Dwyane Wade is a Miami Heat legend, no matter how you look at it. Here is this week’s weekly salute to SLAM’s #WadeWednesdays.
The year was 2010 and Miami Heat Head Coach Erik Spoelstra was in the midst of just his second season as the head man for the Heat. Dwyane Wade was 28 and in the middle of what would be just his seventh season in the NBA. Of course and as he had been for the previous 5 years of his seven-year career at the time, he was named an NBA All-Star for the Eastern Conference.
The Miami Heat were 26-27 as the All-Star break was set to begin and coming off of an 18 point drubbing of the Atlanta Hawks, the team that had sent them home in the first round of the previous season’s playoffs. D-Wade had averaged a career-high 30.2 points per game, 5 rebounds, 7.5 assists, 2.2 steals, and 1.3 blocks in the season prior and was well on his way to another superb season that would see him average 26.6 points, 4.8 rebounds, 6.5 assists, 1.8 steals, and 1.1 blocks per game.
The Miami Heat were a stable team at the time with a nice mix of veterans and young players, that also featured a few players that would go on to become Miami Heat icons for what they have meant to the organization. Some of those names include Mario Chalmers, James Jones, Joel Anthony, Dwyane Wade, and of course the Heat Lifer himself in U.D., or Udonis Haslem who just so happens to still be a member of the Heat today.
He was named to an Eastern Conference All-Star roster that included the likes of Allen Iverson, LeBron James, Kevin Garnett, Dwight Howard, Joe Johnson, Rajon Rondo, Derrick Rose, Paul Pierce, Gerald Wallace, Chris Bosh, Al Horford, and David Lee. The Coach of this team would be none other than Dwyane Wade’s former Miami Heat head coach, Stan Van Gundy.
https://twitter.com/SLAMRewind/status/1179408137633308676
Wade obviously remembered his time as a player during Stan Van Gundy’s Miami Heat tenure. The above footage shows him unveiling a fresh pack of earplugs because he remembered so vividly. According to Flash, SVG was a screamer and had done a lot of that in his direction across his time with the Miami Heat, to which Van Gundy confirmed towards the end of the video.
While the East would go on to win that year’s All-Star exhibition to a tune of 141-139, the Miami Heat got plucked during the first round of that year’s playoffs, like the year prior. There can be solace taken in the fact that this was a first-round exit at the hands of the Big 3 era Boston Celtics, although it still hurts to lose at any point to anybody. The nostalgia is real and this certainly invoked such emotions, that is why we salute Slam’s efforts and we can’t wait until next Wednesday to do it all over again.