Dwyane Wade had the pleasure of playing alongside some of the all-time NBA greats. But when he thinks of his favorite teammate, he tends to favor a guy who did the dirty work. That’s right, it may come as a surprise, but Wade’s favorite teammate isn’t LeBron James, Shaquille O’Neal, or even Chris Bosh.
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No, Wade’s favorite teammate from his career was none other than Udonis Haslem. The big man played for the Miami Heat for 20 seasons and won three titles with them. Additionally, Wade and Haslem were teammates for 13 seasons.
But why is “UD”, as Wade calls him, his favorite teammate of all time? Well, because he knew his role.
“A team is a group of individuals who can all play their role to perfection, and that’s how you get to the point of winning a championship,” Wade professed. “So someone who has that mentality like that, that’s an unbelievable teammate. That’s someone you’ll be like, ‘Who’s your favorite teammate?’ You go to someone like that, I go to UD. I don’t go to Shaq and LeBron, and all of those guys. I go to UD, because he did the dirty work, he did the little things.”
It was high praise coming from Wade toward his former longtime teammate. Haslem was the ultimate glue guy for the Heat, even well into the Big Three years in the early 2010s. It was hard not to love him.
However, despite calling Haslem his favorite teammate, Wade’s friendship with LeBron is well-known. The pair of stars immediately meshed when they met up in South Beach with Bosh in 2010. But it was the tough playoff losses that ultimately bonded them for life.
Dwyane Wade’s bond with LeBron James
The NBA Playoffs are a battlefield that builds bonds between teammates that are forged for life. A great example of this in Wade’s career was in 2011 when the Heat lost the NBA Finals to the Dallas Mavericks.
After becoming the Big 3 in Miami alongside LeBron and Bosh, Wade and the Heat had lofty expectations on their shoulders. When they went up 2-1 on the Mavs in the Finals, though, everything felt like it was going according to plan. But it was then that Wade and the Heat fell into the trap, coughing up 3 consecutive games and losing the series.
Following the series, Wade put his feelings quite bluntly.
“It was depressing. We was just depressed,” Wade stated. But the vulnerability of the moment allowed his and LeBron’s relationship to grow. “To be vulnerable in those moments and not care that the other person sees you in that space helps the relationship grow.”
Today, Lebron and Wade communicate often via text or over the phone. The series truly made them friends for life, and understandably so. They would go on to win another championship before breaking up in 2014. Wade retired in 2019 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2023.
