Udonis Haslem reduced the reality into a single sentence Tuesday, on a day that was supposed to be a celebration of his moving on to a 14th season with the Miami Heat but instead became a reminder of who, for the first time, no longer would be alongside.
"Once we step in the gym for practice that first day," Haslem said, "that's when it's really going to be real."
Because Dwyane Wade no longer will be there.
It was in the wake of the Heat's inability to come to terms with Wade last week and the franchise icon's subsequent move to the Chicago Bulls in free agency that Haslem reached his agreement on a $4 million contract for next season.
That had the 36-year-old power forward talking Tuesday about the changing face of the only NBA franchise he has called his own, and the only franchise Wade, until last Thursday, had called his own.
Amid a whirlwind that has seen Kobe Bryant retire from the Los Angeles Lakers and Tim Duncan from the San Antonio Spurs, and even had Heat free-agent target Kevin Durant move on to the Golden State Warriors, Haslem said in his view there has been only one transformative offseason transaction.
"I mean nothing against Kobe, and nothing against Timmy," he said. "They've had great careers. They're arguably the greatest players at their positions that have ever played this game. But, really, the only thing that's going to matter to me and the only change that matters to me is No. 3 going to Chicago.
"I could give a damn about Kevin Durant or anyone else, to be honest."
And no, he never saw this coming, not this ending.
"Obviously," Haslem said, "I never envisioned finishing it without my brother. But I think the 13 years that I've spent with him, the 13 years that I've been playing with some of the greatest players in this league, the 13 years I've spent in this organization has prepared me for the next step, and that's to lead this next group of guys and this next generation even more so without Dwyane."
From the 2003-04 Heat, Haslem is the last man standing, as well as the only remaining player from the Heat's three championship seasons (2006, '12, '13).
"It's bittersweet, obviously," he said. "It's something to talk about when I'm done: I was the last one left. But while I'm in it right now, it's still hard. It's not going to be easy. Like I said, you kind of write the story a certain way. And you hope that it would end that way. And we just always talked about finishing it together. And it just didn't work out that way. For me, I just look at it as this is the way it's supposed to be for me. This is the way I'm supposed to end my career. Why not?"
And yet, Haslem still is not sure why there was not an agreement between franchise and franchise player, with the Heat unwilling to go as high as the Bulls' two-year, $47 million offer to Wade.
He even joked of how the Los Angeles Clippers reined back DeAndre Jordan last summer after the free-agent center had made a non-binding commitment to the Dallas Mavericks.
"In hindsight," Haslem said, "I don't know. I think back. I don't know if I should have come in and put the Chris Paul handcuffs on him like he did with DeAndre Jordan and made him change his mind. I don't know. I don't know if there was anything I could have done or should have done. But I felt like that it could have been avoided. But for whatever reason it just wasn't."
Haslem, Wade and power forward Chris Bosh had been tri-captains last season. Now Haslem said he would study techniques from former Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis about leadership, while also hoping to at least have Bosh back alongside.
"Nobody knows physically what the situation is going to be with Chris," Haslem said, with Bosh missing the second half of each of the past two seasons due to blood clots. "But me, personally, as the leader, in my mind I'm preparing as he's going to be here, he's going to be healthy, he's going to be contributing. So that's the way we're going to look at it. That's the positive approach that I'm going to take with him."
About the Author
