Pat Riley speaks ahead of Dwyane Wade’s Hall of Fame moment: ‘We’re fused at the hip forever’
In a few days, Miami Heat president Pat Riley will watch who he considers to be the greatest player in franchise history officially become a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
Heat icon Dwyane Wade will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on Saturday night in Springfield, Mass. He’s part of a loaded 2023 class that also includes Dirk Nowitzki, Pau Gasol, Tony Parker and Gregg Popovich, among others.
“As a Heat player, Dwyane is the greatest player who ever put on a uniform for us,” Riley said during a conference call with reporters on Tuesday afternoon to discuss Wade’s upcoming Hall of Fame enshrinement. “LeBron [James] was here for four years and gave us a tremendous lift and helped Dwyane achieve what he wanted to achieve. But over the body of work here in Miami, Dwyane is the greatest player who ever played for the Heat. That’s not an insult to LeBron, that’s because of his longevity and the short term that LeBron was here.”
Among the Heat contingent expected to be in attendance for Wade’s Hall of Fame moment on Saturday are Riley, Erik Spoelstra, Caron Butler, Udonis Haslem, Bam Adebayo, Micky and Nick Arison, and Alonzo Mourning.
Already enshrined in the Hall of Fame for careers that included time with the Heat are Tim Hardaway, Chris Bosh, Ray Allen, Mourning, Shaquille O’Neal, Gary Payton, and Riley. Former Heat assistant coach Bob McAdoo is also in the Hall of Fame.
Wade will become the first player inducted into the Hall of Fame who was drafted by the Heat.
Wade, who was drafted by Miami in 2003, is the Heat’s all-time leader in categories like points, games played, minutes played, assists and steals and is considered one of the top shooting guards in NBA history. Among his most impressive accomplishments: three championships with the Heat (2006, 2012, 2013), a Finals MVP award in 2006 and an NBA scoring title in the 2008-09 season.
“The Hall of Fame is like sacred ground. … That’s where Dwyane’s place is today,” Riley said. “Everything he did in his career has gotten him here. He’s a three-time champion, he’s highly respected, he has gone on to do even probably better things than he did as an NBA player on the court and he’s going to be inducted into the Hall of Fame on Saturday. It’s just an honor to be there and for him to be a Miami Heat lifer.”
Wade’s NBA career lasted 16 seasons and it included 13 All-Star Game selections. He spent the first 13 seasons of his career with the Heat before briefly leaving to spend the 2016-17 season with the Chicago Bulls and part of the 2017-18 season with the Cleveland Cavaliers, and then was traded back to Miami midway through the 2017-18 season to end his NBA playing career as a member of the Heat.
But that short time away from the Heat toward the end of Wade’s career was a turbulent one in his relationship with the organization. Free agent contract negotiations turned ugly between Wade and the Heat in the summer of 2016, leading him to leave the only NBA franchise he knew to sign with his hometown Bulls before eventually returning to Miami a few years later.
“I was sad to see him go, I was upset that he went,” Riley said. “I knew we could work something out, but we didn’t. We did not work it out the way that he wanted it to be worked out and that’s our fault. I think probably as much as myself and Micky [Arison] and anybody else with the Heat, I think Dwyane went to Chicago and then he went to Cleveland, I think he wanted back as much as any of us wanted him back.”
Riley has said in the past that one of his biggest mistakes as Heat president was not offering Wade a max contract in the summer of 2014 that would have likely kept him in Miami for his entire NBA career. With James leaving the Heat to join the Cleveland Cavaliers that offseason, the Heat opted to sign Chris Bosh to a five-year, $118 million max deal and Wade to a two-year $31.1 million contract.
“I think when he left, it was like a cooling off period,” Riley said of Wade’s departure in 2016. “It wasn’t something that was borne out of petulance on his part like, ‘Well, I’m just going to show you.’ I mean, he got a great deal with Chicago for two years and he decided to leave. When he left, there were some hard feelings on both sides but they weren’t lethal.”
Most of those hard feelings disappeared when Wade returned to the Heat for the final chapter of his career because both sides knew the importance of their relationship.
“It’s not easy, sometimes this sport can get in the way of relationships,” Riley added. “But you got to figure out a way to work it out and I think the fact that we had been together for so long — we had other times where there were fractures in the relationship, but you work it out if you value it. Not all of them work out, but this one did. I was happy as hell when he came back to be able to embrace him again and to watch him play his last season with us.”
Wade, who purchased an ownership stake in the NBA’s Utah Jazz in April 2021 and the WNBA’s Chicago Sky in June, moved his life to the Los Angeles area in retirement.
But Wade still makes appearances at Kaseya Center from time to time. He attended each of the Heat’s two home NBA Finals games against the Denver Nuggets in June to support his former team.
And in a few days, Wade will be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame after a legendary career that will forever be tied to the Heat.
“Even though he lives in Los Angeles and has a hell of a career off the court, we’re fused at the hip forever,” Riley said. “I just think the players today, like Dwyane, are very appreciative as they look back on their career and say I was in a good place in Miami and we helped each other get to where we wanted to get to – world champions, Hall of Fame.
“I love him to death. Every time I see him, we wrap each other up in a big embrace and we talk. We talk about a lot of different things. He’s a great friend just like Magic [Johnson] is a great friend, like Zo (Mourning) is a great friend. He’s really an incredible guy, incredible man.”
This story was originally published August 8, 2023 at 1:23 PM.
