Wasting A-Wade

Dwayne Wade is throwing away diamonds. He's skipping them along the Mississippi River and watching them sink to the bottom lost forever, just like his useless 46 point, 5 assist, 5 rebound game yesterday against the Celtics. It was a great performance, a virtuoso excelling, performing his craft at the most unbelievable of levels, leaving mouths agape, jaws on the floor, and eyes dangling out of their sockets.

But it was all for nothing. Nobody watched it, nobody cared, and in the grand scheme of things it did not even matter. All his effort, sacrifice, and unbridled aggression was to win one futile game so that at the end the Heat will not lose 4-0, but 4-1. And just to put it out there it was amazing to see how angry Wade was playing. He was going to win that game no matter what. However, this series was over before it started, and Dwayne Wade's heroics are going unheralded, and it's a tragedy. It is a tragedy that we no longer put Wade with Kobe, Lebron, Carmelo, and Durant. We might still mention his name in the same breadth with them, but we don't really believe it because its not an issue when it matters. His name is forgotten in the championship hunt. We measure greatness in the playoffs. We measure greatness not solely by championships but by the ability to compete for them, and unfortunately for Wade his star dims, through no fault of his own, at the most important time. In the playoffs where legends are made, Wade is a complete non-factor because his team simply cannot compete. When Lebron and Garnett go head to head, or Kobe snipes game-winners in game sevens, or Ginobli puts a team on his back in a conference finals, Wade is sitting at home, a complete non-entity, diminished, and we forget.

We forget the amazing ability, the gravity -defying theatrics, and the raw aggresion and passion in his game. We are missing out on a prime time playoff performer during the prime of his career because his team is terrible. Wade is wasting his remarkable and unique talent, fighting his heart out for a team that has no chance. Wade more than any of the other stars during free agency needs to switch teams. He needs to re-define his legacy with a new team. He needs to play for a playoff contender not simply a participator. We need to see him relevant again in the playoffs like during his championship run, when everybody had him pegged as the greatest basketball player in the world, when his one legged, floating daggers from the three point line meant something. He has, for the past few years, done more with less than any other superstar in the league but has languished in the minor leagues of NBA playoff teams. His career is in dire jeapordy of ending with no real NBA significance, never fulfilling its great potential, giving us just a taste of what could have been, just a flash of brilliance. Hopefully D-Wade will get it right this offseason and stop spinning yarn into gold and then throwing it away.