This is My House: Mike Baiamonte on Dwyane Wade's 2008-10 | Five on the Floor

Welcome to the latest episode of Five on the Floor on the Five Reasons Sports Network. Thanks for joining us on your favorite podcast app, Red Circle, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, also the Five Reasons YouTube channel. Make sure you hit like, subscribe, turn the notifications on. We cover more than just the heat there. We've got messy content pretty much all day long. Also, check out Off the Floor. That's where you get texts directly to your phone from Greg, me, Alex, and Brady. You can bypass X or Twitter or whatever it is it's called these days. Get those texts directly to your phone, special Q&As, contests, all kinds of cool stuff, behind the scenes information, $3.05 per month. Go to winno.app, that's W-I-N-N-O.A-P-P backslash Off the Floor. Also check out the great sponsors of the Five Reasons Sports Network, including PrizePix. Hopefully I have better luck there than I had speaking it. Use the code 5F-I-V-E. Get that initial deposit matched up to $100 at PrizePix. Yes, there's plenty of stuff to play right now, including MLS, but also you can play FIBA coming up here the next week. Your basketball fans out there, MLB, boxing, MMA, and more, use code 5F-I-V-E. Get that initial deposit matched up to $100. And now, today's episode. ♪ Y'all on the floor, ride for my, where is the game? ♪ ♪ You can check the score, hustle hard, couple scars, win, ♪ ♪ bubble frogs, just like, but the same, you in trouble, yo. ♪ ♪ Check the floor plan, got a whole band, y'all seen the block. ♪ ♪ Got the one here, impact we trust, this power have the guts. ♪ ♪ We here to bring the heat, y'all can hang it up. ♪ Welcome to Five on the Floor, a daily insider show on the Miami Heat and the NBA, featuring Ethan Skolnick, Greg Silvander, and Alex Toledo, plus others from the Five Reasons Sports Network. Welcome back to Five on the Floor. Here's today's floor plan. I'm Ethan Skolnick. You can follow me, Ethan J. Skolnick, in the Five Reasons Sports. I got Greg Silvander. You can follow me, Greg Silvander. We've got our guy, Timothy Bain, our Bahamian correspondent, was with me in training camp. You find Timmy on a lot of the shows, including our pregame show on the Five Reasons YouTube channel, and The Voice, The Voice MB, which is where you can find him, on Twitter. The guy, Michael Biamonte. How many years is it now, Michael? Ethan, next season will be my 33rd. I am 32 years old. Wow. Thanks. Thanks, Timothy. Nice to meet you. It's great. It's a great way for you and I to get things started. Whoa. Yeah, it's been a long time. You know what? By the end of this, it's a punish, Timothy, for jumping in there and reminding us that he's younger than both me, Greg, and I know Michael. You're gonna have to, you should do like one of those Luau Dang things for Timothy Bain before we, so put that in your head ear, and we'll do that before the end of it. This is the third of five installments that we're doing here to preview Duane Wade going into the Hall of Fame on Saturday up in Springfield. If you haven't caught them yet, we did one episode on Duane's rookie year. We call it The Rise of Flash. I did that with Tony Fiorentino. We did The Big Three Years. We did the, oh, excuse me, not The Big Three Years. I'm sorry, why am I saying The Rise of Flash? I'm sorry, let me start here from the beginning. The Innocent Beginning we did with Tony Fiorentino on the first year. We did The Rise of Flash with George Sodano. And now today, we're doing This Is My House. And look, it was one moment, but it kind of captures two seasons. It captures the 2008-2009 season, the 2009-2010 season. And look, I did refresh my memory a little bit because we went on playback and we watched highlight packages. We just did this. Timothy and I were on there. My God. I mean, I mean, you know. That's amazing. I mean, best in the world, which is what Pat Riley called him at that point, you know, B, you know, B-I-W. The body control, the combination of the athleticism that he had prior to the injuries, but then also the basketball IQ, which maybe he hadn't quite developed in the finals in 2006, when he was mostly working with athleticism. The pump fake, which kind of came into play during this period of time. The work on the baseline while still being the best shot-blocking guard pretty much in NBA history. Before we get into the specifics of it, Michael, just, he comes back in 2008, right? And he comes off that Olympic run where he reannounces himself and a lot of ways was the best player on a team that included guys like Kobe Bryant, et cetera, LeBron James. When you started to see him in 2008, did he look different to you than he had the previous two seasons? You know, Ethan, I think he may have. And part of that probably is due to that Olympic run. I think that Olympic run did a lot for him because at that point, he was playing against his peers in the league. That is the greatest players in the league. And I think Dwayne came out of that Olympics saying to