Dwayne Wade Apparently Had A “Huge Role” In How His Memed-To-Oblivion Sculpture Looked

Quinn Eaton·
CULTURESPORTS
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Dwayne Wade NBA
@NBA

Art – and sculptures of former athletes – must really be in the eye of the beholder.

Try and rack your brain for the most recent memory of a sculpture being unveiled and it looking like the person its supposed to be honoring. If you remember, Cristiano Ronaldo was done absolutely dirty when his statue was unveiled, and MLB pitching legend Walter Johnson’s mold wasn’t all that flattering either.

Why can’t we do sculptures right in the modern age?

That question is on full display thanks to the recent unveiling of Dwayne Wade’s statue outside of Miami’s Kaseya Center. The Heat legend spent 15 seasons with the South Beach team, helping to bring them NBA Championships in 2006, 2012 and 2013. There’s no doubt that the decorated shooting guard was deserving of being honored with a statue… but a lot of fans online think the sculpture could have stood a little bit more like Dwayne Wade.

Here’s the statue that’s been memed-to-oblivion online since it was revealed:

That’s supposed to be D-Wade?

Thank God the #3 Miami Jersey is on the statue, because context clues are definitely needed to identify who that’s supposed to be. According to all reports, Dwayne Wade loved the statue, and couldn’t believe that he had reached the moment of his career where he’s now being immortalized outside of the stadium.

Some were pointing fingers at this reaction video and suggesting, “Wade can’t believe how bad his statue looks,” but to me, that’s a retired basketball player that’s proudly looking up at his new statue (regardless of how bad it might look):

And in a stunning revelation, NBA Insider and Fox Sports panelist Rachel Nichols suggested that Dwayne Wade was heavily involved in the statue-making process. While she was on The Dan LeBatard Show with Stugotz earlier today, the D-Wade sculpture came up, and she revealed that the former Miami Heat star touched base with the sculpture’s artist four separate times while it was being completed:

“Look, I think it looks clearly how Dwayne Wade sees himself. That’s what I can say about it. That’s not a dig. It’s because he had the most input on this. And in the end, it’s for him. He said he visited the statue maker four different times.”

During those visits, Nichols said that Wade was obsessed with the specifics. So considering that, she concluded that he must have been happy with how the finished product turned out:

“He said that one of the visits, he told me, ‘They didn’t get the distance between the bottom of my nose and my lip correctly. The ratio was off. So I had them measure in between the bottom of my nose and my lip so they could get that exactly right.’

So if he’s doing that level of detail, it tells me that the rest of it, he was like, ‘Oh yeah, this is it.’ So if this is what he wants and how he wants to see himself, I’m gonna have to go with him.”

So Dwayne Wade’s horrible sculpture was an inside job? That’s really hard to wrap one’s mind around, but like Nichols said… if D-Wade is happy, I guess the rest of us should be happy too.

Now let’s finally get to all of the wonderful memes about the sculpture:

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