Dwyane Wade Leaves The Heat

Everybody wants something different. Individual reasons and motivations mean there’s not a right or a wrong when a professional player accepts an offer to stay with his old team or join a new one.

Cases in point: Dwyane Wade and Dirk Nowitzki. Wade spent 13 seasons with the Miami Heat but will change teams on Thursday, signing with the Chicago Bulls. He’s a Chicago native. Nowitzki, who was raised in Germany, has put in 18 years with the Dallas Mavericks and agreed to stay with them for two more years. Neither has ever played for another NBA team.

Wade wanted more money than Miami planned to pay a 34-year-old guard. But he didn’t take the biggest deal offered, which came from the Denver Nuggets. He chose to go home. Nowitzki, 38, has several times taken less money from the Mavs than he could have so that the club could continue to put quality players around him. And he’s doing it again, in essence giving up about $11 million this coming season (he’s doing a two-year deal for about $40M, so don’t weep).

Wade had two years and $40M in an offer from the Heat; he’ll get about $47M from the Bulls over the same stretch, sacrificing about $5 million that Denver offered.

Few players stay in one place for their entire career. Kobe Bryant did it – 20 years with the Los Angeles Lakers. Nowitzki will. Wade won’t. And that’s OK.

“Watching the Bulls growing up inspired me at an early age to pursue my dream of becoming a basketball player,” Wade wrote to the Associated Press.

“My most treasured memories were watching my dad play basketball on the courts of Fermi Elementary School and developing my game at the Blue Island Recreation Center. I have never forgotten where I came from and I am thankful to have an opportunity to play for the team that first fueled my love of the game.”

Wade won three championships with Miami. Nowitzki’s only title came in 2011, when the Mavericks beat the Heat in six games in the NBA Finals and he was named MVP.

Times change. Teams change. And time changes not only teams but the people who made them great.
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman