Wade:
The whispers of Wade declining began during last year's playoffs and have continued with the notion he's "NBA old" at the age of 30.
Rather than say he's a few years away from a rocking chair, Wade will just ignore the outside criticism.
"You know what I've decided," Wade said recently. "I've just decided not to comment on it any more."
....
"Any time someone questions you, it's going to bother you if you have any kind of competitive nature," Wade said. "It fuels you. You want to see what you're made of in a sense. You want to come back and not only answer the bell, but do a little bit more than expected."
....
Wade calls the talk, "just speculation, man."
"I'm not really worried about it, I'm going forward," Wade said. "If anyone asks me anything about that, I'm not answering. I don't want to talk about it. We can talk about all that when I get done playing basketball. Right now, I'm one of the best players in the league, and I come in every year and try to work as hard as I can to try to stay there."
...
"At the end of the day, everyone looks at points," Wade said. "That's what they look at. No one said anything about how my defense has been as good as it's been. No one said anything about how efficient I was last year. I shot 49.7 percent from the field, so that means I hit half the shots I took. People don't look at that. I can't worry myself with that. The only thing I can do is, whatever role I have to play, is play it."
...
"We put this team together knowing that you're going to sacrifice," Wade said. "In a perfect world, if everyone could bring their (old) averages, then we would never have to play a game. That's not the case. When you decide to come together as a team, you sacrifice something. Other teams have done it, and it's a pat on the back for them. When I do it, I've lost a step. It is what it is."
Spo:
"He was not healthy last year," said Spoelstra, who used "a young 30" to describe Wade. "The most important thing for any player in this league is your health. What's sad is [Wade being old] was the story line instead of being the ultimate competitor. That is the amazing story. He helped lead us to a championship. The story about him being old is exaggerated and absurd to us."
Haslem:
"Nobody wants to hear Dwyane is still just as good as he was before," Heat forward Udonis Haslem said. "It's not as controversial as saying Dwyane Wade is getting old. Guys like Dwyane, people don't understand when they piss him off, that's going to make him play better. Keep talking that craziness … When he's pissed off, he plays better. I know that look on his face."
Gotta love Haslem.
