Dwyane Wade talks relationship with Heat, favorite title and more ahead of HOF induction

Miami Heat icon Dwyane Wade will officially become a first-ballot Hall of Famer this weekend.

Wade will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as part of the 2023 class on Saturday night at Symphony Hall in Springfield, Massachusetts. The enshrinement ceremony is scheduled to run from 8 p.m.-11:30 p.m. and will be televised live on NBA TV, with Wade scheduled to speak last.

Heat ready to celebrate Dwyane Wade’s Hall of Fame moment: ‘It’s going to be a surreal moment’

The induction order is tentatively set as: Tony Parker, Gary Blair, Gene Bess, Pau Gasol, David Hixon, Gene Keady, 1976 U.S. Women’s Olympic Team, Gregg Popovich, Jim Valvano, Becky Hammon, Dirk Nowitzki and Wade.

Wade, 41, will become the first player inducted into the Hall of Fame who was drafted by the Heat.

Ahead of Wade’s Hall of Fame moment, he answered 16 questions from the Miami Herald in honor of his legendary 16 NBA seasons:

1. What makes this Hall of Fame honor different than others you’ve received?

“Because we can’t believe it. I’m not extraordinary by the naked eye. I’m 6-foot-3 1/2. Like you can’t just look at me now and be like, ‘Oh, he’s just a regular guy from a regular community with regular parents.’ It’s just all these things. My dad and my mom and I and my sisters, we’re all like: ‘This snotty nose, booger nose, ashy, little dirty kid is the one who’s going into the Hall of Fame?’ So it’s special for us as a family that the Wades can be lifted into the rafters, whether it’s Marquette, whether it’s Miami, whether it’s the Hall of Fame because it’s important for the future of our family to see that success is possible, and it shows for me and hopefully for my kids what it takes to be successful coming from the communities that we’ve come from.”

2. If I would have told you 20 years ago before your first NBA game in Philadelphia that Allen Iverson would eventually present you for your induction into the Hall of Fame, what would have been your reaction?

“Like no. No, no, no, man. When I got a chance to ask him, we were at All-Star Weekend in Utah this year and I grabbed him. I was like, ‘Bro, would you please do me the honor to present me into the Hall of Fame?’ He looked at me like, ‘Are you serious? Don’t make me cry. It would be my honor.’ He’s somebody who I looked up to, somebody who I was trying to do all his crossovers in my driveway dribbling down the street throughout my community. I’m so appreciative that he said yes, and I can’t wait for the moment that the world gets to see A.I. on stage with me.”

3. Who are you looking forward to seeing from the Heat during Hall of Fame weekend?

“There are going to be so many guys. Whoever is able to show up, I don’t know who’s all going to be there necessarily. There are a lot of invitations out. But it’s going to be the usual suspects for me. Of course, it’s going to be good to see individuals that have been a part of this journey that I maybe played a year with, maybe coached me for a year or two. But it’s going to be UD [Udonis Haslem], it’s going to be Spo [Erik Spoelstra], it’s going to be Fiz [David Fizdale], it’s going to be guys who I was in the foxhole with who we spent years together and we accomplished things together. It’s going to be those guys that I want to give a big hug to. It’s going to be Pat [Riley], it’s going to be all those guys. So I look forward to seeing them. This is a big moment for us, for a drafted Heat player to go into the Hall of Fame. It means something.”

4. As an organization, the Heat likes to say they’re not for everybody. Why was it the right team for you?

“Because my daddy’s name is Dwyane Tyrone Wade Sr., my high school coach’s name is Jack Fitzgerald and my college coach’s name is Tom Crean and they all embodied what the Heat embodies — accountability. They all embodied the culture of accountability to me and that’s why I became the player I became. So it was the perfect fit. The day I got drafted, I knew it was the perfect fit because I knew what the Miami Heat was about. Remember, I went to Europe that year and traveled with Bill Van Gundy as my coach. So we were practicing and I was already at like the Miami Heat practices. It was just right and it felt right. So from Day 1, it was for me.”

5. Which one of your three NBA championships is your favorite?

“2006. It’s the first and individually I had a lot to do with it. [Laughs.] But it was the first for the organization. Every player comes in and everybody doesn’t have the same goals. But I had a goal, I wanted to be known as a champion. And at 24 years old in 2006, I got a chance to accomplish that. No matter what happened for the rest of my career, I checked that one off my list and I did it as a lead actor, as well. That meant something to me. For all the basketball heads out there, all the things I knew about the game, you had to be a lead actor to be in this class that I’m in now. So for my career, that meant something and I was able to accomplish that with some great players that I grew up admiring and watching. So 2006 definitely will go down as my favorite child of all my trophies.”

