Miami May Be Dwyane Wade's City, but the Heat Belong to LeBron James

For someone who has been relegated to a sidekick role, LeBron James certainly has a hard time sharing the spotlight with the rest of the Miami Heat.

It was only two weeks ago that Clevelanders were holding signs that read, “Quitness,” wearing shirts that read, “Lyin’ King,” and, astonishingly, yelling out chants of “Scottie Pippen.”  As the Heat leave New York with their 11th consecutive win, any far-fetched reference to the dynastic Bulls teams of the ‘90s must begin and end with the following: Dwyane is Scottie; LeBron is Michael.

With that being said, Dwyane Wade’s body of work is certainly not dismissed.  It was only five seasons ago that Wade nearly singlehandedly dismantled the Dallas Mavericks in the Finals while leading the Heat to their first title. 

Say what you want about the 2006 NBA Finals (Wade got more calls than a Jerry Lewis telethon) or mention that year’s version of the Heat and Mavericks were aberrations (Miami averaged 37 wins over the next four seasons and Dallas mustered only one conference semifinals appearance in the same time frame).  The fact is, including Eddie House and the injured Udonis Haslem (out for the remainder of the season), D-Wade is one of the few members of the 2010-11 Heat who possesses prominent championship experience and is the best player in Miami’s franchise history.

Therefore, anointing the Heat as LeBron’s team is surely asinine, right?

Wrong.

It is James that has continued to perform under the most scrutiny.  King James has taken the majority of the pressure facing Miami off of the shoulders of Wade and Chris Bosh in the early part of this year.  The other two-thirds of the Heat’s Big Three have yet to face anything close to what LeBron has encountered in Miami’s visits to Cleveland and New York this season.  And, in both games, it was The Chosen One who clearly led the Heat to victory.

In the 24 hours prior to “The Decision,” the announcement of the to-be-signed deals for Wade and Bosh made the Heat a second-tier team in the Eastern Conference, behind Orlando and Boston.  It was the arrival of James that entered Miami into the NBA’s elite.

Prior to Friday night’s game vs. the Knicks, Wade expressed skepticism of how interested the Knicks were in obtaining his services, saying, “I don’t think they ever really wanted me here, anyway.”  With the way the focus of Knicks fans was squarely on James in the Heat’s first visit to Madison Square Garden this season, one may have forgotten that Wade actually was a free agent this past offseason.

Ironically, it is through James’ individual obstacles that Miami has grown as a team.  The game vs. Cleveland was the first game in which the new Heat won while facing adversity in a playoff-type atmosphere.  The win over the Knicks was the most heralded regular-season game involving a superstar opposing player since Michael Jordan dropped 55 in his first trip to the Garden after coming out of retirement.

Here we go with another LeBron and Michael connection.

James and Wade will never resemble Pippen and Jordan; the games of the two duos are drastically different and James and Wade have yet to defer to each other the way Pippen (and everyone else, for that matter) deferred to Jordan when it mattered most.  However, as the games grow to be more important, perhaps LeBron or Wade will have to take over the role as THE top dog for the Heat.

As we've seen thus far, when it has counted the most, James has slightly edged Wade.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that Miami is LeBron’s team—as LeBron goes, the Heat will go.