ROLLASON: D-WADE: The second best NBA option

There were eight different NBA teams that had two players from their team playing in this year’s all-star game; and only one of those teams had three players in the all-star game, that would be the Miami Heat.

In fact, the Miami Heat might have the best “second guy” in the NBA in Dwyane Wade. The “second guy” would be the next best player after the first best player on the team, in the case of the Heat that would be LeBron James.

Few would debate that LeBron James isn’t the best player in the NBA (I say few because I know there are some out there that would disagree, not sure why). James is at the top of his game and seems to be moving closer and closer to gaining another title, and maybe more to come after that.

And he’s not alone, joining him is a very talented team in Miami that is full of players that understand their role and have bought into the system. But aside from all the role players LeBron James has what no other superstar has in the NBA — Dwyane Wade playing right beside him.

On any other team in the NBA Dwyane Wade might be “the guy” but in Miami Wade has been kept in the shadows a little bit. Not in a bad way though, LeBron has been having one of the best years of his career and Wade has spent most of the season coming back from surgery.

LeBron has stepped up as the clear leader of the team and Wade has been slowly but surely coming back around to where he was last season. Some analysts have said that Wade has gotten too old and has lost a step, but nothing about Wade’s game gives any indication of that.

Dwyane is actually having his best shooting year of his career and has been scoring more and more over the last few weeks. And for coming off of surgery over the offseason the 31-year old Wade is still faster than a lot of other players in the league — not to mention that he is still one of the toughest guys to defend off of the dribble.

Everyone has been keying in on LeBron’s game as of late, but people seem to overlook Wade when he scores 33 points.

It’s not that he isn’t getting any love because Dwyane is still getting plenty of credit for the Heat’s great season thus far, but he is simply being outshined by his counterpart James.

Wade is hands down the best second option on any team in the NBA. If LeBron has to come out of the game for a little while you still have a future Hall-of-Famer and one of the best guards in NBA history to lead the team.

The Heat have run off eleven straight wins and are showing everyone why they are the best team in the league. At the rate that they are playing no one will be able to take them out in the playoffs; it’s hard to imagine any team beating Miami four times in two weeks.

When LeBron and Wade are clicking there might not be a better show to watch in all of sports. The two have very similar games and simply make the other better, not to mention making the rest of the Heat’s team look good as well.

No one is overlooking the Heat, but I just want to make sure that no one is looking over Wade and thinking that he has lost a step.
He is still the best “second guy” in the NBA and is still more than capable of putting the team on his back. If teams start forgetting about Wade they will have another thing coming.

Tyler Rollason is a Winder-Barrow High School graduate and mass communications major at the University of West Georgia. He writes a weekly column for the Barrow Journal. You can e-mail comments about this column to tyrollason@yahoo.com.