The Miami Heat unveiled a statue of Heat legend Dwyane Wade outside of Kaseya Center on Sunday.
Dwyane Wade, immortalized. Congrats to the Miami Heat legend. pic.twitter.com/WyVWLMwLUE
— Heat Nation (@HeatNationCom) October 27, 2024
Once pictures of the statue began to make the rounds on social media, folks were quick to criticize its appearance. Plenty of users on X implied that the bronze statue doesn’t even resemble Wade.
that is not dwade 😭
— PrizePicks (@PrizePicks) October 27, 2024
That’s not DWade. That’s a mad black Mr. Clean pic.twitter.com/2RluUjJuRo
— Casey (@CaseyJ_516) October 27, 2024
That is NOT Dwayne Wade 😭😭
— BOOG (@BoogCB) October 27, 2024
Bill Simmons of The Ringer weighed in on Wade’s new statue as well and didn’t speak too highly of it.
"There's never been a worse sports statue ever."@BillSimmons and @TheCousinSal reacted to the unveiling of the Dwyane Wade statue live last night on YouTube. 😬 pic.twitter.com/gPHkIAkgGO
— The Ringer (@ringer) October 28, 2024
“The biggest loser of the day was Dwyane Wade, who had the worst statue of all time,” Simmons said. “What did you think it looked like? I actually though it looked like somebody had emerged from a fire and lived.”
Simmons continued.
“Can you imagine having a statue look that bad of yourself being unveiled?” he said. “What would you even say? Thanks? There’s never been a worse sports statue.”
Wade reportedly had a large say in the creation of the statue. According to Rachel Nichols, he visited the statue maker four times to give his input.
“I think it looks clearly how Dwyane Wade sees himself,” Nichols said of his new statue. “That’s what I can say about him. Well no — that’s not a dig. It’s that because he had the most input on this. And in the end, it’s for him. So, he said he visited the statue maker four different times. He said that one of the visits, he told me — he said, ‘Oh yeah, they didn’t get the distance between the bottom of my nose and my lip correctly. The ratio was off, so I had them measure in between the bottom of my nose and the lips so they could get that exactly right.’ So, if he’s doing that level of detail, it tells me that the rest of it he was like, ‘Oh yeah, this is it!’ So if this is what he wants and how he sees himself, I’m gonna have to go with him.”
Simmons is a longtime fan of the Boston Celtics — the Heat’s bitter rivals — so perhaps that played a part in his disparaging comments on Wade’s statue.
Regardless of the public perception of his statue, Wade is universally considered to be one of the best players ever to don a Heat jersey. Across 948 total regular-season games with Miami (847 starts), he averaged 22.7 points, 4.7 rebounds, 5.6 assists, 1.6 steals and 0.9 blocks per game.
He’s also Miami’s all-time leader in numerous statistics, including games played, minutes played (32,912), made shots from the field (7,842), assists (5,310), steals (1,492) and points (21,556).
Furthermore, he and Udonis Haslem are the only two players to have been part of every one of Miami’s three title teams in franchise history. The Heat won their first title in 2006 when they were led by a young Wade along with star big man Shaquille O’Neal. Miami’s most recent titles came in 2012 and 2013, and Wade was teammates with Chris Bosh and LeBron James for those two championships.
For a while, it seemed as if Wade would spend the entirety of his playing career with the Heat. But he signed with the Chicago Bulls in the summer of 2016 and also spent some time as James’ teammate once again on the Cleveland Cavaliers. However, he still finished his NBA career where it all started, as Wade appeared in 72 games with the Heat in the 2018-19 regular season before he retired.