himself, hey, you know what? I'm on par with these guys, but right now I might be even moving into a little bit of an ascension at that point coming off of the Olympics so that he comes in to that NBA season. And as you've already told everyone, it's the Dwayne Wade show, let's face it. The Olympic stage, I think, gave him the understanding that it could be the Dwayne Wade show and it could be a success as the Dwayne Wade show, as best as it could. And I don't know that any other player in the NBA could have gotten more out of those teams in those two seasons other than Dwayne. I'll also argue that it was the start of Dwayne learning the intricacies of the game that made him a better teammate when the big three was put together. Because in that Olympic run, he had to learn how to play more like the player he was in the big three years for the Heat than when he was running the whole show. And so do I think he looked different? Maybe not necessarily physically, but clearly mentally and with his own confidence, yes, he was a different player. Yeah, and I wanna pivot to Greg here now as we go forward. I think when you look at that team and also that coach, I mean, this was a first-year coach. A lot of people looked at the Eric Spolstra hire. I remember writing a column when he came in saying I liked the hire, but some didn't. Like they were like, okay, wait, what are they doing here? You know, you have Pat Riley, he's still here. You know, I know he took a little bit of a break in 07, 08 when things kind of fell apart, but you're taking somebody out of the video room? He's 37 years old. And so, and then you have the number two pick in the draft, but extremely talented player, but obviously a little bit raw in terms of the way he played the game. And then you were starting a rookie point guard who was a second round pick and wasn't really a full-time point guard in college at Kansas. He was more of a scorer and he ended up starting in Mario Chalmers, 82 games. This was the core. Like you're going into a season with Dwayne, Beasley, Chalmers, UD who had to kind of step aside a little bit for Beasley. But there were no guarantees that this team was gonna be even competitive, I don't think, coming into this season, unless Dwayne was superhuman. And to a certain extent he was. Greg, I'll turn it over to you now. Yeah, so, excuse me. I wanna go right into the 08, 09 season because that is where I felt like we saw some of the stuff from Dwayne that was just the most jaw-dropping. And you had the best seat in the house and got to call all of that. So I think you come from a unique perspective of that you're a part of the play and you also get to hear the crowd's reaction. So this is a twofold question. Is there a moment in that season, in the MV3 season, I'll call it, that really sticks to your gut that you remember from Dwayne, that just, you could never forget it, that type of moment, whether it be just its stature in heat history or the reaction from the crowd that you remember from whatever that moment may be? So, you know, Greg, that's interesting. It was a season that we would come into the arena every night almost talking to one another, working at the stats crew table, saying, I wonder what we're gonna see tonight. Every night it was, well, what's it gonna be tonight? And what's it gonna be tonight? The one thing that does stand out to me was this interesting effect that has only happened on a limited number of occasions since when we talk about those two seasons. And that is when a player makes such an iconic basket or shot that I can go back and say, I was belting out that player's name as loud as I could. And I guarantee you, nobody heard anything that came out of the public address system inside the building. That's probably when I started to realize, you know what, you don't have to kill yourself when Flash goes bananas because nobody's gonna hear it anyway. Since those two seasons when he was just amazing, I can count just a couple of baskets where that has happened since. But in those seasons, it happened more often than I can't even tell you how many times when he would come down the lane and put up a shot with his back to the basket and he's looking at me at the scorer's table and the ball's going up and going in. And that's kind of, it started a little bit earlier than that, a couple of years earlier. But that's where really some of my announcements when he would just make these amazing shots and he would get fouled. Basket by Dwayne Wade is incredible! You know, just amazing stuff that basket by Dwayne Wade is good. That just wasn't good enough of an announcement. I mean, the shot was ridiculous. I mean, it was unbelievable. Timmy, I'll let you jump in here a little bit because one of the things that we were talking about on playback was that this was your first year playing for the league, this team. You got to see all the games. Right, so just taking you back to my heat journey, you know, in 2002, so I grew up watching basketball because my mom played basketball and she liked Kirby. So it was