Dwyane Wade Had Knee Drained Prior to Game 7 of NBA Finals

The Miami Heat escaped Game 7 of the NBA Finals, winning their second NBA championship in a row. Dwyane Wade shrugged off his knee problems and scored 23 points in the decisive game. Wade, who hopes to avoid surgery this summer, now admits that his right knee was drained prior to Game 7. Per the AP: “Wade revealed Saturday that his right knee pained him so much that he contemplated asking to play limited minutes in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals, and that his left knee was drained and required about eight hours of game-day therapy just so he could play in Game 7 of the NBA Finals. ‘I went through a lot,’ said Wade, who’s now a three-time NBA champion. ‘But I’m at peace now.’ Wade also received platelet-rich plasma therapy late in the regular season to combat three bone bruises around his right knee, which was his biggest source of frustration and pain during the playoffs. Wade said two of the bruises healed, but a third – directly under the kneecap – remained a big problem, especially since that area was also affected by tendinitis. Wade underwent an MRI to rule out additional problems during the East finals against Indiana, and said he was driving into a meeting with Heat coach Erik Spoelstra before Game 7 of that series – not long after saying in the immediate aftermath of the Game 6 loss to the Pacers that he needed the ball more – to tell him that he felt he should only play short minutes because his ineffectiveness was hurting the team. Spoelstra had other ideas, and Wade decided to scrap his plan. ‘I felt like if I was going to be playing the way I was playing, and hurting the way I was hurting, I wasn’t going to be able to help us move on to the next round,’ Wade said. ‘I was going to say play me short minutes only, and give Mike Miller and guys other opportunities. But I came into the meeting, and all Spo was about was giving me more opportunities and getting me ways to be more successful. So I was like, `Well, changed my mind.’ […] In the end, it was all worthwhile. Wade will soon be getting his third ring – ‘3 for No. 3,’ as the shirts many of his friends wore amid the Heat celebration pointed out. ‘Selfishly, I’m going to say we won this one for me,’ Wade said. ‘Because of the way my career has gone and the things I’ve dealt with personally, I wanted this third one. In my mind, it validates the player I’ve become in this league. When you change your position, going from being talked about as one of the three best players in this game to people questioning your ability, I needed this one to validate that what I did was the right thing. I can be at peace with anything going forward.’”