Not many professional athletes get to end their career in the time and place of their own choosing. Dwyane Wade is doing just that for the Miami Heat.
Usually when a professional athlete begins to lose their abilities, they are the last to realize or acknowledge it. NBA and sports history is littered with legends who hung on just a little too long and wound up being remembered at the end as a shell of their former selves. That won’t happen to Dwyane Wade this season with the Miami Heat.
Wade can’t do the superstar things he could do when he was younger with athleticism most players throughout history could only dream of. Instead, at 37, he’s more like a fastball pitcher who has lost some velocity on his heater so he has to reinvent his approach on the mound, and reinvent he has.
He’s transformed into a solid lead guard off the bench who can give you 25 good minutes, and can even hit the 3-pointer at a rate (32.7 percent) just high enough to keep defenses honest. This isn’t a trick he’s had in his bag for most of his career.
Perhaps Wade’s most impressive trend this season, he has been at his best when the Miami Heat play the second half of back-to-back games. While the Heat have a negative net rating overall when Wade is on the floor, getting outscored by 2.2 points per 100 possessions, Wade’s net rating is +6.6 in games with no rest day.
If ever there was a time when you might think Wade’s legs would betray him, it’s in games with no rest day. Instead, he’s also shooting at his best in these situations, hitting 46 percent from the floor and 40 percent from 3-point range on an average of 4.5 3s per game.
Of course, 10-game samples like this are an example of small sample size theater, but if there’s ever a time to excel in that theater, it’s in the last season of a legendary Hall of Famer’s career.
Dwyane Wade will never suffer the ignominy of being traded from team to team and essentially deemed unrosterable like Carmelo Anthony, he’ll never languish at the end of a team’s bench with one good knee. He won’t ever be viewed by Miami Heat fans (or any other franchise) as dead weight, sucking team resources and salary dry.
No, Dwyane Wade will be remembered as a champion and as a player who in his last season was a key part of a Miami Heat playoff run, one which probably never happens without him.