Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
One Last Dance?
Wade brings down house with One Last Miracle Shot
MIAMI — Bank shot.
Off the glass. For a three, for the win, for the celebration no one believed.
Who else gets that script? Who else takes the shot that didn’t go as Dwyane Wade planned in a season that’s not going as anyone wanted and somehow still goes through the net to deliver the unlikeliest of wins?
Miami Heat 126, Golden State Champs 125.
And as the ball banked through, as the surprise happened, it was 2007 against Utah again or 2009 against Chicago or whatever last-second, game-winning, crowd-frenzying highlight shot you want to pull from the archive.
Only this was better. Bigger. These were the champs, after all, and this was Wade’s Last Dance. So this might’ve not just been a great shot but The Last Shot.
“I needed this one on my way out,” Wade said.
As he ran down the court immediately after the shot, as teammates chased him, as the home crowd raised the volume and Golden State players only stood in place with stunned smiles, there was a feeling this last one might have been the best of them all.
“I even told him, when we go around the locker room and break the huddle [after the game], I gave him a huge hug,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “I bear-hugged him. The raw, extenuating emotion afterward, this was my favorite one of all.”
A minute earlier, Spoelstra sat down at his post-game interview table and said, “Just exactly as we designed it.”
Has anything gone the way the Heat designed it this year? They’d lost six straight home games entering Wednesday. They remain a blip out of the playoff race. They haven’t had any player dramatically advance their game in a manner you hope in a season like this.
So this was a great game tucked in a blah year. It’s also why you feel sorry for those always talking about the big picture, about only winning championships. The small picture of a single game can be fun.
The Heat led by as much as 24 points in the second quarter. But the champs are the champs. They battled back, even if this was just another night in another city for Golden State. They were up, 124-120, with 18.1 seconds left.
Enter Wade. He hit a 3-point shot a couple of seconds later to bring the Heat within a point. All these years, all these miles, all this supposed young talent and Wade is still the best player on the Heat. That’s the good and bad of this season.
After Golden State’s Kevin Durant made a free throw, Dion Waiters tried to make the final play and couldn’t. He passed to Wade, who went up for a shot with 1.2 seconds left. It was partially blocked by Jordan Bell. Wade got the loose ball.
“His back was to the basket,” Spoelstra said. “I think he looks at the clock to the other end.”
“I knew it was going in,” Golden State coach Steve Kerr said. “It had the perfect length to bank off the basket.”
“Lucky,” Spoelstra called it with a laugh. “We’ve had so many breaks go against us this year, maybe we were lucky for one.”
This game day started for the Heat with team president Pat Riley saying on Heat TV how they wouldn’t be tanking this year and how much the young players would benefit from a playoff berth.
It ended in a way that only sports can deliver. Only Wade can for the Heat. For so much of the past 16 years, the ball has been in his hand and the arena hoping for some big heroics as he takes some final shot.
When Wednesday’s shot went in, he raised his arms. He started running down the court, his teammates chasing him. He ended up briefly jumping on a courtside table, though there was no pronouncement of like years ago of, “This is my house!”
No need. Everyone knew whose house this was.
“I’ve been in this position so many times, and so many times you don’t make the shot,” Wade said. “The one I make is a one-legged flick from my chest.”
He laughed in a way that everyone around the Heat was. One Last Dance, he called this season. One Last Miracle Shot, you can call this ending.