Dwyane Wade is heading back to the Miami Heat. The end of the Cleveland Cavaliers‘ midseason roster overhaul featured a few major moves, but the simplest trade involved flipping Wade to the team that drafted him back in 2003 for a second-round draft pick that won’t head to northeast Ohio until 2024.
For that reason, it seemed kind of obvious that the Cavs just wanted to send Wade somewhere because he wasn’t in their plans and they just wanted to get something back for him. Upon scanning the landscape, Cleveland made the decision to send him back to his hoops home, and now, Wade is back in Miami.
The move was something that made Gabrielle Union and LeBron James really happy for Wade, and as it turns out, Wade is stoked to get the chance to return home, partly because he always expected this to happen. Wade spoke to Tim Reynolds of the Associated Press about his return and opened up about his desire to get back to his first basketball home.
“I always felt that one day it would happen,” Wade said. “For me, it’s always been a hope. You just don’t know how or when you’re going to get there.”
Wade also shared the story of how he learned about the trade, which is tremendous. He was about to get to the Cavaliers’ practice facility to work out with James when his agent texted him and said “Call me 911.”
“So if you get a text like that and the trade deadline is coming up and you know the team that you’re on is going to be very active, you know something is going down with you,” Wade said. “And my mind went right to, ‘No, it’s not Miami. There’s no way.’ My mind went right to that because I felt like that’s the only other place I can be.”
It is really cool seeing how much getting back to the Heat means to Wade. He’s going to a pretty good situation — the team is currently in seventh place in the Eastern Conference with a 29-26 record — but even if team was winless, Wade is clearly just happy to get back to his roots.
