It’s been years since the “Miami Heat Big Three” dominated the NBA, but people still look back on it today.
Mostly, fans and media members blame that team for starting the superteam era and ruining league-wide parity.
But in an appearance on JJ Redick’s Old Man & The Three podcast, Dwyane Wade’s wife Gabrielle Union, made a rather interesting point about superteams, coming to the defense of the Heat and her husband, who was a crucial member of that squad.
“I was here for all of that s—,” Union said. “But I was also here for when KG (Garnett) and Paul and [Rajon] Rondo and Ray [Allen] all came together, even though they don’t want to admit it that they kicked that b—- off. There’s been superteams before. They just didn’t, they didn’t have, it wasn’t in this era with this platform and with social media and sports talk radio 24/7.
It’s different, and how you look at it, it’s different,” she continued. “And the whole, ‘Built, not bought,’ whatever. Boring is what it says to me. Okay, you built it. Did anyone come? No, your fans are leaving at f—— halftime. Cheerleaders can’t be bothered.”
Union certainly speaks the truth when she says superteams existed long before the LeBron-led Heat. There was the Celtics, the Lakers, and even the Bulls. She was also right in saying that superteams make things ridiculously more interesting for both the organization and the NBA.
Still, unlike many of those teams, the Heat came together by unnatural means. Instead of being drafted or traded for, Chris Bosh and LeBron James chose to ditch their old teams behind and join Wade in free agency.
At the time, it was taboo for players to willingly abandon their teams to join forces with players they had competed against in the past. That’s not to say it had never happened like that before, but that Heat crew definitely broke some boundaries in that regard.
Love it or hate it, you can’t call the experience a failure for anyone who was a part of it.
Together, Wade, LeBron, and Bosh made history by winning back-to-back titles. There isn’t a doubt that, in their mind, it was completely worth it.
