LeBron James has a legacy in the NBA for many teams. But he was very closely associated with the Cleveland Cavaliers. He left the Cavaliers to join Dwyane Wade at the Miami Heat to form a superstar trio of alongwith Wade and Chris Bosh. After seven long seasons where he failed to win the Championship with the Cavaliers, he decided to make a switch to the South beach and combine with his best mate, Dwyane Wade.
Recently the Miami Heat legend Dwyane Wade opened up on the ‘Point Forward’ podcast how the move of luring LeBron James from Cleveland happened and how they engineered the creation of the big three at Miami. Wade shared how he never thought about playing with LeBron apart from the All Star game. The thought of being on the same team came a lot later to him.
“It never crossed my mind. Playing in an All-Star game or playing in summer games or playing in the Olympics, that’s one thing. But playing in an NBA season together? That’s way different. … It wasn’t nothing that was on my mind until we started going through the process of free agency,”Wade shared on the podcast.
Wade then highlighted how ‘The King’ was winning several individual accolades and was at the top of his game but he was not having something to show for at the end of the season and it bothered him. He wanted to win the NBA Championship. Once he realized he could not do on his own he joined the Heat.
“LeBron, at that time, was MVP, scoring champ, all these things. Those individual accolades are dope. but then at some point, there’s no feeling you get nothing when the season ends. He wanted something more than just those individual accolades. … And he realized he couldn’t do it on his own,” Wade added.
Before moving to the Heat in 2010, LeBron and Wade played with each other in the 2004 and 2008 Olympics representing USA Basketball. They have also featured in multiple All-Star games.
While Wade was already a Champion and a Finals MVP, LeBron was the scoring champion and regular season MVP.. Heat president of basketball operations Pat Riley decided to add more length as he added Chris Bosh to the mix making it an iconic trio that would be remembered for years and years to come.
They reached the Finals as a trio for the first time in 2011 but they were blown away by Dirk Nowitzki’s Dallas Mavericks. It was one of the biggest upsets in NBA history. However the trio got it together in 2012 when they finally won the NBA Championship and repeated the journey once again in 2013 and went down as one of the greatest big three of all times in the NBA.