the Shock, 1999 to 2002. She bought me the Shock jersey. And then in 02, I really liked Tough Juice. So I was like, okay, I live in the Bahamas. I go to Miami every single year. I might as well play for the Heat. So I went from watching Corona Butler to the Wade, yes. And of course, still in high school, my parents were the type of parents where I can't watch TV during the week. So I didn't really watch TV on the weekends. My father doesn't like sports. He's a mechanic, so he likes cars. So I'm like, the first time I could actually watch basketball every single night without hearing my mother's voice because my first year in college was 08. So that went for me from seeing, so in the Bahamas, everyone is either a Laker fan, a Celtic fan, or a LeBron fan. I was only, it was two or three, but I was the only one saying I'm a Heat fan. So that summer was plenty of trash talking for me. Like Wade was arguably the best player on the Olympics. And then in the season where Wade finished, Wade done, with a shoulder to knee, I said, no, man, he's back. And I go to watch him every single night. And so I'm playing 2K today. I'm at college, playing on the NFL team, just trying to do my little Wade moves and talking about Wade. And I'd come home, and he's just killing everybody's favorite player. Like, that was ridiculous to me. So I always loved basketball. Was always a Heat fan, but 08, 09 was where I was able to fully immerse myself in Heat culture. Like, that was ridiculous for me. That was a good baptism for me. And Timmy, you mentioned it, like killing everybody's favorite player. Like, we're watching these highlights on playback. I mean, he's running Kobe Bryant through screens. Ray Allen, it looks like. Ray Allen looks completely lost against him. And that was not old Ray who came to Miami. No, that was, that was, that was the year they won the ring. The year they won the ring. I mean, he was, he was literally kind of unstoppable. I want to, what I want to do here with Michael as we go forward here, is I want to go through some of these moments. And you'll have to remind me because some of them, I remember them being at home, but I'm not 100% sure, but I know some of them were, okay? Because it kind of runs together a little bit. I was covering the team at home at that stage. I didn't travel with those two teams, but I was in pretty much all the home games. But I want to get to some of those moments. We do want to mention a couple more sponsors of the Five Reasons Sports Network. Our betting partner is a legal betting partner, by the way. It's betteredge.com. Use the code 5RSN, that's 5RSN, the number 5RSN. You get $20 to play. Again, you're betting against others who use it. You're not betting against the app or a bookie. That's why it's legal in 45 states, including the state of Florida. Go to betteredge.com. Also, water cleanup. We know that things happen. You get leaks, you get mold, all that kind of stuff. Reach out to Michael Robert and his team. They got more than 70 plus, they have more than 75 star Google reviews. You can check them out at wcufl.com, 954-579-0356. That's Michael's personal cell phone. Huge Miami Heat fans as well. They were probably there for the This Is My House game. I'm sure they were. They're based in Boca, but they service Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties. We always say this here, Greg. If you've got the schmutz. They got the guts. All right, so let's get to it. Speaking of guts, what the hell was Anderson Varajil thinking? Let's go back to that one during that. Now, that one was at home, okay? I remember that. That was a TNT game, from what I recall. Varajil went at Dwayne. What do you remember from that sequence, Michael? So, let me run back with you, Ethan. Is that the, was that the game where he had the behind-the-back dribble right at the sideline? Yes. Okay, so that was ridiculous in and of itself, that move where he's got the ball, but he puts it behind his back, gets past his defender, and then goes up and just destroys Anderson Varajil. What Varajil was thinking at that point, I have no idea. It was embarrassing. For me, it was phenomenal, because the thing that ultimately happened with Dwayne is it got to the point with the Heat fans and myself, anytime I said Dwayne Wade's name for any reason during a game, the fans went bananas. And so, once I figured that out, I started prodding the fans to get that. So, whatever it was, if he was coming in the game, now in the game for the Heat, Dwayne Wade, people go crazy. Now, coming out of the game, Dwayne Wade, people go crazy. At the free throw line, Dwayne Wade. What a tool for hype. It's just, whatever it was, for whatever reason. So, he puts it right on Varajil's head, and from that point on, if you were there watching whenever we played the, at that point, he was playing with Cleveland, I think? Yeah. Anderson Varajil really had a stink eye for Dwayne Wade every time we played them after that, because he never forgot what Dwayne did to him. Now, the problem with that is, the problem with that