Dwyane Wade on commissioner’s ‘special’ All-Star invitation: ‘It was a dope gesture’
Dwyane Wade has made it clear all season he didn’t want an invitation to the NBA All-Star Game. It’s not because he doesn’t want to play in the annual star-studded showcase, but the Miami Heat guard really didn’t want to take a roster spot away from someone who deserved it more — someone like Charlotte Hornets point guard Kemba Walker or Milwaukee Bucks swingman Khris Middleton, both of whom were named All-Stars for the first time Thursday.
On Friday, commissioner Adam Silver figured out a compromise. This year, the game will have 13 players aside instead of the usual 12. Silver announced he would be making two “special roster additions” to the All-Star Game on Feb. 17, inviting Wade and Dallas Mavericks post player Dirk Nowitzki to suit up in Charlotte.
Wade, a surefire future Hall of Famer and three-time NBA champion, has already said he’ll retire at the end of the season. Nowitzki, another future Hall of Famer and perhaps the greatest European player in league history, hasn’t made anything official, but is widely expected to retire at the end of the year.
“It was a dope gesture,” Wade said inside the home locker room Friday at AmericanAirlines Arena after the Heat fell to the Oklahoma City Thunder, 118-102. “I reached out to him and I told him. At this point, you guys know, I appreciated my fans for voting for me, but I didn’t want to be put in a position where you take a roster spot of someone who gets their first opportunity to go to the All-Star Game or second or third. I’ve had 12 chances.
“But for the commissioner to create that opportunity for Dirk and myself, that’s cool. I think I appreciate more getting in this way, so I’ll be there. I’m going to enjoy it, everything. Go around and take it all in. I’m glad I can share this opportunity with Dirk, one of the game’s greatest players and someone that I’ve had battles against. It’s only right, so I look forward to this opportunity.”
Wade’s 13th and final All-Star appearance will be his first in the NBA’s new format, which has two captains pick their rosters from a pool of 26 All-Star players. The captains this year are Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James and Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo, and James will have first pick in the snake draft. In the first year of the format last year, captains spent the first five rounds picking their starters from the other eight players who were elected as starters by fans, coaches and media.
Round 3 this year, however, will be dedicated to Wade and Nowitzki.
James, of course, will get the first pick in the third round, which means one final opportunity for the two to play together after spending 2010-2014 as teammates with the Heat — as long as James doesn’t do anything crazy.
“He better pick me,” Wade said. “I’m not even going to play. He better pick me. I’m not going to play this game.”
Despite playoff position, Heat has trouble on horizon
Miami’s playoff positioning is officially precarious.
Since finishing 2018 with 12 wins in its final 17 games, the Heat has solidly sat inside the top eight of the Eastern Conference with multiple games of buffer between Miami and those sitting outside the playoff picture.
The Heat’s buffer is still multiple games, but just barely. Entering a Saturday game against the Indiana Pacers in Miami, the Heat slipped into eighth place, two games ahead of the ninth-place Detroit Pistons and 2.5 games ahead of the 10th-place Washington Wizards. The seventh-place Charlotte Hornets sit a half game ahead of Miami and the sixth-place Brooklyn Nets have built a 2.5-game edge.
Hanging on to the final playoff spot in the East will be a tall order for the Heat. FiveThirtyEight gives Miami only a 40-percent chance of making the playoffs — worse than the Hornets, Wizards and Pistons. ESPN’s Basketball Percentage Index and Sports Reference’s playoff probabilities report remain more optimistic — ESPN has the Heat at 55.8 percent and Sports Reference at 51.3 — but a 12-game stretch, which began Friday against the Thunder, complicates Miami’s playoff push.
Seven of the Heat’s next 11 games come on the road, including the next five following Saturday. Four of those next five games, which are broken up by the All-Star Game on Feb. 17, are against teams which entered Saturday with a winning record. Six of the 12 games are part of back-to-back sets, including Friday against Oklahoma City and Saturday against Indiana.
“This is where you lean on your character, your culture and what you have in your locker room,” coach Erik Spoelstra said at his postgame press conference Friday. “The majority of teams go through tough points during the season and it’s how you respond to this. This is a time where we’re not playing the kind of basketball that we want to.”
Following those 12 wins in 17 games to end 2018, the Heat won only seven of its next 15 entering Saturday, including losses to bottom-dwellers like the Chicago Bulls on Wednesday and the Atlanta Hawks last month.
Losses like those become more painful when viewing Miami’s remaining schedule in whole. The Heat entered Saturday with the third toughest remaining schedule in the league, its remaining 32 opponents boasting a combined winning percentage of .537. Washington and Detroit, on the other hand, both have two of the nine easiest schedules remaining, although Charlotte’s schedule is the eighth most difficult.
“We have a resilient group,” Spoelstra said. “It’s not like we’re going to have a bunch of guys that are hiding and feeling sorry for ourselves.”
This story was originally published February 2, 2019 at 8:00 AM.