BOSTON — Dwyane Wade had been there before, anger boiling over at Erik Spoelstra and seemingly all those around him on the Miami Heat bench.
So as the franchise icon watched Jimmy Butler simmer last week, he smiled and then reached out to his former coach.
“Well, I text Spo right after that and said, ‘It looks like you guys are gearing up for the playoffs,’ " Wade said with a smile in his role as TNT studio analyst. “This, right here, for me, I have been in that.”
And, indeed, he was, erupting at Spoelstra during the Heat’s 2012 playoff series against the Indiana Pacers, with the Heat moving on to an NBA championship that season.
“You can play the same video with me and Spo. Spo ain’t come back at me like that,” Wade said. “Spo and I had the same blowup. We ended up winning the next three games. I think we won a championship that year.
“So sometimes family have fights, they have disagreements, they have arguments in front of the world, because that’s what we’re playing in front of, right? And so, I looked at it like, ‘Oh, this is a Tuesday for the Miami Heat.’ "
Actually, it was a Wednesday, the three-way tiff between Butler, Spoelstra and Heat captain Udonis Haslem coming during last week’s home loss to the Golden State Warriors, part of a four-game losing streak that was snapped with Monday night’s victory over the Sacramento Kings at FTX Arena.
“Listen, I understand, the one thing is, after that argument with Spo and I, very ugly, they were talking about it every day. Spo and I did not have a conversation about it,” Wade said. “We didn’t need to. I understand, as a leader, that in that moment I was feeling a certain way, and I had to get it out in that way. He understood the same thing. We moved past it. We won a championship.”
At other stops, Butler’s angst never stopped simmering. That, Wade said, is the difference with a team like the Heat.
“You have to have the fundamentals as a team,” Wade said. “And that’s where the culture comes into play. So every organization can’t have that with a player and a coach, or a star player and their coach. They will never recover.
“Teams that have culture, that have foundation, I looked at that, like I said, I text Spo, I said, ‘Oh, this is ya’all getting up for the playoffs.’ "
What Wade said remains uncertain is whether this Heat roster can show the same fight on the court when the stakes are highest, with the Heat in a pre-playoff test Wednesday night against the Boston Celtics at TD Garden.
“We know with the Miami Heat that they can compete to win a championship,” Wade said. “We don’t know, yet, if they have the players that’s gonna step up and lead them there. That is it.
“It’s not saying anything about the guys there. We just haven’t seen it. Is it going to be Jimmy? Would it be Bam [Adebayo]? Are we waiting on Tyler Herro? We don’t know. And that’s the thing for the Heat that is kind of still up in the air.”