is, you're Anderson Varajil, okay? So, whether you are upset with Dwayne Wade or not, there's nothing you're gonna do to stop him in the future, and he never did. But I'll never forget, ever since that moment, he had, obviously, for good reason, he wanted to get back at Dwayne and just never could. But that just goes to show you what Wade was able to do, and you name some players, again, guys he played with in the Olympics, that here we go, he's running them left, right, and down the middle on the court, because he learned that he had that capability when they were playing together. It was a lot of fun to watch that guy. You know, there was times, Ethan, you take it way, way, way back, games three, four, and five of the 2006 NBA Finals, where Dwayne Wade was the greatest player on planet Earth. Those two seasons, you saw bits and pieces of that. You saw it in three games, but you saw it in, for me, I saw it in 41 games. And that was really a lot of fun. It was amazing to see this guy continue to do it and get this team to places, as I said earlier, that they would have never gotten, and really should have. They had no business getting to where they got in those two seasons, but because of him. Yeah, I want to let Greg jump in next. I do want to mention Varazel, though, because there's a funny anecdote related to this. So this was 08, 09, or the 09 period of time. So after LeBron left the Heat in 14, we went to Rio for a Heat-Cavs preseason game. And I flew down there, Joe Goodman, Shandell, some other reporters, and we were staying at the Heat hotel. But I was also kind of starting to cover the Cavs then because Bleacher reported my contract. I was the LeBron guy. So I was kind of going back and forth between the two teams. And I actually did a day with Varazel in Brazil, in Rio, because, of course, he was the big star. He was a huge Brazilian star there. He did something like a bookstore, a signing and all that. And somebody comes up to it with a three jersey. I remember Dwayne was still on the Heat at this point. Company's comes up to it with a heat jersey. And he has a picture. This kid was like 14, 15 years old. And it was a Brazilian kid. OK, it was a local kid. Had a picture of Dwayne dunking on Varazel. And I will give Anderson credit. He signed it. He signed it. Just like when built late May. Rest in peace. Just like when Bill Buckner. I once went to a card show and Bill Buckner and Mookie Wilson would appear together and Bill Buckner. Actually, I know it hurt him, but he would actually be very cordial with people who reminded him of the ball going through his legs on Mookie Wilson's ground ball. But Varazel actually was was he was he was nice. I don't think he liked it, but he did. He did sign it. So I give him credit for that, Greg. I want to go to a game. It was later in the season, actually, February 28th. It was Heat Knicks and the Knicks after round and found out, as we'll say, because they bloodied Dwayne and then Dwayne went off for 24 in the fourth quarter. And it was one of the more. This is my like we talk about that. This is my house moments. And there's always the iconic on the stand, you know, on standing on the you know, right where you guys check in, right, right in front of where you're sitting, actually. And then there is this moment I felt like was another. This is my house moment against New York. What do you remember about that night where Dwayne Wade sliced up New York, especially because at that time there were still a few heat fans out there, myself included, that had animosity towards New York because of the 90s. So we felt like, oh, no, is this a rivalry happening again? Why are you messing with our guy, Dwayne? What do you remember about that game? So, you know, Greg, you bring that up and you talk about going back. There's one terrible memory I have that sounds like this, Alan Houston. And don't do that to me. That's kind of where that's kind of where I think you were going for a minute. But yeah, you wonder, listen, are we going to you know, what's happening here? You know, are we going back to, you know, that time period? And then all of a sudden you've got Dwayne having to come off the court because he's bleeding. And is he coming back? Will he come back? Is everything is he going to be OK? And he comes back. Not only does he come back, but he comes back. I mean, there's there's two guys that you can remember in heat history that get bloodied and come back with a vengeance. D Wade's one, Udonis Haslam is the other against the Indiana Pacers. And they both came back with the same mindset. You're not doing that to me. I'm not allowing that to happen. And guys, let's go. And so it was it was a game on at that point. I guess you can call it that. You can say game on at that point. And it was take it to another level and get everybody that the place gets fired up. The arena gets fired up. I'm trying to get everybody fired up. And it's great because that Nick rivalry, having been a part of that so many years ago, that that just never leaves you. That's still there. You