Dwyane Wade on LeBron's Record Chase and Life After Basketball

The future Hall of Famer also talks about returning to host, leaving Inside the NBA and more.

Since Dwyane Wade ended a decorated 16-year NBA career, he has worn many hats. He has been a broadcaster with Turner, a gig he gave up before the start of this season. He has published a photo-driven memoir; collaborated on a limited-edition cannabis line; and, with his wife, Gabrielle Union-Wade, founded a baby skin care brand. He is currently a minority owner (“minority investor,” Wade clarifies) with the Jazz and is set to begin his second season as a game show host. “I'm a firm believer in some things you have to just try and see if you suck or not,” says Wade. “Or you get in and you learn and you realize, Oh dang, I actually like that.”

With Season 2 of The Cube, the TBS-televised competition series, set to premiere on Jan. 6, Wade, 40, sat down with Sports Illustrated to discuss life after basketball—and a few NBA topics, too.

Sports Illustrated: So you’re a game show host now?

Dwyane Wade: I got this entertainment side of me that just won’t go away. I guess I like being in front of the camera. But it’s something cool, man. It’s something that I never thought I would do. When you get a chance to try something, to experience something that you didn’t know it would be this electric kind of energy in your body, you want more of it. And so that’s what I tried.

SI: A lot of people were surprised when you stepped away from Inside the NBA. I know I was. What went into that decision?

DW: My family, man. First of all, that’s one of the greatest jobs in the world. But I retired and walked away from the game. I've been on this journey since I was 17 years old. And I'm not going to say I've been doing it by myself, because I’ve had a lot of help. But I’ve been on this journey to change my family’s fortune and become something that my family can be proud of, and all the things that come with it, since I was 17. And so to go through that until I was 37 and then to come out of that, go through the pandemic and then have the job where I’m flying back and forth to Atlanta for four months out the year, it wasn’t what I retired for. It wasn’t where I needed to be at this point in my life. And so I just decided to take a step back to have my sabbatical year, if you will. And that’s the first year that I can kind of look at everything I’m doing, and take a deeper look at it, and then see what’s next for me.

SI: But you didn’t get to be on set when Shaq got shoved into a Christmas tree.

DW: I watch it all the time. I cannot wait for my Tuesday crew with Jamal Crawford. I mean, he came on the show a few times. He filled in a few times. I knew when I stepped away there was only one person that I felt was going to sit in that chair, and it was Jamal Crawford. So I can’t wait to see that chemistry, but I am definitely going to miss those guys.

But some things sometimes have to be put in place. And I had to put certain things ahead of other things right now and I'm young enough to do it. I'm 40 years old and so I don’t want to rush and mix and think I have to do everything right now. I need to take time and have some solace and solitude and figure out what that is that I really want to do. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m trying all these different things out. See what I suck at. I don’t know if you’ve seen The Cube, but you can tell me if I suck as a host or not.

SI: I’ve seen it. You’re good. But honestly—do you think the Shaq–Christmas tree stunt was staged?

DW: That’s the crazy thing about it. You never know. I worked there and I didn’t know what was staged or real with Shaq. But I would say if it's a percentage, we all know that it’s more than likely staged, but we still laugh and we still love it. And they did it in 2014 and they did it again in 2022, and we laughed the same. Man, that’s why the show is so amazing. That magic that they created, because we're still laughing at the same thing that Kenny [Smith] did to Shaq eight years later.

SI: Staged or not, that’s 300-plus pounds of man going into a tree …

DW: Yeah, it is. He falls with the best of them. I don’t know how he does it. Because I’m walking up and down these stairs in my home out here in L.A., I’m starting to be like, Hey, what does my future look like?

SI: I want to get your take on a couple of NBA things. LeBron James, your former teammate, is closing in on that all-time scoring record. You were with him in Miami. You knew he was a great player. But did you ever think he would become the NBA’s all-time leading scorer?

DW: I can’t use the word surprised if I’m going to say LeBron James’s name in anything. I think sometimes we're living in the LeBron James era of life, and we haven’t had the chance to step back and look at it just yet. And as we step back and look at it, it's going to get even better than it is right now with what he’s done. Obviously what he’s done away from the game, definitely what he’s done on the court. And so I’m not speaking for him when I say this, but I will speak as someone who spent a lot of time with him. He’s not a selfish individual on a basketball floor. But I feel that if there is one record that LeBron wants to walk away with more than the assist record, it would be the scoring record. And it’s because of what people say he cannot do, right?

And because he’s so great at other things and it comes so natural to him, just the one thing that was not necessarily natural, he now has an opportunity to be what we know it’s going to take somebody another 40 years before they are able to even come close to, right? So it’s amazing. At least if I can’t be there on the day that he does it, I hope to be somewhere in front of a TV, and I’ll definitely be one of the first text messages that he reads when the game ends.

