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Dwyane Wade's Last Dance

Eddy Sheeky

Updated: Sep 29, 2020

Since being drafted by the Miami Heat in 2003, Dwyane Wade has embarked upon a Hall of Fame career. In a 16 year career, the majority spent with the Miami Heat with brief stints with the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Chicago Bulls. A 3X NBA champion, a Finals MVP, 13X an All-Star and becoming one of the faces of the league. However all good things must come to an end and prior to the start of this season, D-Wade announced that the 2018-19 season would be his last, prompting the hashtag #OneLastDance.

As we reach the conclusion of the regular season the gravitas of what the NBA is about to lose is beginning to set in. A player who is a consensus top 50 player of all time in his sport is about to hang up his sneakers and seemingly it has hit the player himself. During an interview on The Jump!, Wade stated that he will need therapy following the conclusion of his playing career.


“I’ll be in therapy. Seriously,” Wade said; “I meant it, it is going to be a big change. I told my wife, I said, ‘I need to do therapy, and we need to do a little bit.’. He added; “I was always against someone that don’t know me telling me how to live my life or giving me instructions. But I need someone to talk to about it. Because it is a big change. Even though I got a long life to live, other great things I can accomplish and do, it’s not this. So it’s going to be different.”

In sports psychology, retirement falls into the bracket of transitions. Schlossberg (1981) defined a transition as; “an event or non-event which results in a change in assumptions about oneself and the world and thus requires a corresponding change in one’s behaviour and relationships”. Other transitions include; switching teams or going from an amateur to professional athlete.


However a key difference with these transitions is that athletes undergoing these transitions receive various forms of support, usually from the organisation they are joining. This usually is not the case with retirement. The retiring athlete often has to seek out their own forms of help, such as Wade is doing.

Exiting a career results in major changes in one’s roles, relationships and daily roles, all of which affect physical and social worlds. How an individual adapts to these changes in their world determines the success of their transition (Kim & Moen, 2001). Indeed, Wyellmann et al, (2004) reported that elite athletes leaving sport are susceptible to difficulties such as depression, identity crises, drug dependencies and increased levels of anxiety.


Former 6X All-Star and 19 year veteran Grant Hill echoed these findings; "Depression is real in the NBA for retired players," he continued; "It's the one thing that validates you, and now you don't have that. The game, this make-believe-world we have been in, consumes you and as a result of that, you don't necessarily have time to develop other skills for the real world. For me, I'm going to stay busy.". Although if an athlete is able to retire on their own terms, such as Wade has been able to do, has been seen as a major mediating factor to these potential problems.

A gradual transitional process may lead to fewer difficulties related to adaptation to post-sports life (Werthner & Orlick, 1986). This is something which is prominent for Wade as he appears to have toying with the idea of retirement for a couple of seasons and discussed the idea of retirement all the way back in 2015.

A major factor which has been found to help athletes in their exit from sport has been career planning. Athletes who engaged in career planning prior to their retirement felt higher levels of perceived control which correlated positively with their own self-efficacy as regards to their ability to successfully adapt to life after sport (Alfermann et al. 2004). Furthermore, the same researchers also concluded that these prepared athletes can access their resources more readily than those who have not made such plans. The fact Wade has already suggested he is going to see a therapist following his career termination, suggests has engaged in career planning. Moreover Wade has his own shoe deal with Chinese brand Li-Nang as well as many philanthropic and religious endeavours which he could perhaps branch into during retirement.

Another key factor in retirement from elite sport is the notion of athletic identity. It is defined as the degree to which an individual feels and thinks like an athlete (Brewer et al., 1993). Whilst being positively associated with athletic performance it has been negatively correlated to retirement. Those with a strong athletic identity tend to be less likely to build a multi-dimensional self and as such are more likely to face adaptation issues following retirement from sport.


Furthermore these types of athletes are less likely to plan their futures beyond playing sport (Brewer et al., 2004; Lavallee et al., 1997). This does not seem to be the case with Wade who has other facets in his life including the aforementioned entrepreneurial, philanthropic and religious activities as well as his family.

Athletic identity has been found to decline following team deselection (Fish et al. 1999) and while still playing at a high level, he is currently playing the sixth man role for the Heat and whilst still a key role it is a long way from the roles he has been accustomed to as the go-to player and number one scoring option as demonstrated by his scoring title in 2009 with 30.2 ppg. This gradual decline from a 38+ mpg MVP candidate to a 22 mpg sixth man could be seen as perhaps helping reduce Wades athletic identity and thus perhaps helping his transition from elite level sport.

Additionally life-events (non-athletic transitions) that an athlete goes through can influence their feeling towards their sport and their development. The influence that life-events have on the individual’s life and how one reacts to their occurrence depend on individual’s subjective perception of these life-events (Turner & Helms, 1993). Interestingly Wade has had a couple of key life events in his recent past. In 2014, he married his wife Gabrielle Union in Miami. Then in November 2018, they welcomed their first child together (Wade’s fourth), Kaavia James.


Interestingly, Wade took an extended paternity leave of two weeks, which is longer than the usual NBA player, particularly when Celtic’s centre, Al Horford, drew criticism for missing a game following the birth of his child in 2016. This suggests a comfortability with Wade in himself to spend time with his family rather than basketball. Wade’s comments following his return to basketball; “I’m going to obviously miss them (Union and Kaavia James),” Wade said. “It was tough leaving my little girl and my wife, but I’ve got to get back to work and I’ll see them again soon”. It is possible that these life events have helped shift Wade’s focus slightly away from basketball over the past couple of years which can only help him during his exit from the sport.

Indeed Wade’s transition from the NBA won’t be an isolated event with studies suggesting that transitions from sport last somewhere from six months to a year (Stambulova, 1997; 2001). Brian Shaw, who played 14 seasons has previously stated it took him over a year after his retirement to accept he was no longer a player.

It’s perhaps possible that Wade’s retirement could signal what Coakley (1983) coined as a “social rebirth”, whereby an athlete upon retirement from their sport can embark down various non-sport related avenues and projects. In particular Coakley identified retirement as a period of increased entrepreneurialism for American athletes based in greater visibility and name recognition that results in the ability to ‘self-brand’ (Hughes, 2003). Kobe Bryant for example had something of a “social rebirth” following his retirement in 2016. In 2018, Bryant found himself winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for his film “Dear Basketball”.

As we have discovered retirement for elite athletes can be problematic so it is positive to see an athlete as high profile as Dwyane Wade making preparations for his impending exit from basketball. Moreover in an era where many sports stars seem opposed to receiving professional help in a mental capacity, or at least letting the public know they’re receiving help, it’s refreshing to see Wade admit that he may suffer difficulties leaving the sport he loves and hence making plans to aid his transition.

At the time of writing, Miami Heat, have just been eliminated from playoff contention following the Detroit Piston’s win over the Memphis Grizzlies, which means the Heat’s game against Brooklyn on Wednesday night will be Dwyane Wade’s final game. After tomorrow's game which will be Wade’s 1054th and final in the NBA, Wade will begin the transition to the next stage of his life. Wade’s Last Dance has been fascinating but there's a possibility that his new dance could be just as fascinating.




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