Miami Heat champs Dwyane Wade & Ray Allen helped shape Bradley Beal

Miami Heat & NBA legends Dwyane Wade and Ray Allen were all-time greats. It makes sense that Bradley Beal chose them, along with Allen Iverson, as molds.

The Miami Heat are a team that has been filled with champions. When you look at the list of players that have called American Airlines Arena their home arena, that all starts to make sense.

While they haven’t been in that title or championship conversation for the last few seasons, they seem to now be headed in the right direction. With Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo at the head of things on the floor, with Erik Spoelstra stalking the sidelines, and with Pat Riley in the front office turning the gears, things are sure to be back there in no time.

That doesn’t mean that it won’t take work though on all three levels and by all parties involved. The first two levels in the coach and the players have seemingly begun to show some of there work this season.

Pat Riley is presumably always up to something as well. One name that has more than likely come up in his work, haa been linked to the Miami Heat for a year or better now, and continues to come up in conversation surrounding them every day it seems is Bradley Beal of the Washington Wizards.

As recently as a few days ago, the rumors started to heat up again with the ultimate conclusion from this barrage being that if he is to exit Washington, it’ll be a wild wild west style auction for his services. That isn’t the topic here today though, or at least not where Beal currently plays his professional basketball specifically.

The Miami Heat have been hot on the trails of Bradley Beal, seemingly keeping an eye on him. He’s been keeping an eye on some of them for a while too.

Concerning Beal though, nonetheless, he recently had some interesting things to say about how he went about crafting his game, or style of playing the game of basketball. See for yourself, via Matt Barnes’s and Stephen Jackson’s Showtime podcast series, All The Smoke.

What a perfect trio to model your game after. You have the greatest Miami Heat player of all time in Dwyane Wade, a Miami Heat champion and one of the best shooters to ever live in Ray Allen, and although never affiliated with the Miami Heat, you can never be mad at any Allen Iverson reference, unless you are Tyron Lue or a fan of his (see: Allen Iverson step over)

You can see it all when you watch Beal play too. As he said, but his own words of course.

When you look at his ability to flat out stroke it from every level, that is the Ray Allen. Although Jesus Shuttlesworth was predominantly a three point specialist by the time he got to Miami, he was a three-level scorer for a long time in the NBA.

Allen Iverson was well before his time, taking the NBA crossover to an even greater level. He was also a master of being able to make tough finishes from anywhere on the floor, which is something that Beal often does himself. You also have to include the fact that they both share a string tight handle that they can both utilize to make the opposing defender look silly at will, before completely demoralizing them with a dazzling finish.

Lastly, you tie a bow around it with one of the greatest all-around scorers the league has ever seen, one that was especially fluent and dominant from the mid-range area of the floor. One similarity you really notice between Wade and Beal is their abilities to catch in the mid-range, mid-post, or mid-baseline areas and quickly get into their stuff.

What this means is that they can create their shots in a compact area, something that most players can’t do which means that they need the extra space the perimeter provides, while operating with less space for yourself means less space for the defender.

Their understanding of operating in these confined areas puts them at the ultimate advantage because they are able to premeditate their moves, while the defender can’t and has less room for errors he makes, literally and proverbially, thus resulting in less time to make up for said mistakes. And, that’s a Beal or Flash bucket.

You could pick any three NBA players to mold your game after, but why, when you have the skillset and tools to be like the three great ones that Beal chose? Either way, we hope he eventually gets to literally follow in Wade and Allen’s footsteps, as we assume he will one day soon. As the above-linked tweet indicates and in reference to the many little Miami Heat links that have been made as of recent to Beal, it seems inevitable.