ESPN's Sunday Conversation featured Rachel Nichols' interview with Dwyane Wade. Wade made a couple interesting comments:
1) Asked how many players he would select before himself if he were starting a team today, Wade said that to build a great team you have to take a dominant center first. His choice would be Shaquille O'Neal, despite O'Neal's advancing age. Then he would pick either himself or LeBron James.
2) Wade explained that the reason that he and Shaq get along better than Shaq did with Penny Hardaway or Kobe Bryant is that Shaq is at a different stage of his career now. The young Shaq and the young Penny were both exciting players who wanted to be the main guy on the team and the same conflict took place with Shaq and Kobe. Wade added that now Shaq realizes that he cannot shoot 30 times a game and is happy to defer to a young, unselfish Wade. Wade indicated that he and Shaq have talked about this subject and that what Wade told Nichols reflected what Shaq said to him.
This made me wonder three things: 1) How do Magic and Lakers fans feel about this transformation in Shaq's thinking? 2) How much better would the Lakers have been in 2003 and 2004 if Shaq would have dealt with Kobe the way he deals with Wade now? 3) How well would Shaq and Wade get along if Shaq resisted deferring to him the way he refused to defer to Kobe? As C & C Music Factory sang many years ago, these are things that make you go hmm.
Dwyane Wade's Sunday Conversation with Rachel Nichols
