The NBA has been blessed to have so many great players step out on the court during its existence, so to be named among the very best of those is an honor unlike any other. The NBA 75th Anniversary Team, which was revealed in 2021, honored the truly great players of the game, and one of the chosen few to make it in was Dwyane Wade.
Wade played 16 seasons in the NBA, during which he was a 13-time All-Star, and he won 3 championships to go with a Finals MVP as well. He was one of the premier guards in the league for much of his career and is the leading scorer in the history of the Miami Heat by a country mile. Considering the list of accolades, it wasn’t too surprising to see Wade make the team, and during an appearance on the “Point Forward” podcast, he spoke about what it meant to him to get that honor.
(starts at 37:18 mark):
“Probably one of the most humbling individual moments of my career. I didn’t know it, I didn’t know it was gonna be. We all want to do well individually but I’ve never like played sports for the individual right, I’ve always played from what I fell in love with it, it was the team aspect. I’ve always been okay with like not getting an award. I remember I was trying to get MVP one year and I was going off for Defensive Player of the Year the same year in 08 and I came in third in both of them. Then I was on like second-team All-Defense… they just proved to me again that individual awards meant nothing and so the 75 was probably the first time since then that I really cared about something individually.”
The season Wade talks about is 2008-09, where he led the league in scoring by averaging 30.2 points per game, but LeBron James ran away with the MVP award while Dwight Howard did the same with Defensive Player of the Year.
It was understandable that he was a bit upset about it and that it took his focus away from winning individual awards, but getting a spot on that team was definitely a level beyond any award, so it clearly meant a lot to him. Chris Paul, another modern-day great, also spoke about what it meant for him to make the team earlier this month as he expressed his gratitude just like Wade here.
