Inside Heat’s plans to honor Haslem’s career and why Haslem is ‘done no matter what happens’
As the Miami Heat nears the end of its season, longtime forward and team captain Udonis Haslem nears the end of his unique NBA playing career that has turned him into a franchise icon.
With Haslem’s final regular-season home game just about a month away, the Heat announced Sunday on 305 Day at 3:05 p.m. that it will celebrate the Miami native’s 20-year NBA career with “4 Days of 40.” The organization is describing the four-day long celebration as a “fun, fan-first campaign celebrating Haslem’s unique journey and lifelong connection to the city of Miami.”
“Obviously, there is a tremendous amount of love and respect in this organization for Udonis. The marketing department, we absolutely love Udonis. He has been great to us in his 20 years here,” Heat executive vice president and chief marketing officer Michael McCullough said. “We’ve been trying to go out of our way thinking about how we can properly say thank you and recognize what he’s meant to this organization.”
This is how the Heat plans to begin thanking Haslem for his on-court and off-court contributions in the final days of his playing career:
▪ It starts on March 23 with an ongoing digital content series dedicated to Haslem.
▪ It continues on March 24, when Court Culture will release “The UD Collection.” This will include four new Haslem shirts, which will be available for purchase at all Miami Heat Store locations and online at MiamiHeatStore.com.
▪ Then the Heat will host “UD Night” during its March 25 home game against the Brooklyn Nets. During an in-game break, a newly dedicated “Section 305” at Miami-Dade Arena will be unveiled to honor Haslem. Tickets to the game are available online at Heat.com/Tickets.
“The interesting thing about the positioning about Section 305 is it’s up against kind of a wall,” McCullough said. “It’s going to give us a chance to really kind of take that entire area and dedicate it to Udonis. It’s going to end up being a really cool in-arena aspect that’s going to live on forever.”
▪ It ends on March 26, when a Miami Mashup edition of the 23rd annual Miami Heat Family Festival will feature Haslem-themed activations and experiences. Festival tickets are already on sale.
“These four days are really more like, if this was a backyard barbecue or a house party and you’re sitting around and you’re swapping Udonis stories, that’s the tone of these four days,” McCullough said.
Haslem said he’s “thankful, appreciative” and called the four-day celebration “an amazing gesture.” But with the Heat (34-31) currently in seventh place in the Eastern Conference and just hoping to avoid the play-in tournament, he’s also not going to allow it to distract him from what’s happening on the court.
“I’m just trying to get to the playoffs,” Haslem, 42, said to the Miami Herald. “It’s one thing at a time, man. I can only focus on one thing at a time. So the focus is trying to get into the playoffs right now.”
Following Saturday night’s 117-109 win over the Atlanta Hawks to improve to 1-2 on its ultra-important six-game homestand, the seventh-place Heat entered Sunday two games behind the sixth-place Brooklyn Nets and four games behind the fifth-place New York Knicks. The Heat also stands 1.5 games ahead of the eighth-place Hawks and two games ahead of the ninth-place Toronto Raptors.
With 17 regular-season games left to play, the Heat needs to finish as a top-six team in the East to avoid having to qualify for the playoffs through the play-in tournament just one season after entering the playoffs as the conference’s top seed. The Heat, which has lost six of its last eight games, hosts the Hawks for a second consecutive game on Monday (7:30 p.m., Bally Sports Sun and NBA TV).
“It’s not easy,” Haslem said of trying to enjoy the final weeks of his playing career through the Heat’s late-season struggles. “You want to enjoy it. But, man, the way you enjoy it is to move the needle and help us get wins. That’s the way I’ll enjoy it. It’s not the way any of us envisioned it going, but this is where we are. I wouldn’t change it for the world to be in this situation with these guys. This is just how it should be written. Hopefully we’ll make a run and it turns into an amazing story.”
Whether the Heat finds solutions to turn what has become a frustrating regular season into what would now be considered an improbable deep playoff run is still to be determined. But Haslem’s NBA career is already an amazing story.
Haslem, who was born in North Shore Medical Center in Miami and grew up in Liberty City, has spent his entire 20-year NBA career with his hometown Heat and currently holds the longest streak by any active player with only one team in the league.
Haslem went undrafted out of the University of Florida in 2002 and spent the 2002-03 season playing overseas in France before earning a spot on the Heat’s roster for the 2003-04 season. The rest is history, as Haslem has played a role on each of the Heat’s three championship teams and is the only undrafted player in NBA history to be a franchise’s all-time leading rebounder.
Haslem is only the third player to spend an entire NBA career lasting at least 20 seasons with one team. That list includes Dirk Nowitzki (21 seasons with Dallas Mavericks) and Kobe Bryant (20 seasons with Los Angeles Lakers), and Haslem is the only one to do it in his hometown.
In addition, Haslem is on a short list of players to play in 20 or more NBA seasons that currently only includes Vince Carter, Robert Parish, Kevin Willis, Kevin Garnett, Nowitzki, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bryant, Jamal Crawford, LeBron James and Haslem.
But Haslem has only appeared in six games this season and 64 regular-season games since the start of the 2016-17 season. His value toward the end of his career has come through his leadership, as he’s in his 16th consecutive season as a Heat captain.
“Basketball ops didn’t ask us to do this,” McCullough said of the four-day campaign later this month dedicated to Haslem. “This is us saying we want to recognize this guy because he means a lot to us. Even though he’s saying he doesn’t want something, we feel like he is owed something from us.”
Haslem’s final regular-season home game on April 9 against the Orlando Magic will serve as another celebration of his career. Whether Haslem addresses the Miami-Dade Arena crowd during that game is still to be determined.
One day in the not-too-distant future, the Heat will also retire Haslem’s No. 40 jersey.
This is Haslem’s final NBA season, whether it ends the way he envisioned it or not.
“I’m done,” Haslem said. “I’m done no matter what happens. I gave my contribution. I think at this stage, there needs to be another voice for these guys. It’s time for somebody to step up and be the voice.”
This story was originally published March 5, 2023 at 3:05 PM.
