Dwyane Wade ruminates on meeting with the Nets in 2010: ‘Jay-Z wasn’t there’
Superstars, even superstar friends, have to set lines of demarcation. If one star has a limited edition Ferrari on order, the other has to have an aftermarket crew outfit his same Ferrari with several tributes to himself. If one star made a cool hundred grand a year, the other star had to make a hundred grand … plus a dollar. Between Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, at least according to Sam Smith's book The Jordan Rules, the bragging rights came down to (scrunch your nose, here) the relative endowment of their young sons.
To Dwyane Wade? His initial go-to memory about the 2010 meeting between D-Wade and the then-New Jersey Nets? Let's let Miami Herald Heat beat writer Joseph Goodman take it from here:
You'll recall that Wade went on a free-agent tour that summer, just as LeBron James did. And that the Nets — already purchased by Mikhail Prokhorov (and, kind of, Jay-Z) — came calling with plenty of cap space and the hopes of luring two max-level free agents to a team that would end up in Brooklyn 27 months later. And, because LeBron got to say "Jay-Z came to my meeting," this is Dwyane's takeaway.
[Y! Music: Check out music and videos by Jay-Z]
And he's fine for that! Because, as Yahoo! Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski pointed out in a column from that summer, there was precious little chance Wade was going anywhere but Miami after his free-agent tour. His hometown of Chicago seemed nice and New York or even Jersey was always there on the back burner, but this was always about pairing with LeBron and Chris Bosh.
Failing any intrigue with his mind mostly made up, you fall back on other things to interest you. Like, "is Jay-Z going to be there?" He wasn't, and that's a drag. LeBron got the edge on that one.
Jay-Z could be in Miami on Wednesday, as the Heat take on the Nets. The Heat are defending champions, odds-on favorites to take the 2012-13 title even before the Los Angeles Lakers' slow start and the Oklahoma City Thunder's dealing of James Harden; and not even Brooklyn's similarly sized payroll to Miami can help that.
On the court, at least, Wade can get his revenge. Though that probably won't stop some dap between he and Jay-Z before the game, provided Dwyane can get it in before the buzzer.
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