Profile
Dwyane Tyrone Wade is a member of the Miami Heat. He was selected with the 5th overall pick in the 2003 NBA Draft. From unheralded draft pick to fast evolving NBA star, Dwyane Wade has experienced a whirlwind career in fewer than two years. Perhaps this might have been expected of a player widely known as “Flash”.
In his first season (2003-04), the Chicago-area native who also flashed his athletic brilliance for Marquette University, achieved NBA All-Rookie Team status with the Miami Heat. Before he knew it, Dwyane was an Olympian, representing the United States in the 2004 Athens Summer Games. Now he’s a major catalyst behind the Heat’s current NBA campaign with a new teammate and admirer, former L.A. Laker Shaquille O’Neal.
O’Neal is on the record saying that Dwyane is the most phenomenal second-year player he has seen since himself, and has praised his young teammate for possessing “fire” and “heart”, and all of the qualities of a great competitor as the Heat have emerged as the team to beat in the NBA’s Eastern Conference. Dwyane joined the Heat as the fifth pick of the 2003 NBA Draft. In 56 starts, Dwyane averaged a solid 16.2 points in 35 minutes per game, and was one of the reasons the Heat emerged as an unlikely #4seed in the 2004 playoffs.
Yet it was Dwyane’s all-world showing in the playoffs that solidified his spot as one of the NBA’s brightest young performers. Wade led the Heat in scoring in seven of the team’s 13 playoff games. Dwyane’s heroics in Games Five and Six of the opening round led the Heat past the New Orleans Hornets and into the Conference semifinals against the top-seeded Indiana Pacers. While the Heat could not subdue the powerful Pacers, Dwyane left his mark on the series with monster dunks and an average of 21 points per game.
There was little time afforded Dwyane to reflect on all of that. In the summer of 2004, he averaged 7.3 points, playing 17.5 minutes in the eight games played by Team USA on its eventful journey in Athens to an Olympic bronze medal last August. Dwyane was the No. 2 rated team member in registering steals against Olympic opponents, averaging slightly more than two per game.
With a similar meteoric rise in college, Dwyane catapulted Marquette to the 2003 Final Four. In two years at Marquette he became one of the most decorated players in school history where he averaged 19.7 points per game, had 150 steals and 79 blocked shots. That was upstaged only by Dwyane’s history making NCAA Tournament triple-double (against No. 1 ranked Kentucky) to take the Golden Eagles to the Final Four for the first time since 1977.
The first Marquette player since 1978 to earn Associated Press First Team All-America, a United States Basketball Writers First Team All-American and a National Association of Basketball Coaches Second Team All-American, Wade was a finalist for the Wooden, Naismith and Oscar Robertson awards. He burst onto the national radar when ESPN The Magazine nominated him in 2002 as Shooting Guard of the Year. Wade was the Conference USA 2003 Player, and Defensive Player of the Year for what would be his last season in college.
It was all a fast ride for Wade who concentrated on academics his freshman year at MU as a partial qualifier from Richards High in Oak Lawn, Ill. His senior year the team was 24-5 and gained a berth in the title game of the Illinois Class AA tournament.
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