Dwyane Wade Values Second NBA Title Much More Than His First


Dwyane Wade won his first NBA championship in 2006, and didn’t get back to the mountain top until this year. Wade explained how much more significant this title is for him in the postgame press conference. From the AP: “He became a father for the second time. He played for the worst team in the league. He won an Olympic gold medal. He got divorced. He convinced LeBron James and Chris Bosh to join him in Miami. He dealt with an ugly custody fight that took years and in some ways continues today. He wrote a book this year. He lost a championship series last year. A whirlwind, by any measure. ‘What I dealt with personally,’ Wade said, ‘was indescribable in a sense.’ […] ‘Two years ago, putting this team together, obviously we all expected it to be a little easier than it was,’ Wade said. ‘But we had to go through what we had to go through last year. We needed to. And as much as it hurt, we had to go through that pain and that suffering. To get to this point of this season and the rest of our careers together, we’ll take nothing for granted.’ […] He sacrificed, and sacrificed a lot. He left about $20 million in salary on the table in owner Micky Arison’s office to make sure that James, Bosh, Udonis Haslem, Mike Miller and others could be squeezed under the cap two summers ago. He turned over the role of team go-to guy to James, the player that even Wade will acknowledge is better. […] ‘We made a decision two years ago to become a team,’ Wade said. ‘You know, LeBron, Chris and myself, and other guys decided to come together. So you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to make sure that you reach your goal. And I had a position, I had a role to play. It might have changed a little bit, but at the end of the day we all had one common goal, and that was to become the champions.’ On Thursday, that finally happened. On the same court where Dallas celebrated in front of them a year ago, Wade and the Heat won it all. A banner will rise, confetti fell. How fitting. Ups and downs, just like his life has seen over these last six years. ‘I’m speechless,’ Wade said. ‘Winning the championship in 2006 was amazing. But I didn’t go through nothing yet. Now six years after that, I’ve been through a lot in my personal life, and I’ve been through a lot in my professional life, and this means so much more.'”