know, it's always there. And so to see him do that without showing too much, you know, we're sitting there at the score table saying, yeah, yeah, get him again, get him again, get him again. So I'm going to let Timmy close here. But before I let's get to this, this little sequence of games, there was a stretch at home, the Utah game, a couple of that went like multiple overtimes. But look, everybody remembers the Chicago game, right? And we were watching it again. Ben Gordon was on the other side. They were kind of going at it a little bit. But there it was. It's crazy because everybody remembers the jumping up on the table. And this is my house. And he's fist bumping Nick Harrison and everything else that's happening there. Right. But like there were so many plays in that game. That's the thing. It was a ridiculous game. It might have been, honestly, his best game he ever played, other than the NBA finals, like there were like seven sequences where they were out of it and he brought them back into it. And this is like a regular season game in the spring. You know what I mean? Like, you know, for a team that ultimately we knew was probably not going anywhere like they're probably there. They were going to be capped out in a first round kind of situation. I just am curious for your recollections of that game, that moment. Because it's been his house since. I actually almost didn't see that the last thing was like, it's not really in this game, like where it's great. But at that point, I thought the Bulls were just too great. Ben Gordon, Kirk Hammond, Derrick Rose, Sean Simons, St. Thomas was still there. Joakim Noah's like, these are too many good players. They'd be overwhelmed. And then I, I remember someone called me. I was fine. It's like, man, you're going to say, no, we're not. And I remember it. Again, my mother cursed me out because it was like at the point, maybe like after 10 to go to sleep, I was in my own bed shouting, this is what what you watching that game on my laptop. I was like, and I was like, I just thought in awe, like, how did he win this game? Like, he literally willed them to win. They will. Yeah, and my and Michael, you're you're you're viewing it from your seat because just to remind people where you sit. OK, because again, there's a there's. And I know things have changed a little bit over the years. And that second row used to be media. But, you know, you know what happens here. You know, they had to sell those seats and bump us upstairs. But but not that I'm bitter about any of that. I was pointing out that for the Dwayne shot against against New Orleans in the first round, I'm literally sitting baseline like Dwayne basically dropped that shot in my lap. I didn't get those seats anymore after that. But I just just tell people, Michael, because you're again, he didn't jump on your table. He jumped on the table across from you, which is really the ownership table. Correct. Right. There are there's a table on each side of the court. I'm on the side where the benches are. So where the players come and check in, that's where I sit. I'm about, if not right at the midcourt stripe within a foot or two off of the midcourt stripe to to make all of your your viewers jealous. I look straight across at Mickey Arison. So the owner of the team and I basically have equivalent seats on opposite ends, which can be intimidating, by the way. I'll tell you that's just what I was going to say to make you nervous. You paid less for yours, Michael. I will say that. Yes, I agree with you. So I'm I'm on the opposite side of the table that he jumped on for that game. You also mentioned the Utah game. I just quickly want to say to that, if I remember that correctly, overtime game. Yeah. Game winning shot. But but kind of one of those bounce, bounce, bounce goes in. Right. Is that was that that was that? OK. I think it was multiple overtimes to Michael. I'll check it out. It may have been. Yeah, I think it's not the game where James Jones had like four threes and like two minutes or something like that. It might have been. It might have. That JJ will remember, I'm sure of that. But that that that I remember the bounce, bounce, bounce in game over, drive home safely. As far as the Chicago game, Timothy Bain. That let's not lose sight of the fact that he had to make a steal in order to get possession of the ball to have a shot. Making the the game winner, and that goes back to maybe the last two minutes, Ethan, you may have having watched it recently, you may remember he was on top of every single play that I can remember in that in that home stretch, including it almost got to the point where, OK, now he's going to do something else because he's been doing something for the last five Chicago possessions. And so he makes the steal. He comes down, puts up the three and hits the three. And again, going back to a few of those games where I'm screaming at the top of my lungs, Dwayne Wade, and nobody can hear a word coming out of my mouth because the place has just gone bananas and everybody's going crazy. I see