Podcast: Why Game 3 of the 2006 NBA Finals is the signature Dwyane Wade performance
The 2006 season was the most pivotal in the Miami Heat’s now-storied history. The Heat’s 2005 postseason run — its first with Shaquille O’Neal — fell short in the Eastern Conference finals, and O’Neal’s rapid deterioration began soon after. The Heat had still never won a title, and the outlook was quickly changing.
Just as O’Neal started to fade, Dwyane Wade began to emerge as one of the five or six best players in the league. The 13-time All-Star finished sixth in voting for the NBA Most Valuable Player Award, then carried the Miami all the way to the 2006 NBA Finals. The Heat fell down 2-0 to the Dallas Mavericks in the series and then Wade became a legendary.
He scored 42 in Game 3, dragging Miami out of a 13-point hole in the fourth quarter to take a must-win game at AmericanAirlines Arena. Wade and the Heat completely swung the momentum. They won the next two in Miami, too, and then capped the turnaround with a Game 6 win in Dallas. Once just minutes away from a 3-0 deficit in the series, the Heat won their first NBA championship in six games.
It all started with Game 3 — the signature performance of Wade’s Hall of Fame career. With the NBA still on hiatus because of the COVID-19 pandemic, David Wilson and Anthony Chiang, the Heat beat writer for the Miami Herald, break down the marquee Wade game on the Heat Check podcast.
First, we talk about why this game — and not a 43-point explosion in Game 5 of the series — is the pinnacle of Wade’s career. It starts with the scoring, which made him the perfect shooting guard for his era, but ends with the defense and hustle he made in the waning moments.
The game was more than just about Wade, though, so Chiang and Wilson hit on all the topics, including O’Neal’s lingering dominance, post player Udonis Haslem’s reliability, a star-studded preseason trade and trying to figure out whatever happened to former Mavericks small forward Josh Howard.
