Like his buddy LeBron James, Miami Heat guard Dwyane Wade took to Instagram on Monday to address his critics. The subject on Wade's mind: The 2006 NBA Finals, in which the Heat came back from a 2-0 deficit against the Dallas Mavericks to win their first championship. Controversially, Wade shot 73 free throws in Miami's four wins.
ESPN published an oral history of the series on Saturday, and the South Florida Sun Sentinel took a look back, too. It is impossible to talk about it without mentioning the officiating, but Wade's view is the same as it ever was. He tried to attack the basket every time he had the ball, and he thinks it is unfair to say he and his team got help from the referees.
It must be weird to read about one of the greatest moments of your basketball career and see almost 2,000 words dedicated to the officiating. Wade would prefer that those Finals were remembered as the time that he ascended to superstardom and the Heat established themselves as a premier franchise, not as the time where he got an unbelievable amount of calls and Mavs owner Mark Cuban was furious.
(As much as Cuban has discussed this issue in the last decade, you can't blame him for this one -- he declared that, with the 10-year anniversary here, he is done talking about it.)
You can understand why Wade would be frustrated, but the reality is that the fouls were an enormous part of the story, especially from Dallas' perspective. If it was Dirk Nowitzki who marched to the free throw line over and over again, Wade would probably still be mad about it all these years later.
The bright side: no amount of fretting over 10-year-old foul calls changes anything that happened. Wade and the Heat will always have that championship and all the good memories associated with it.