him go to the other table, which I'm extremely jealous that he went to the other table. I wish he would have come to our table, but that's OK. He goes to the other table and I can see what from his back. He's he's given the. But I don't know what he's saying because I'm looking at his back. And then once we get the video review or the replay, we can see him saying, this is my house. And you've got you've got Nick and Mickey and everybody wants to high five him at the Eric Reid's high five. And he met the table at the time. The broadcasters are right there. And so that was that was magical. I mean, for that season, probably, probably. Yeah, that's without a doubt the most magical moment that he had. And I don't know that that was ever repeated until the last season when he hit that crazy shot against Golden State. I mean, that's going off the wrong foot, off the wrong foot. I mean, everything with that was wrong, Timothy. Everything, nothing, nothing went right with that. That shot, I mean, the block, the try to get it right. And then just to almost like hot potato thing. How do you how do you hot potato with three? And it goes, you know, it goes right in the way. We know James Harden wouldn't have done that. I'll just say this about the Dwayne shot or Paul Pierce. I'll just say this about the Dwayne shot against Golden State. He just had to upstage Dion. That's it, because Dion had the moment against Golden State. And then for like for like five seconds, for five seconds. And then and then Dwayne Dwayne took him over. But Dion was Kobe Wade. I think, though, as we talk about all this and I think this is a good place to close. And we appreciate you, Michael. Follow him at the voice and be on Twitter. I think the thing about this that I think is admirable about Dwayne because in each episode we've tried to find the thing that really sticks out is that he had all these moments for two seasons. He was the star of the show. It was completely his house, his town. And yet when they lost to Boston, he sat at the podium and said, I need help. And he was not content just doing this. And I think a lot of other guys would have been. Yeah. And and he was OK with. And we didn't know at the time that it was going to be LeBron James and Chris Bosh. OK, but but he was OK with the idea that he might have to give up a piece of his fame and not fame because his fame was there, but his glory, I think, and his opportunities. Because like you said, at the end of that game, that this is my house. He made every play like it wasn't like somebody else there was going to steal his spotlight, right? Like everybody knew it was Dwayne and get the hell out of the way. You go set a screen, Rio, get in the corner or whatever it was. And he gave that up. He gave that up to play with LeBron and Chris. And we never really got a chance to see it again until. I mean, you mentioned the shot of a goal state, but I actually go to the 1516 playoffs where the 16 playoffs where a purple shirt guy and Dwayne kind of had those moments where it was really about him because Bosch was out whites, I got hurt, but we didn't get a chance to see it for years. Most guys would not have done that. And I think that that is one of the great sacrifices that he made because he could have kept doing that for a couple more years. We didn't know the knees were going to go, but he could have kept doing it. Michael, I just want to let you have the last word here. Just your thoughts as the first player of the Miami Heat have ever drafted goes in the Hall of Fame on Saturday. Yeah, it's it was an absolute honor. To have the opportunity to announce Dwayne Wade and his career for almost all of it. I've you know, I've told people I've had the fortune of announcing every single home basket that Dwayne Wade has ever scored in his Miami Heat career. And that's, you know, that's a privilege. That's a privilege to watch that guy and the way he performed and the magic that he did. It was it was just remarkable. I'm so happy for him. What a wonderful weekend and so well deserved to be the next Miami Heat Hall of Famer. Congratulations, Dwayne. I cannot wait to see you go in the Hall of Fame Saturday night. All right. Thank you, Michael. We can't wait to see you. Basket by Dwayne Wade is going to take us out. Take us out. Then we close. Go ahead. He just he just he just game winner. I'm just going to present the scene for you. It's against the Knicks. OK, let's just do that. Game where fall away baseline jumper. Let's just say that Alan Houston in his prime is guarding him. OK, let's let's let's cross over the errors. We want to make the pay as much as possible. Ewing is sitting there down in the paint, right? Oakley's down there somewhere. LJ, whatever balls to Dwayne. They're down one. He gets the ball with two point one seconds left. Turnaround jumper is good. Go, Mike. Dwayne Wade. Final score. Your Miami Heat 116. The New York Knicks 115. Heat fans, please drive home safely. Go goodnight. Thank you for listening to the five on the floor on the five regional sports network.