Miami Heat: The Top 7 Freakiest Athletes in Franchise History

The following is not a "Greatest Players" list; statistical productivity is not a condition for inclusion. Indeed, there have been many NBA players who had tremendous athletic gifts without being able to make the most of them on the court.

For the very same reason, this is also not necessarily a list of the most consistently exciting guys from years past.

This is a list of players with certain athletic traits or abilities that would make the other guys on the court (also world-class athletes) say "I wish I could do that."

Some of them have parlayed these gifts into highly productive careers, while others have been only serviceable at  best, but every guy on this list has/had the ability to do perform feats of athleticism the average player wouldn't dream of pulling.

As the Heat have a relatively brief history, their list of physical phenoms is conversely short, so today's list is a Top seven.

Also, I only considered players as they were during their time with the Heat, so there shan't be any Shaq or Derek Anderson sightings.

Honorable mentions (a.k.a. the guys whose absence from the main list is most likely to be lamented in the comments, but who are/were in fact nothing too jaw-dropping athletically):

-Eddie Jones

-Jamario Moon

-Steve Smith

7. Kevin Edwards

Kicking off the short list of unnatural athletes, we have one of the original Miami Heat, a little guy who became very close friends with the rim due to his frequent visits to it.

Kevin Edward was listed at 6'3", and I suppose I'll just have to take the books' word for it; watching him in action on the court, you'd never think he had a millimeter on Isiah Thomas.

He may have looked like a point guard, but he played like the shooting guard he was, which is to say he took shots. And since he wasn't the most effective shooter—especially from long range—he evolved as a slasher.

His stats were modest but respectable, so he did have some success with the whole "attack the rack" approach. Playing off Glen Rice, Sherman Douglas and Rony Seikaly, Edwards had plenty of opportunities at the rim in his Miami days.

Some might say he wasn't the only little guy who got to the basket with some regularity, but in my book, he was a rarity among them in that he was a little guy expressly intended to play the finisher.

And at the end of the day, there was something less than normal about the amount of air he was capable of putting between his feet and the floor.

6. Harold Miner

I really can't say much about Harold Miner that you wouldn't already know.

Sure, it takes a remarkable amount of athleticism to win a dunk contest (let alone two) but to win as dominantly as he did in 1993, it took a combination of vertical and finishing power, not to mention some pretty good conditioning to bring the ball up, down and around with the deftness he did.

I really can't say too much more about Miner because the only other evidence of his freakish athleticism is the occasional in-game dunks, which were nothing in comparison to his performance in the dunk contest.

Really, once you get past All-Star Saturday, the story is pretty much told.

5. Keyon Dooling

There's your darkhorse right there.

Another diminutive player generously listed at 6'3", Dooling only played a season in Miami, so he barely makes it. At best, you'd remember maybe one or two highlights from his time there.

And yet, insofar as this list is more about what a player is/was capable of rather than how much he actually did, Dooling belongs as a pretty darn gifted athlete who once wore a Miami jersey.

His gifts were foot speed and leaping ability, which he has used on countless occasions to crack through defenses and go sailing to the basket for a tomahawk. The nonchalance with which he got above the rim the second he had room made you wonder if he had at some point been hypnotized to think he was six inches taller than he was.

All statistical production aside, Keyon Dooling was basically Russell Westbrook long before Russell Westbrook. Though most of his career highlight reel would be heavy on the Clips and the Magic, he had his share of launchpad plays in South Beach as well.

4. Alonzo Mourning

Alonzo Mourning was an impressive athletic specimen particularly in terms of durability.

Most athletes lose intensity as they get older out of a need to save energy and preserve their bodies from advancing wear. Mourning, meanwhile, got more in shape as he got older, which allowed him to play monster defense well after age robbed him of his offensive effectiveness, if only on the strength of screaming, flexing adrenaline.

Most athletes also lose physical robustness as they age. Similarly, human beings in general tend to lose physical robustness following kidney failure and major surgery. These facts were completely lost on Mourning.

He decided he'd use his later years to buff up even more, which allowed him to keep on flattening shots at the rim if need be. The decline in his offense only made him more impressive to watch, since it wouldn't let you forget just how Zo really was, regardless of his ageless D.

Also worth noting: somehow Mourning blocked more shots per 48 minutes in his last years than in his prime.

For a guy his age to maintain his manhandling ways until the very end of his twilight years is a pretty impressive show of athletic freakishness.

3. Shawn Marion

Shawn Marion barely made this list since he spent a relatively brief time with the Heat, but he did on occasion still display the antics that earned him the nickname "The Matrix."

Those antics could be summed up in one word: boing.

Marion got off the floor so effortlessly for his size—particularly off two feet—that he was among the NBA's elite at grabbing rebounds and lob passes in his prime (which he exited at or around the time he exited Miami.)

Once I could swear I saw an opposing player inspect the spot on the floor from which Marion had just taken off for an alley-oop.

He would get above the rim with such unusual frequency—albeit with some help from Jason Kidd and Steve Nash—that Marion's aerial ability began looking routine to some people. In a way, he was a bit of a victim of his own success.

Still, Shawn Marion in his prime will never be mistaken for a normal athlete.

2. Dwyane Wade

Through some combination of footwork, ridiculous stamina and all-around physical gifts, Wade is capable of imposing his will on opposing teams better than anyone I know in the NBA at the moment.

It's not that he's all that strong or blindingly quick; he's just excellent at creating shots for himself regardless of the defense, and once he's in scoring position, somehow the finish is never just a simple one, is it?

It's the same thing on defense; he uses his strength and athleticism to play down low without getting pushed around, where he can then go up for his trademark "little guy blocks big guy" moments.

Those who can, block the shot; those who can't, merely contest it.

In a nutshell, Dwyane Wade plays basketball as if he's a video game character with a bunch of cheat codes activated.

[Double-jump On], giving him a little boost at the top of a normal human leap, which allows him turn what look, smell and quack like layups into dunks...

[Bullet-time On], which slows his perception Matrix-style in mid-air, letting him improvise the most ridiculous shots in real-time...

[Invincibility On], letting him stand up to the punishment that comes with the territory for a slashing, above-the-rim player, relatively unharmed.

[+50% stamina], which allows him to run his defender ragged off the ball, making it that much easier to go over, under, around and/or through them in unthinkable fashion.

I'm still waiting to see him make the basket actually burst into flames a-la NBA Jam one day.

1. LeBron James

Even though he's only played one season in Miami, LeBron is hands down the number one athletic freak in franchise history simply because he's the biggest athletic freak in NBA history.

The other guys on this list are all highly athletic, but the term "athletic freak" is only a literal term in LeBron's case; he actually defies the limits of normal human anatomy.

You could try and make a computer program to explain LeBron scientifically, but the first time you ran it would be accompanied by smoke, sparks and repeated cries of "does not compute."

For the record, LeBron weighs in the neighborhood of Dwight Howard with the locomotive capabilities of a point guard. Between sheer mass and acceleration, I'm not totally convinced he's physically incapable of running right through a concrete wall like he was Juggernaut.

In terms of anatomical limitations (a concept even less familiar to LeBron than contraction,) he does things at his size that would destroy the ankles of most other athletes and cripple regular people.  

If the average 260-pounder tried to operate at the speeds and the altitudes LeBron is capable of, he'd be putting himself in grave physical danger every time down the floor. Meanwhile if the average point guard dropped his shoulder at high speeds like LeBron does, he'd be risking a broken neck.

LeBron James is quite simply an affront to normal human musculoskeletal systems everywhere.