LeBron James has seen it before and could get a closer look at it during the playoffs.
James lingered in the locker room after the Cavaliers’ rout of the Nets on Wednesday night to watch the closing seconds of the Heat-Blazers game, and he called former teammate Dwyane Wade’s stepback winner before it happened.
That shot has been part of the often-hobbled Wade’s recent resurgence. Since returning from a hamstring injury that sidelined him for seven games, Wade is suddenly in 2006 NBA Finals MVP form including 32 points in back-to-back wins over James’ Cavaliers and the aforementioned Blazers.
“This is the best I’ve felt in years right now,” Wade told ESPN on Wednesday.
“You question it. And you try not to question it, like ‘Why? Why couldn’t I feel like this the last two years?’ But it is what it is. I’m feeling like this now, when I need it individually to [carry] more of a load to help this team.”
If the Heat are going to first reach the playoffs and then be a threat to one of the East’s contenders, they will need Wade to maintain this form. When he returned from his injury on Feb. 20, the Heat’s roster was much different from the one he left. Chris Bosh was out for the season with a blood clot in his lungs, a life-threatening ailment that was announced the same day the team acquired Goran Dragic at the trade deadline.
“He understands the moment right now,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra told the website of Wade.
“We don’t have to talk about it. It’s, ‘Here’s the ball. Make a play for the team.’ Quite frankly in the fourth quarter, the best offense really was to get the ball to Dwyane and let him create some kind of action.”
And the Cavaliers might be the team the Heat try to foil. James’ past and present teams currently are in line to meet in the 2-vs.-7 matchup in the Eastern Conference, though much jostling is left to be done in the season’s final month.
“It feels good, man,” Wade said. “I’ve taken a lot of criticism and I’ve worked very hard on my body to get to the point where I know, fourth quarter, it shows. That means a lot to me. When everyone is tired, I go up a notch. And for an old guy, that’s not bad at all to have that extra level to go to.”