Wade explains why Spoelstra is great and what it’s like reliving youth with ‘Last Dance’
Dwyane Wade has been spending a lot of time on Instagram these days. Every Friday, he hosts the “Wine Down,” his own show where he interviews celebrities across all different worlds. Like everyone, the Miami Heat legend cooped up at home because of the COVID-19 pandemic and using social media to give everyone a glimpse into his world.
On Wednesday, Wade popped up on the Heat’s Instagram page for a question-and-answer session with Jason Jackson. The sideline reporter asked some of his own questions and relayed Wade some from fans. One fan was particularly curious to know what makes Erik Spoelstra so good. Wade was effusive in his praise of Spoelstra, who coached Wade for 10 seasons and two of the franchise’s championships.
“I know Coach Spo does not get the credit that he deserves, and I don’t know if he ever will get the credit he deserves,” Wade said. “This is the fortunate and unfortunate part of it is he’s under Pat Riley, and Pat Riley’s still in the organization, he’s making the correct moves to bring in the right players and he gets a lot of credit for that. And I think a lot of people think Spo’s job is easy because of it. That actually makes it harder, to have Pat Riley as the boss and the one that’s putting these teams together.
“I think his greatest strength is his ability — I talked about it a little bit in my retirement speech, but for us it was his ability to not allow us to ever think about the moment. Whether we were winning 27 games in a row or we were losing five games in a row, he approached every day the same way, so we had to do the same thing and, as our leader, he was always consistent with that, and when you have someone that’s leading you and they’re consistent, it’s easier to follow them, so it was easy to follow his mentality. ... No matter if we won by 30 and we was on a 21-game winning streak, he was about the work. He was about, How are we going to get better? He was about this and that, and he stayed true to that and that’s, to me, his greatest strength — he never wavers.”
The conversation bounced around a litany of topics, including some of his favorite up-and-coming players and his foray in to the wine business. It wrapped up with documentary talk, though, as the NBA world continues to be fascinated by “The Last Dance.”
Wade is particularly enraptured. The former shooting guard was born in Chicago in 1982, two years before the Chicago Bulls picked Michael Jordan with the No. 3 pick in the 1984 NBA draft. While it primarily centers upon the Hall of Fame shooting guard’s final season with the Bulls, the ESPN documentary has touched on the entirety of Jordan’s tenure in Chicago. Every Sunday when new episodes air, Wade relives his youth and remembers why it was so important for him to have a strong connection with Miami.
“This is my entire childhood that we’re watching every Sunday,” Wade said. “God gave me an ability, so many people helped me along the journey, and my drive and all these things helped me get here, but if it was not for the Chicago Bulls — I wanted to be Michael Jordan, so I would’ve never had the vision to become that guy. And I also never would’ve had the vision to understand what it means to win championships for a city because the Bulls winning those championships back then — in our home, we might not have had a lot. We might not have eaten that night, we might not have had no heat that night, but the night that the Bulls won, it brought us together. It made us feel a part of something bigger than us and that’s the feeling that I always wanted to give, so watching this is taking me back to some of the simplest times in my life and the beginning, where my journey was just so clear of this is what I want to do. Before all the business and the money, and the fame and all these things got involved — it’s taking me back to the purest time that I’ve ever experienced in my life.”
Everything else
Wade also recalled out some favorite memories, named his all-time starting five and picked out his favorite Heat jersey. Here’s everything else we learned from the 13-time All-Star:
▪ Wade’s all-time starting five: Allen Iverson, Jordan, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Shaquille O’Neal. “I’ve got all three of my guys on there and then I’ve got two of my guys I won championships with, so that’s my team.”
▪ His funniest teammate: Eddie House.
▪ His favorite jersey: the home whites. “A lot of special things happened in that jersey over my career, so any time I put that jersey on it took me back a lot of times. The memories would come back — winning the 2012 championship in those jerseys, a lot of cool moments.”
▪ Most importantly, his favorite championship: 2006. “Just being able to bring that first championship to the City of Miami, being a young kid at 24 years old and having an out-of-body experience, and playing out of my mind and, for a quick moment, becoming the best player in the world — that right there was just a special moment.”
