Crowder: Heat Fans Liked Wade 'Until He Changed' His Identity
Dwyane Wade has one week to exercise his opt-out clause and expectedly became a free agent before next Monday's deadline.
In the meantime, the public leverage battle over a new deal has to be filling Heat fans with discomfort as alternate destinations get rattled off by the day for their once indisputable, self-proclaimed Heat lifer.
"They liked him until he changed who he was," Channing Crowder said on the Kup and Crowder Show on WQAM. "Heat fans, Wade, double-digit years, we're used to Wade being a Heat lifer. Coined the phrase Heat lifer. Taking sacrifices. He was the main influence in bringing LeBron James and Chris Bosh down here.
"The narrative that he wrote about himself, the persona he built around himself was that he was with the Heat and he was gonna do whatever it takes for the Heat to be successful. That's why people loved him because he wasn't the hired gun. He wasn't that guy. He was a Heat guy, Miami life forever. Loved the Heat. Loved South Florida. Raised his kids down here. What's going on the last two weeks, Kup, that is totally going against what the fans got used to out of Dwyane Wade and it turns them off. It turned me off."
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