6. What’s your favorite non-championship Heat memory?

“Just my whole rookie year. That team my rookie year with Lamar [Odom] and Caron [Butler] and Rafer Alston, Brian Grant, Eddie Jones, Loren Woods, Jerome Beasley, Udonis. Just going with those guys in the beginning, when it was just pure. We started off 0-7. I’ll never forget starting off 0-7 and I thought it was over. My head was down and I remember Eddie Jones grabbing me on the plane and was like, ‘Young fella, put your head up, man.’ And I’m like, ‘Man, we’re never going to win a game.’ He said, ‘Bro, it’s a long season.’ So just having that, just having people that helped me in that first year, that let me know it was going to be alright. When I hit that rookie wall, people that helped me get over it to give me game that carried me throughout my career. That means something to me. So 2003-04.”

7. Do you have any regrets about how the 2016 offseason played out when you left the Heat in free agency?

“I think we can go back and look at all my interviews. I talked about being like Dirk, I talked about being like Kobe [Bryant], to name a few that could be with one organization for their entire career. But the business, the business sometimes shows up and it did in 2016. So I don’t regret it because it’s all a part of my journey. There are a lot of things with that Chicago move that a lot of people don’t know that was just personal for me. Getting a chance to spend that last year with Henry Thomas, my agent, that was meaningful for me. If I was in Miami, I wouldn’t have been able to do that. So outside of the game, it was bigger than that for me. So I don’t regret that. But I do go on record and say that I did want to be one of those players. Unfortunately, that’s one of the things in my career I wasn’t able to accomplish that I tried to accomplish.”

8. How would you describe your current relationship with the Heat organization?

“It’s exactly where I want it to be. I don’t want anymore from the relationship than what we have now. I show up, I support. Whether I’m supporting in interviews, whether I’m supporting in what I post, whether I’m supporting sitting courtside. Bam [Adebayo] is there, Jimmy [Butler] is there, UD was there, Spo is still there. As long as Spo is there, I’m going to show up and support, so forth and so on. So the relationship is exactly where I need it to be and where I want it to be, where it’s nothing that we need from each other. So now we can just enjoy the moments that we had and not allow anything to be in the way of it. I don’t have nothing in the way of me showing up. I just show up as myself and I love on everybody, they love on me and then I get out of there. I’m out.”

9. Since moving to Los Angeles in retirement, what do you miss most about Miami?

“The streets that I know, the drive to the arena. The things that became a part of my life. You miss that part. And then the people that you meet along the way. There are people that are a part of my life, that have been a big part of my success and a part of seeing me at my lowest, as well, and helping me rise up. All those things, you miss that part.”

10. What is the Miami restaurant you miss the most since moving away?

“I was down there on the strip. Myles [Chefetz] took care of us down there with Prime 112 and Prime Italian. That was our vibe, like that’s home. I can go back there right now today and I know exactly what I’m going to eat, where I want to sit, all these things. If I can say there’s one area for me where I grew up in, I grew up in that Myles area — that Big Pink. After the club, going to Big Pink. I grew up in that, so I miss that.”

11. What are you proudest of off the court at this point of your life?

“The people around me, the people that have been around me. When you get people that are in your life and they’ve been there for 20 years, for 15 years, all these years. I look around and I see the same people, and that means something to me. That means I’m not as big of an [expletive] as everybody might say I am behind closed doors. So it’s the people for me. To me, that’s my legacy.”

12. Is retirement better or worse than you expected?

“Way better, hands down.”

13. The daily reminder that you’re not 28 anymore?

“When I get up from this interview and try to walk out of this room. My hips are going to hurt, my knees are going to hurt, my ankles are going to crack. I’m going to feel like I just played a back-to-back-to-back like it was the lockout year.”

14. What’s a philosophy that you live by?

“I think you guys all know it, my belief is stronger than your doubt. I will live by that forever.”

15. With you and Udonis now off the roster, who is the next Heat culture carrier?

“Well, it’s definitely Bam. No doubt about it. He’s been molded. UD molded Bam to be the carrier. That’s the one thing that UD and I talked about and we started talking about it in 2016 when I left to go to the Bulls. Who is going to carry the culture? We sacrificed a lot, we gave a lot to continue the culture that was set by the ones before us. It means something to us that when Chris [Bosh], when LeBron [James], when Shaq [Shaquille O’Neal], when all these guys came to Miami that it was already like, ‘Hey, this is what we do and this is how our locker room has to be.’ So as leaders of the culture, you want to know who’s going to be the next one and so Bam has been talked about. UD did a great job of molding him and we think he can carry the culture.”

16. How confident are you that you won’t cry during the Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony?

“I’m not confident. I don’t want to cry because snot comes with it and then you can’t stop. I don’t want to cry. I want to cry away from the stage. I want to cry with my family when we’re together. I don’t want to cry on stage. Now if I do, I have some nice Versace shades right there that I can put on and just finish my speech. But hopefully I don’t. But I definitely know there are a few parts in there that I’ve written that I’ve gotten to and I’ve gotten a little teary-eyed reading it. So hopefully I can get through that.”