent two summers ago was offered a two-year $50 million deal to stay with the Dallas Mavericks and was more than he asked for in free agency.
“I basically told him, look, you tell me the price and it actually started lower,” Mark Cuban told me back in the summer of 2016.
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Miami Heat’s Dwyane Wade Had to Work Harder Than Kobe, MJ says ex-teammate