Dwyane Wade has left a city where he won a championship before, so he is uniquely positioned to weigh in on Kyrie Irving’s apparent shade against Cleveland.
After Irving called Boston “a really major city” with many different cultures, different from his previous home — which many took as a knock against Cleveland — Wade said he was giving the former Cavaliers point guard the benefit of the doubt.
“I’ve always tried not to be too, me personally, oversensitive to what I read or what somebody says because I wasn’t there when they said it,” Wade told ESPN’s Dave McMenamin. “Because you just don’t know. Boston is a big sports town. It has the history there. And I think that’s one thing, if you want to read the quote, they have an amazing amount of sports history and all the championships from football to baseball to all four sports. I think, depending on how you want to take it. If you’re Cleveland and the way they were left, you read it one way. If you’re a sports fan somewhere else, you read it another way. So it just depends on how someone wants to take the quote when someone says it. Unless you were there and you heard it and saw his facial reaction and know how he really meant it. That’s how I look at things.
“My thing has always been — even in Miami — first of all, you never know where you’re going to be, what’s going to happen, where you’re going to end up, who you’re going to be teammates with,” Wade said. “You just never know those things, so I never want to leave a place and talk s— about a place. Because when you were there, it was great, and then you leave, it’s terrible? It’s just like players. Fans celebrate players when they’re there, and then they leave, and it’s the worst thing. That’s not me. That’s not how I do things. I’m appreciative of what people have done for me, what organizations have done for me, and I hope they’re appreciative of whatever I can bring or whatever I’ve done — on and off the court. So, it doesn’t always go that way, but that’s the way I try to make it when I can control it.”
Wade, a newcomer to Cleveland, is taking the diplomatic route here. Some of Irving’s former teammates have been a bit less charitable since the big trade was made.
