Heat represented on, off the court in Olympic semifinals. Among the representatives? Dwyane Wade
The Miami Heat is expected to have two current players on the court and one former player sitting near the court for the men’s basketball semifinals of the 2024 Olympics on Thursday.
With Heat center Bam Adebayo and Team USA facing off against Heat forward Nikola Jovic and Serbia in the semifinals, retired Heat icon Dwyane Wade will serve as the color commentator on NBC’s broadcast crew for Thursday’s game in Paris (3 p.m., USA and Peacock).
Wade, 42, has served as the color commentator on NBC’s broadcast crew for all of Team USA’s games during the Paris Olympics alongside play-by-play announcer Noah Eagle.
“When I got asked to do this, I looked at this as probably one of the biggest challenges in my 2024 calendar year,” Wade said during a media conference call earlier this week when asked about his broadcasting duties during the Olympics. “The one thing, as a former athlete, you don’t find these certain challenges that present themselves every day besides the challenge of life.
“So this was a big challenge. I decided to dive into it, understanding that there were going to be a lot of things that were going to be needed to be learned actually on the fly. But that’s kind of how I live my life. If anybody knows anything about me, I just dive into things.”
Wade brought some broadcasting experience to the Olympics, but that experience came as a studio analyst for TNT from 2019-22. The Olympics have marked Wade’s first time calling live action during games.
Like most things involving basketball, Wade took a very serious and professional approach to prepare for this opportunity.
“The first thing for me was to sit down and try to learn how to pronounce the names from the Greece team,” said Wade, whose playing career came to an end following the 2018-19 season after winning three NBA championships with the Heat. “I’ve never really had to do that, just in my normal life and definitely with the world listening. One thing I’ve done since I retired is I work with a vocal coach. I work with a speech coach as well. Just like when I played basketball, I had trainers. I have people help me get 1 percent better, understanding that God gave me natural talents but how do you take it to another level?
“Not knowing this space, I just did what I normally do, and I just prepared myself as much as possible. Go and read as much information about each team as I can so I have my own information and knowledge. Go watch film. I watched the games that the USA played versus a lot of teams in this field and any other film I could find from other teams just so I could be familiar with their game.”
Eagle has used his broadcasting experience to help mentor Wade in his new role. But Wade’s past basketball experience on the Olympic stage has also helped, as he won a bronze medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics and a gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
“I’ve been on the court before. I’ve been in the huddles before,” Wade continued. “I understand kind of what the Olympic athletes are dealing with and growing through. So just bringing that perspective to the table that not a lot of people could bring to the table. So understanding that and being confident in that.”
Since Wade helped Team USA win a gold medal in 2008, the national team has won gold in every Olympics since. That has the Team USA men’s basketball team looking to come away with the gold medal for the fifth straight Olympics.
Team USA (4-0 during the 2024 Olympics) is just two wins from accomplishing that, as a victory over Serbia on Thursday would clinch a spot in Saturday’s gold medal game. Serbia is led by three-time NBA Most Valuable Player Nikola Jokic, but it remains to be seen if Jovic from the Heat will be able to play because of an illness that kept him out of Tuesday’s quarterfinal win over Australia.
“As someone who has played in the Olympics before, now getting to this part, getting to the Paris portion of the program, now is really about locking in even more,” Wade said, with the men’s basketball group phase games played just outside of Paris in Lille, France. “It’s about locking into the small details even more than before. You get a little bit more serious about it as you get closer to now smelling the weekend coming where a gold medal game is on Saturday. But also not looking over and looking past anyone.”
Wade has even taken that approach into his broadcasting career. When asked if he wants to continue calling basketball games after the Olympics, Wade didn’t want to look past the final few days of the Paris Games.
“I don’t want to look too far ahead,” Wade said. “I want to enjoy the moment we’re in and continue to try to get better, because as Kobe Bryant said, very famous quote, ‘The job is not done.’ The job is not finished over here. We have a lot of work to do. We want to keep bringing the same energy and the same education and knowledge to the listeners.”
