{"id":841351,"date":"2026-08-03T07:11:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T07:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/841351\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T07:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T07:11:09","slug":"dwyane-wade-reveals-doctors-told-miami-heat-his-career-could-end-at-age-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/841351\/","title":{"rendered":"Dwyane Wade Reveals Doctors Told Miami Heat His Career Could End At Age 24"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Miami Heat<\/a> legend Dwyane Wade<\/a> recently recorded an episode of his podcast \u2018The Check-In on the Wy Network\u2019\u00a0 where he was answering questions from fans.<\/p>\n

Dwyane Wade is arguably a top-three shooting guard of all time<\/a>. When a fan asked him how he performed at such a high level without a meniscus, Wade recalled how he didn\u2019t realize the gravity of the news he got at age 19 about his knee (he had to surgically remove his meniscus).<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no idea. When I was 19 years old, and I was at the hospital, and the doctor told me that they had to take my meniscus out and that later in life I would experience arthritis and all this stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou think I understood what that meant? Man, get me back on the court. I got to get to this money for my family. I don\u2019t even know what a meniscus is. It\u2019s a different day, different time. All I know is I hurt my knee. They\u2019re saying this word called meniscus. They gave me some information, and I was like, \u2018So, I got to get it taken out.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay, that technology was different, all the things. So, I don\u2019t know how I had the career I had because I know that when I came in, Doc told me this later in my basketball journey; he said, \u2018We only gave you five years,’\u201d Wade recalled<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you go through the draft process, you do all these tests, and they do all these evaluations and all these exams and x-rays and and Doc said he told the team, the Heat, \u2018he will have five good years. And then after that the knee is gonna become an issue.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so he wasn\u2019t lying, I had about five good years, and then my knee became an issue. I\u2019ve had multiple knee surgeries after that because other things need to be cleaned up and so forth and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I will say is I have an incredible tolerance for pain. I have a high threshold for pain. I can play through I played through things that I know a lot of guys wouldn\u2019t play through. Played through a lot of discomfort in my career. And I figured out how to still be effective with knowing I couldn\u2019t do certain things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why I always talk about \u2018you don\u2019t see the brain,\u2019 like I probably wasn\u2019t a genius in school, but when it came to the game of basketball in my mind and all the things, like I had a version of that, right? And so, I learned how to still be successful knowing that I didn\u2019t have the meniscus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut my first for my first couple years, I didn\u2019t even know that was going to be an issue because I was still just really explosive, right? And so, I was just like, what meniscus? What? I don\u2019t even know what y\u2019all talking about. Like I felt like Rookie of the Year,\u201d Wade added.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started jumping higher. Like I wasn\u2019t jumping. I didn\u2019t feel like I was jumping that high before I had my knee surgery. Now maybe this is what I told myself. But ultimately, I just had to do a lot of things, dog, behind the scenes. I had to do a lot of masking. I had to do a lot of pill taking. I had to do a lot of strengthening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did a lot to keep this, and a lot of it. And shout out to Tim Grover. Shout out to Dave Alexander. Shout out to all my trainers. We try to keep this VMO strong. We try to keep these quads strong. We try to keep these hamstrings strong. We try to keep all these things strong so I could take pressure off this knee.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so I have very strong legs as a player, like big thighs and all those things. And that was like intentional because I came into the NBA with no meniscus on my left knee. And so I knew they knew that it was going to be trouble down the line for me. So each surgery I got, I was told that I would have another one. I knew I was going to have another one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so it was on me to try to keep it off as long as possible. So that\u2019s why I said I\u2019m not lying when I said it was a point before, like a couple years before I retired, where I was like, I want out. I was in so much pain because it was not just my left knee; it was my right too cuz I was compensating.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo then it was a point where every time I drove up over the court it was just pain in both knees, and I was like, but why though? And so, man, God did. And just having like a just no quit, just having a will, just having a toughness, just having that tenacity, just being ferocious- like, you had to, you got to tap into all these things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you always have that question back in your mind. What if I was 100%. You know, I always had that question back in my mind because I did what I did,\u201d Wade concluded.<\/p>\n

Born on January 17, 1982, Wade was 24 years old at the time of his first championship with the Heat in 2006. In the 2006 NBA Finals, he averaged 34.7 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 3.8 assists while shooting 46.8% from the field to secure the Finals MVP alongside his first ring.<\/p>\n

Wade\u2019s prime was arguably from 2005 to 2011. In the 486 games he played during this period, he averaged 26.6 points, 6.6 assists, and 5.2 rebounds while shooting 48.6% from the floor. He then shifted to a primary playmaker role and left the scoring to LeBron James.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dwyane Wade Shuts Down Critics For Disrespecting Him<\/p>\n

Having retired with three NBA championships, Wade is regarded as one of the greatest shooting guards of all time<\/a>. But he is often snubbed in the debate for other players like James Harden and Allen Iverson, who haven\u2019t accomplished as much as he has in his career.<\/p>\n

Wade decided to address the critics who leave him out of this debate on the episode as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy career in this generation of conversations has been one of the most talked about careers\u2026 I\u2019ve been compared more than anybody\u2026 I see you talking about me, so please don\u2019t be surprised when I pop my s\u2013t back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I really care about is the ones I played against; they know, you know who you had to go sleep a little early the night before\u2026 y\u2019all like to remember D-Wade with the LeBron era \u2014 it was one before that, and that\u2019s the one y\u2019all don\u2019t wanna talk about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy career is great\u2026 I did everything\u2026 I didn\u2019t get the MVP award because they didn\u2019t give it to me. Not because I wasn\u2019t MVP. You feel me? Like I did everything. I just didn\u2019t get everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wade was selected to play in 13 All-Star games. He won a Finals MVP award and three NBA championships. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2023.<\/p>\n

Going from a player who could have quit basketball within five years of his NBA career to now being regarded as one of the greatest of all time, Wade\u2019s journey has certainly been an inspiration to many.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Miami Heat legend Dwyane Wade recently recorded an episode of his podcast \u2018The Check-In on the Wy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":841352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-841351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}