Miami Herald- Before heading down this path, though, here are a handful of interesting basketball things you may not have known, according to sources who do know:
▪ It was LeBron James, not Wade, who first made real the possible paradigm shift with three superstars playing together in Miami. James broached the subject during free agency in 2010, at a secret meeting he called in Cleveland with Bosh and Wade. To that point, Wade had been relaying to Heat management that there was no way James would go for the idea of playing in Miami. ▪ It was Wade, not James, who by himself kept Udonis Haslem in Miami. Wade went to James with the idea of taking less money to include Haslem. James refused. The Heat couldn’t figure out a way to make a competitive offer to Haslem within salary-cap constraints until Wade volunteered to take that salary hit alone. It is why Wade was paid millions less than Bosh and James — one of the sacrifices Wade would make on behalf of team that he evidently would now like reimbursed. Ummm...duh? Was I missing something? Did people actually think that Dwayne Wade was the one that concocted the idea of LeBron and Chris Bosh coming to form a super team in Miami? Gee, I wonder, was it the best player in the world who, to that point , hadn't proved he could win on the big stage without help, or the player that basically walked into the league and immediately led his team to an NBA championship? Listen, I am sure that Wade was extremely happy to have LeBron James on board, but I don't think he was chomping at the bit to bring on a player superior to him. Why would he be? He had already proved that he was able to win as the most productive player on his team. If LeBron James comes to you and says that he wants to play with you then you say 'yes' every single time. That's why the big 3 existed, that's why it came to fruition. LeBron realized to be known as the best he was going to have to start stockpiling championships and fast. If anything we were all naive to the type of person that LeBron James was prior to 'The Decision'. We weren't aware that his first priority was winning instead of winning for Cleveland. While there is nothing wrong with that, it's not something that was clear until he headed to Miami. Some may have been duped to believe that James coming back to the Cavaliers was for the betterment of Cleveland. It's pretty clear, to me anyway, that it was a move to play with a younger core that had more potential. A selfish move that allowed him to unofficially play the roles of coach and General Manager. The fact that he could help his hometown in process was one of the pros of the move, not the reason. No matter how heartfelt his 'Coming Home' article read. I honestly never knew it a topic of debate who was responsible for the tampering that led to the big 3. LeBron didn't learn how to be selfish from Dwayne Wade, he was the culprit the entire time. To see that you need not look further than Dwayne Wade spending his entire career, to this point, with one franchise, while LeBron was off trading for Kevin Love and rendering David Blatt virtually useless.
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