Dwyane Wade and Chris Paul may be close friends, but all bets were off when they stepped on the court. During their playing days, Wade didn’t hesitate to get physical with Paul, despite their bond. In fact, the former Miami Heat star admitted that he deliberately roughed up the ‘Point God’ during games to throw him off his rhythm.
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Getting physical against a fellow member of the Banana Boat Crew was a very calculated move from DWade. During a recent episode of his The Why podcast, Wade revealed details of his interesting strategy against his friend.
Wade started by giving CP his flowers. He said that the 12-time All-Star is one of the finest defensive players in the league because of how well he can read the game.
“Out of all the people that I’ve played against from a defensive standpoint, when it comes to his ability to be able to muck everything up…Clippers CP, New Orleans CP will f**k up your whole offense,” Wade said.
So, how does one deal with a player like that? Wade said that hitting him was the best choice he had if he wanted to score against CP.
“Only thing I would do with CP because CP is fiery as f**k ‘cause I’m hitting him. I’m hitting CP…I gotta get CP off his game a little bit if I need to score on him,” the Heat legend revealed.
Wade said that the reason why this worked was because Paul is “a little loose up there [head].” The Hall of Famer used his temper against him, and since they were friends, he got away with it. However, there were moments when things really heated up between the two. Despite that, both of them have admitted that they’d prefer playing against each other than being on the same team.
One of the biggest criticisms that the modern-day game faces is that there are a lot of friendships on and off the court. While a friendship with one’s teammate wouldn’t hurt anyone, being friends with players on the other teams is what upsets the legends. However, CP and Wade would prefer having friends on the other side.
During an appearance on Wade’s podcast, Paul said that being on the same team with “friends” is “hard.”
He said, “I think enough guys don’t understand that, right. And if you do want to play with your, like, ‘friend,’ then at some point when it ain’t working out, it’s going to be some hard conversations.”
The 39-year-old said that when friends are not willing to have those difficult conversations, it ends up destroying their bond. As per Wade, most of the time, people aren’t willing to have those tough conversations with their friends.
