NBA fans savage Dwayne Wade statue after Miami Heat unveiling: ‘Shame on whoever greenlit this’
Dwyane Wade became the first Miami Heat player this weekend to have a statue outside the team’s arena.
The Heat unveiled the statue on Sunday, about eight months after team president Pat Riley announced plans for the tribute.
Wade is Miami’s all-time leading scorer, and he and Udonis Haslem are the only players to have been on all three Heat teams that won NBA championships.
“This is crazy,” Wade said shortly after the reveal. ‘I wanted to feel this. Life goes by so quickly and it’s very rare that we feel things because we’re always on to the next thing. …I wanted to feel this, man. I wanted to watch it.”
However, NBA fans claimed there was one problem with the statue: it looked nothing like the icon.
Dwyane Wade became the first Miami Heat player to have a statue outside the team’s arena
The Heat unveiled the statue on Sunday, sparking viral reactions from NBA fans online
When photos of the statue went viral on social media, fans quickly ridiculed the revelation, quickly turning it into new meme fodder.
“Miami Heat did Dwyane Wade dirty,” claimed one fan on X, formerly known as Twitter, while another agreed, writing, “The Dwayne Wade statue is dirty work.”
“Shame on whoever gave this the green light; it doesn’t even look like Dwyane Wade. You all could have done better. This looks like a statue straight out of Temu,” a third wrote, referring to the Chinese online shopping site.
Another echoed the bewilderment, saying: “Honestly, how did that D Wade statue get cleared? When Dwayne Wade said, ‘who is that guy,’ part of him thought, ‘That’s really the best thing y’all could do.’
“Dwayne Wade statue looks like he’s riding an invisible motorcycle,” one joked, while another quipped, “Damn, the heat got Wade dirty.” Gave him the Cristiano Ronaldo treatment, referring to the viral statue of the Portuguese football star.
“This image is so bad I forget what Dwayne Wade actually looks like. The longer I look, the harder it is for me to imagine his real face,” one social media user shared.
“Dwayne Wade is trying to figure out who this statue is,” another joked next to a photo of the former point guard looking at the statue.
Fans on social media were quick to roast the statue of the former NBA point guard
An in-game celebration will follow Monday when Miami hosts Detroit on the 21st anniversary of Wade’s debut game with the franchise.
A member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, Wade is one of six former Heat players to have his number retired by the team, along with Haslem, Chris Bosh, Tim Hardaway, Shaquille O’Neal and Alonzo Mourning.
“As the greatest player to ever play in Miami Heat history, it’s his day, it’s his family’s day,” Riley said.
The statue is accompanied by a wall depicting Wade’s career achievements and is placed outside the front doors of the team’s arena. Wade is now part owner of the Utah Jazz, among many other business interests.