The Miami Heat are 10-4 on the season and surprisingly 5-0 without Dwyane Wade in the lineup. The team won all three games Wade missed with a sore foot two weeks ago. They lost three straight games when he returned, and they’ve won both their games since he was sidelines with an ankle injury.
The pattern of winning without Dwyane and losing with him in the lineup sparked chatter on TV and Twitter that the Heat is better “Without Wade.”
Wade clearly didn’t appreciate the negativity, and he made light of it with a series of tweets Friday. My favorite was when he apologized for being the reason Tim Tebow lost to the Patriots.
Here are the tweets:
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra wasn’t pleased with the talk either and made his feelings known Saturday.
“I mean, come on, let’s not make it a bigger storyline than what it is. We were playing fantastic basketball with all of our guys when everybody was healthy,” Spoelstra said. “When he was playing at about 60 percent, OK, our game looked a little different. And even them, we had some good things going on during that road trip. He was trying to be a warrior and play through all of that. We need all our weapons. Ideally, if everybody’s healthy. It makes for great drama. The more I hear something like that, the more it becomes the theater of the absurd.”
Keep in mind that three of the games they won without Wade were at home. All three games they lost with him happened at the end of their West Coast road trip. That’s another factor people should not forget when they engage in this discussion.
