“Then I Became Batman!”: Dwyane Wade Shows Off Shaquille O’Neal’s Humble 2006 Finals Speech

Another off-season has almost gone by and the Miami Heat are yet to acquire any high-profile talents to pair alongside Jimmy Butler. Pat Riley and his front office are having a tough time convincing stars to come to Dade County and they seem unable to execute blockbuster signings like they did in the early 2000s and 2010s. Heat legend Dwayne Wade posted a clip from the team’s 2006 Finals win, reminding the Heat fan base of the better times they had.

Wade was an All-Star by his third season in the league and even won a chip the same year, leading his entire squad in all major statistical categories (except rebounds) in the 2006 NBA Finals. But most remember Wade for his legacy as LeBron’s James’s running mate, his Robin.

While that might be true for Wade’s career in the early 2010s, he played as the Heat’s ace for the majority of his career. Even Shaquille O’Neal had to admit that Wade was good enough to make him play Robin, and Wade recently took to Instagram to remind everyone of how dominant he was before his injuries.

In the above-mentioned clip, O’Neal can be seen carrying the Larry O’Brien trophy after the team’s championship-clinching Game 6 outing and was asked about Wade’s performance soon after. The media even enquired if Shaq had the faintest idea that he would be playing second fiddle to a 24-year-old, and he responded by saying,

“I knew that, you know, he was a young gunner. So when I came here I decided to let him go, and I was going be, you know, second option. And I was good with that and, you know, he’s a great player, unselfish player. He’s the best in the world, D-Wade.”

Wade posted the above clip to his Instagram and tagged it saying “And then I became Batman.”

Wade and the Heat met Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks in the 2006 Finals and were underdogs during the matchup. No one expected Wade to go off as he did, and his 34.7 points per game in the series forced O’Neal to admit that Wade was the team’s ace and even called him the best player on the planet. Wade’s Game 5 performance (43 points) was the icing on the cake as that night the world was forced to acknowledge “The Flash”, one of the greatest two-guards in the game’s history, behind Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.

Shaq recalls the 2006 Finals.

An average of 13.7 points, 10.2 rebounds, and 2.8 assists in 6 games is not impressive considering Shaq’s averages with the Lakers during his three-peat, but as always the numbers don’t tell the full story. Regardless of his sub-par performance the Mavericks always doubled or triple-teamed O’Neal and that might have lost them the series.

Shaq was even asked about Maverick’s strategy 19 years later during an appearance on the Heavy Weight Radio Show’s YouTube channel. Talking to his host, Adrian Hernandez, O’Neal said,

“I was playing terrible. But everyone knows that I don’t like playing two terrible games in a row…I was still ‘The Shaq’ but I was not ‘Shaq’.”

In the end, O’Neal confessed that it all worked out perfectly considering how the Heat won the Championship. It was also an added advantage that Shaq could mentor Wade through the process and if it wasn’t for O’Neal pushing Wade, we might have never experienced prime D-Wade as we did in those 2006 Finals.