Dwyane Wade for NBA MVP?
A year ago, it seemed that the Miami Heat were at the beginning of a long rebuilding era. A still effective but past-his-prime Shaq had been traded away, and a fiercely competitive but in-his-twilight gutsy Alonzo Mourning had gone down with a serious knee injury.
Most disturbingly for Heat fans, however, was that it was beginning to look like the best days for Dwyane Wade were behind him. He was still putting up numbers (24 PPG and 7 APG), but he didn't seem like “Flash” during the 2007-08 campaign. The explosiveness that defines his game just wasn’t there, and it really looked like getting knocked to the floor time and time again was taking its toll on his body.
Fielding what was truly one of the worst teams in NBA history at the end of the season, Miami shut down D-Wade for the final 20 or so games so that he could undergo knee treatment.
I remember wondering if his career would end up looking like Penny Hardaway's after the knee injuries, and if he would ever be the same again.
Like everyone else, the next time I saw Wade play was during the Olympics. I wrote a piece covering Team USA’s dismantling of Greece, and as I sit here, I don’t remember the specifics of the game at all, I couldn’t tell you what Kobe or Lebron did.
No, but I vividly remember thinking that Dwyane was everywhere, doing everything, absolutely the best player on the floor. And his performance the other night in a double-overtime win against the Bulls (48 points and 12 assists), capped by this play to win the game, was amazing.
A quick look at the numbers gives plenty of support to the D-Wade-for-MVP argument. He scores more and on a higher shooting percentage (29.7 PPG and 49.5 percent from the field) than Lebron (28.1 and 48.8 percent) or Kobe (27.8 and 47.2), and for my money, is a better defender than either of them.
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