Here’s why Michael Jordan’s trainer believes MJ, Wade and Kobe are cut from same cloth
Dwyane Wade is obviously the greatest player in Miami Heat history.
The three rings, 13 All-Star appearances and eight All-NBA selections only slightly begin to explain Wade’s stature in Miami. There’s another level to his greatness that can be difficult to explain but easy to point out.
Tim Grover, Michael Jordan’s longtime trainer, recently shed some light on what makes Wade so special. Describing three different types of work ethics, Grover slotted Flash into the ‘cleaner’ category along with Jordan.
“Cleaners get that end result over and over again,” Grover said on a podcast released Sunday. “So they figure stuff out no matter what’s thrown at ‘em and they get that end result numerous times, over and over and over again. A part of a cleaner’s mentality is to constantly never be satisfied when something is done they move onto what’s next.
“The two biggest [cleaners] I’ve had are Michael and Kobe. I would put Dwyane Wade in that category, too.”
Grover’s other two categories are best described as someone who does the bare minimum (cooler) and someone who can achieve the desired end result as long as there are minimal obstacles (closer).
For Wade to be named alongside two of the best players in NBA history is no small feat. Grover has trained some of the best of the best and doesn’t hand out that ‘cleaner’ designation often. There are several others who probably could be considered cleaners but the specific brand of adversity each shooting guard overcame was unparallel.
What likely cemented Wade’s cleaner title was his battles with the injury bug. Think about Wade in the late 2000s for a second. The young superstar had just won his first championship in 2006 but a slew of nagging injuries caused him to miss 62 games over the next two seasons. Critics even started to write him off.
But linking with Grover following Wade’s 2007 knee injury probably saved his career. Not only did his relentless pursuit to get healthy pay off (he missed only 14 games between 2008-2011), he’d return to championship pedigree with the help of LeBron James and Chris Bosh.
So maybe that “another level” isn’t too difficult to describe after all. It actually can be summed up in two words: dogged work ethic.
