Dwayne Wade has unfinished business with Miami Heat

This season is over for the Miami Heat. Sure, Dwayne Wade’s rescue act in game four of the first round of the playoffs injected a degree of hope into a season that one game earlier had looked to be done for, but not a realistic level of hope. No one comes back from being down 3-0 in the playoffs. Not against the Boston Celtics. And not if you’re the Heat. But throughout the series, the television commentators have made one too many “Could this be Dwayne Wade’s last series in a Heat uniform?” remarks (bound be to amplified now that the Heat will be one game from elimination for however much longer this series lasts) for the comfort of Heat fans who know that without Wade, there’s no hope at all. If Wade leaves town as a free agent this offseason, the Heat suddenly goes from being one player away from contention, to becoming a lottery team overnight.

But Wade isn’t going anywhere. It could theoretically happen, if he believed that Pat Riley wasn’t interested in adding another player worthy of being the Pippen to Wade’s Jordan – or vice versa. But that’s just not the kind of philosophy that Riley has employed during his long Heat tenure, and Wade knows it. So as much as Dwayne Wade must dream of playing alongside a LeBron James or a Chris Bosh or someone approaching their caliber, Wade knows that his best shot of making – and making it work – that happen is with the Heat. Even if Dwayne and LeBron might be collectively fantasizing about both signing with the New York Knicks so they can play together, they’re smart enough to know that a crap franchise with a couple of star players is still a crap franchise. So unless one of them also gets to be president of the Knicks and the other gets to be general manager, it’s just not going to happen.

At least not for Wade. Much as he might be tempted to bolt, what’ll ultimately keep him grounded in Miami is the fact that despite winning a championship with the Heat in 2006, and having been the driving force for that championship when it came to the playoffs, 2006 is still largely (if unfairly) remembered as Shaq’s final championship run as opposed to Wade’s first. If Wade now goes to another town, any championship he might win will be regarded as LeBron’s championship or Bosh’s championship because all Wade would be doing would be helping the other guy’s team win. But if Wade stays home and trusts Pat Riley to figure out how to land one of the big fishes, then it really doesn’t matter how big of a name Riley brings to Miami; any championship that Dwayne Wade’s Heat team wins at that point will still be credited to Wade. And he knows that.