Wade plots his shirt giveaways
MIAMI — All is not as impromptu as it appears on this farewell tour, even those seemingly spontaneous moments when Dwyane Wade gives the shirt off his back.
Among the elements of Wade’s self-proclaimed “One Last Dance,” this 16th and final NBA season with the Miami Heat, have been postgame jersey swaps.
In the past week, Wade waited after games to exchange jerseys with Portland Trail Blazers guard CJ McCollum and Sacramento Kings guard Iman Shumpert. Before that, Wade acceded to the request of Orlando Magic center Nikola Vucevic for a No. 3 Heat jersey of his own.
Wade said rather than being caught shirtless, he has crafted a carefully choreographed exchange program.
“I got the schedule, so I know who we’re playing and I know who’s on that team that I have a relationship with,” he said, with Shumpert a teammate last season with the Cleveland Cavaliers. “Then I go to them before the game or they come to me.”
But he apparently also will take requests.
“Like Shumpert was, ‘I need that jersey,’ “Wade said. “I was like, ‘perfect, ‘cause we’re going to swap after the game.’ C.J., I went to him and said, ‘Let’s swap jerseys after the game.
“And then I gave Vucevic my jersey in Orlando.”
The possibility of the Heat running low on No. 3 jerseys is minimal. Because of all the promotional obligations from the league regarding Wade, the Heat routinely have stocked an extensive volume of No. 3 jerseys.
But Wade said he made the team aware that the laundry will be light a few No. 3s along the way this season.
“They already know that,” he said. “There was a conversation before the season started. I have a whole list, for the entire season.”
What Wade said hasn’t been planned has been a schedule of games he might miss to preserve his 36-year-old legs.
He said a lone Heat visit to a city won’t necessarily factor into his planning.
“Not really,” he said. “I kind of watched Kobe [Bryant] go through it, played the nights he could, and the nights he couldn’t, he didn’t play. He didn’t play in Miami the last time.
“So it’s still early. You’d love to play in all of ‘em. I probably won’t, so that’s that.”
Similarly, he said there is no specific plan regarding potentially sitting out nights during back-toback sets.
“I’m just playing,” he said, with the Heat now on a three-day break before returning for a Saturday road game against the Atlanta Hawks. “I haven’t needed to sit out back-to-backs in a long time. So it’s not in the conversation.
“In Cleveland, Ty Lue wanted to sit me out some, because he wanted to play other guys, so I did, when he needed me to. In Chicago, I didn’t sit out. My last year in Miami, I didn’t sit out.”
Wade played for his hometown Chicago Bulls in 2016-17, when he left the Heat in free agency, then for the Cavaliers at the start of 2017-18, before rejoining the Heat at the trading deadline, getting back to where he spent his first 14 seasons.
“So,” he said of unscheduled schedule breaks, “it just depends how your body feels and how you’re going. That’s the way I approach it.”