LeBron James is closing in on the all-time scoring record :: Gary A. Vasquez/USA TODAY Sports

SI: Did he evolve as a scorer in Miami?

DW: Yes. First of all, I mean, he was young. He did seven years in Cleveland. He came in as 18 years old, right, so he's still so young. And he came to Miami right in that time where really you think LeBron has exceeded this. You think that’s the best time you’re going to get as a professional athlete from 25 to 29. Those are the prime years. And so we were lucky to get him in his prime years. But the thing about LeBron is he’s a sponge. And so he will not allow anybody to be better than him at anything.

If Ray Allen was going to shoot afterwards, he’s going to go shoot with Ray Allen, with Ray Allen’s form. He wants to be better than everybody at everything. And so I can never get work in a post without him coming to get work in a post. You know what I mean? And so when you see a guy like that who has the body to be able to do that, and he has the energy to be able to consistently do that, you know you’re watching something special. So yeah, we definitely had him in his prime and he listened to everything and soaked everything up that we had to offer and everything he brought with him.

SI: Russell Westbrook is having some success in this sixth-man role. You are one of the few superstars who successfully made that transition. What do you think of what you are seeing from Russ?

DW: Well, first, it’s a lot of things that come with that before you even get to Russ, right? When you talk about a player like Russell or myself who’s had the ball, who’s been responsible for 50-plus percent of their team’s points on a nightly basis, when this is who you become, this is who you identify with and this is who everyone expects you to be. And then everyone in the world is watching you get older, and they feel that it's some kind of decline that you don’t necessarily maybe feel or see, but you know your game is not where it was when you’re 18. But you don’t see that massive decline that the world thinks they see. People don’t understand. It’s about the situation. And Russ has now put himself in a better situation by coming off the bench. I’m glad that he’s got to this point where he sees that it’s not him, that it’s situational and that depending which one he’s in, he knows what role he needs to play.

SI: So Season 2 of The Cube. Are you surprised there is a Season 2?

DW: Well, yeah, I am a little surprised because there has been a lot of change in TV. It’s been a lot of change from when I first got into the Warner Brothers, Warner Media families. And when new people come in, they have new ideas for what they want to see for their network. And so I didn’t know what we were going to be with The Cube. We heard maybe, we heard no, we heard maybe, we heard no. And then now we heard yes. And so we are just super excited that they thought enough of The Cube, not Dwyane Wade, The Cube, the game that’s been around for 13 years in the U.K. They thought enough of the game that they feel that the fan base can continue to grow. And hopefully we proved them right, and hopefully I’m getting a call back after Season 2.

SI: One more. You are involved with the Jazz—are you surprised by how they are playing this season?

DW: I come from this as someone who’s been in locker rooms where not much is expected of you. And so being at training camp this year, it was one of the best training camps that I’ve been a part of watching and experiencing. And so I walked away from that training camp knowing that no matter what someone expects from this team, this team is going to play their ass off for this coach and for the opportunity that a lot of these individual players are getting.

You have to understand the mind of players who get another chance, who have been traded, who have been thrown away. So I know that they’re going to play that way. Do we know what the record’s going to be at the end of the year? No one does, but just the effort and the way that they’re playing. I’m so happy for Coach Will [Hardy] because this was going to be a hard year if it went the way that everybody was saying it was going to go. But now he set his culture, he set a precedent of how it’s going to be going forward if you’re going to wear a Utah Jazz jersey. So the future looks bright. And however you want to look at it, I think everyone is saying, if you don’t get the No. 1 pick, it’s a failed year. That’s not true. It’s so many wins coming out of this year, and I love watching those guys play, and the energy in Utah right now is insane.

SI: Miami is one of those organizations that doesn’t believe in tanking.

DW: I was on a team, we won 15 games and I wasn't a part of all 15 wins. You want to talk about a hard year of life? That was hard. It was two years after winning my first championship. But yeah, I mean, listen, tanking is a media conversation, right? Tanking starts in the media, and you look at an organization and kind of see where they are headed in their future. We don’t look at it as tanking. We look at this as we’re reshaping our team. We had a team together for X number of years, we had a coach together, I mean, here for nine years.

Those individuals have now left this organization for however they left. And now we have to reshape this roster and this is the way that we do it. We do it with the future, we’re getting picks. And you do it with players that are competitive right now, that could play in the NBA, and you see what happens. And so I feel we accomplished that, and everything else when it comes to the draft and all that, that’s going to take care of itself later. Danny Ainge, that’s his job. So I’m excited for the guys in the locker room and I'm excited for that state that they get something to cheer about every night.

This interview has been edited for clarity.