It’s time for Wade to make transition
The trick for Dwyane Wade is to view it as a graduation. The trouble is it can just as easily be seen as a demotion, because there’s no label for the transition the winningest South Florida athlete of them all must make now.
Labels form the arc of his career, too. Look at the stages: Promising. Good. Great. The Best. Great again. Good again. And now … Now what? What’s the word Wade, at 34 next season, should aspire to for the Heat? “Steady” isn’t enough. “Awesome” is too much. Maybe it’s easier to see by envisioning fans leaving the arena next year, saying on a successful night, “Wade was brilliant.”
Maybe that’s the word. Maybe that’s the right label given the time, talent and temperament. Maybe the The Brilliant Years are the next stage a once-elite athlete transitions into at points like this.
Being the best is in the rear-view mirror. Being great remains possible on occasion but not on demand. But he can always be brilliant, meaning he can be smart, productive, a champion to follow and a beacon of winning plays with the occasional side dish of greatness.
Many elite athletes make this transition. San Antonio’s Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili have been brilliant in San Antonio. Derek Jeter was brilliant for the Yankees. Jaromir Jagr was brilliant for his abbreviated Panthers stretch this year.
Ray Allen was brilliant with the Heat and Paul Pierce is brilliant in Washington as his 20 points in Saturday’s playoff opener showed. Pierce and Allen, like many
players in transition, left their original team to do so. Like Ginobili, they went to the bench, too.
No one should suggest Wade go to the bench, even if there are whispers of that. Who started that silliness?
It’s overdoing the fact Wade lost a step without grasping he still has the goods to beat most players in the league. He averaged 21.5 points and shot 47 percent this year. That’s not shabby.
But the number that also describes Wade is his 20 games missed. After 28 the previous year. After an average of 22 missed games the two seasons before that. Another dog year of aging on his body can’t expect to improve that number.
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra says he wants to run next year. Chris Bosh will be back to form a formidable pick-and-roll team with Goran Dragic. Hassan Whiteside deserves to see what this team looks like with an inside post presence.
Wade isn’t any worse of an option than all that. But is he any better at this point?
This could be an uncomfortable time for everyone, just as it was regarding Dan Marino at the end. There’s a difference, though, and it’s a significant one. Marino’s quarterback position demanded he still be The Man.
Wade’s position doesn’t demand that. Sure, some nights he can cameo as The Man. But most nights he can just be a productive player if he’ll accept that. Admittedly, acceptance is the difficult part in every great athlete.
It’s one thing for Wade to give up the ball to LeBron James, the game’s best player. It’s another to give it up to a newcomer in Dragic. So it was Wade noticeably dribbled the final seconds away at New Orleans this year before launching a shot that made you wince. And at Milwaukee.
Pat Riley once said the greatness of Michael Jordan was he missed 26 game-winning shots and still had the guts to take them. That applies to Wade. But so does another old idea Spoelstra repeated at the start of The Big Three: “Trust.”
Trust his teammates. Trust the system. Trust that some days he won’t be the best option.
Wade has carried himself like a champion through a career of changing roles that brought three championships and cements him among the top five shooting guards of all time.
Now he’ll be asked to change again next season in this next stage. It’s time for him to be brilliant.