Michael Carter-Williams on Dwyane Wade's Bulls tenure: We felt he could've been a better leader
That year, there were stories about Dwyane Wade being a bad locker-room guy. What was D-Wade like that year? Michael Carter-Williams: Honestly, D-Wade was in a tough position. Coming from Miami, nearing the end of his career, he was in a new place. I don’t know if he fully knew his role. Having Jimmy and Rondo there complicated things. Sometimes, Wade seemed frustrated. He was injured a lot and spent a lot of time rehabbing, so we didn’t always get reps with him in practice. He’d get frustrated about not getting the ball in the right spots, and we’d feel like we didn’t have enough practice with him to figure it out. Wade was passionate about winning. He wanted to address problems, have conversations, and resolve things. There were moments where he led by sharing his experiences and trying to guide us. At other times, we felt he could’ve been a better leader.
Source: YouTube
More on this storyline
Dwyane Wade's son, Zaire, is calling on everyone to keep the jokes and memes coming about the Miami Heat legend's new statue ... telling TMZ Sports all the silly comments only make it that much more of a must-see attraction!! We caught up with the future Hall of Famer's oldest out at LAX this week ... and asked him what the fam REALLY thinks of the team's permanent tribute to Dwyane outside the Kaseya Center -- especially after all the reactions it got on social media. -via TMZ.com / November 16, 2024
But as Amrany recalled, when the Michael Jordan statute was publicly unveiled at a press conference on Nov. 1, 1994, it was not roundly greeted with praise. Rather, there were a number of initial complaints from the public and media over the way it portrayed Jordan’s face, including the decision to keep the Hall of Fame’s famously wagging tongue concealed behind his lips. “They didn’t like that his face wasn’t right off a cereal box,” said Amrany. “They didn’t want what (Jordan) said he wanted. And they didn’t know that, because they were not meeting him, they did not sit with him.” Mercifully, that experience long predated the era of social media and the current “world of algorithms,” as Amrany puts it. The peanut gallery is infinitely more critical and voluble in 2024. “I mean, after 20 articles (about Dwyane Wade’s sculpture) in the last three days,” Amrany said, “what you become is not famous, but infamous.” -via Sportico / November 4, 2024
The day after attending the unveiling of the Dwyane Wade statue outside the Kaseya Center in Miami, the artist behind the inadvertently provocative piece, Omri Amrany, was back in his suburban Chicago art enclave, focused on his litany of future projects. “I don’t check the comments at all—one of the many things that I don’t do—because I keep my brain open for dreams and opportunities and for looking forward,” he told a reporter, while standing in the front hallway of the fine art studio he and his wife, Julie Rotblatt Amrany, have operated in this space since 2005. A sign on the front door of the red-bricked building read: “We are sorry we cannot invite you inside, as we are hard at work sculpting several proprietary projects.” -via Sportico / November 4, 2024
Michael Carter-Williams on OJ Mayo: "I remember asking him, ‘What are you doing today?’ He said, ‘We’re in Chicago, I’m going into the city.’ I said, ‘What for?’ He’s like, ‘I’m about to go shoot for some bread.’ So, he comes back with a duffel bag with like $50,000 in it. I’m like, ‘Yo, you won all that just off shots at the gym?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, we were all just in there.’ Then he left the bag on the bus while we were going to practice. That’s OJ. That’s just how he lived." -via YouTube / November 26, 2024
Michael Carter-Williams: The next day, we had another team meeting. Coach Hoiberg was like, "Jimmy, what’s going on, man? What’s going on with me and you?" Jimmy kind of shook his head, and Hoiberg said, "No, tell me." Jimmy looked at him and said, "Well, for one, I think you’re soft." He didn’t even get to two. He didn’t even get to two. Coach was like, "You, Jimmy!" And then Jimmy—you know how he is, real sarcastic—said, "Oh, see? You ask me, and now I’m telling you." That kind of proves his point, though. If you won’t let the man speak, that proves his point. Then Jimmy went on to say how he got a tech, D-Wade got a tech, and Taj got a tech, and he didn’t feel like Coach had their backs. It was just one of those team meetings where everybody kind of got things off their chest. -via YouTube / November 26, 2024
Michael Carter-Williams, who turned 33 Thursday, is retired after playing parts of nine seasons in the NBA, including that Rookie of the Year with the 76ers. He has helped develop an app called NDUR for athletes, which offers mental health tips and resources to student-athletes, providing options to deal with issues such as anxiety, depression, and anger. -via Boston Globe / October 12, 2024
This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: Michael Carter-Williams on Dwyane Wade's Bulls tenure: We felt he could've been a better leader
