Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade was honored by the Miami Heat on Sunday with the unveiling of a statue outside the Kaseya Center. Such a gesture is arguably the ultimate tribute a professional sports franchise or athletic program can pay to an iconic figure.
Wade must have been in awe of the spectacle of creating a sculpture of him that generations of fans can now look at outside the Heat’s home arena and remember one of the team’s greatest players.
The statue commemorated the moment on March 9, 2009, when Wade hit a game-winning shot in a double-overtime contest with the Chicago Bulls, after which he stood on the scorer’s table and declared: “This is my house!“
However, as impressive as the sculpture and the performance of the Heat may have been, after the statue was unveiled, many noticed that the bronze monument did not really resemble the NBA star.
Why can’t we get statues of people…that look like the people they are supposed to represent. Nobody sees Dwyane Wade here. pic.twitter.com/AMc36O7hVU
– Charles Robinson (@CharlesRobinson) October 27, 2024
The reaction to the statue and its lack of resemblance to the real-life figure being honored resembled the backlash over the bronze bust of international soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo that was unveiled at the airport in his native Madeira in Portugal.
The outrage over a silly, cartoonish portrayal of the strikingly handsome Ronaldo was so loud and global that a new sculpture was commissioned, which almost everyone agreed resembled its real-life subject much more closely.
A State Farm commercial featuring former NFL quarterback and current Prime Video studio analyst Ryan Fitzpatrick mocked a ridiculous bust being made of him.
Everyone involved, including “Jake from State Farm” and Fitzpatrick’s colleague Charissa Thompson insisted that the likeness of the sculpture was correct. However, Fitzpatrick was incredulous and viewers of the ad must have agreed on how absurd the bust looked.
Here it is with real life again drawing a parallel with a comedy commercial parody of exactly these types of moments.
Perhaps in the coming days, someone will ask Fitzpatrick — himself a former Miami professional athlete, playing for the Dolphins from 2019-20 — what he thinks about the Wade statue. At the very least, he could repeat the “What did I do to deserve this?” line from the commercial and apply it to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Regardless of what the statue looks like, Wade certainly deserves such an honor. (However, many would argue that he deserves a sculpture that bears a better likeness.)
The guard played 15 of his 16 seasons with the Heat, averaging 22.7 points, 5.4 assists and 4.7 rebounds in 948 regular-season games for Miami. He won three NBA championships, two as part of the “Big Three” with LeBron James and Chris Bosh, in addition to a gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
During his career, Wade was also a 13-time All-Star and led the league in scoring with an average of 30.2 points in the 2008–09 season. The Heat retired his #3 jersey number in 2020 and he was inserted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2023.
If Wade is okay with how the statue looks, that should be the final word. And realistically, he’s not going to criticize the similarity in public. But if public outcry is loud and long enough, maybe he’ll get the tribute fans to believe he deserves.
