Despite being one of the NBA’s youngest franchises, the Miami Heat have established a solid winning tradition, and a list of their greatest players ever includes several iconic figures of the past 30 years.
The website Rankeo.com asked fans to weigh in on the best players to don a Heat uniform, and some may feel surprised by how they were ranked.
- Dwyane Wade (830 votes)
- LeBron James (709 votes)
- Alonzo Mourning (563 votes)
- Chris Bosh (543 votes)
- Shaquille O’Neal (432 votes)
- Udonis Haslem (345 votes)
- Tim Hardaway (331 votes)
- Glen Rice (225 votes)
- Rony Seikaly (147 votes)
- Grant Long (25 votes)
James, considered by most to be the greatest player of this decade, only ranked second despite winning two regular season MVPs and two NBA Finals MVPs during his four years in South Florida.
The recently retired Wade took the top spot, perhaps because he leads all Heat players in career points, assists, steals and minutes played. Of course, Wade also starred on all three championship Heat teams and won Finals MVP in 2006.
Mourning, who also played on that first championship team, finished third in the polling. Bosh, the third member of the Big 3 earlier this decade, took the fourth spot.
Rounding out the list was O’Neal (fifth place), who was Wade’s co-star on the 2006 title-winning team.
Several members of the Heat’s teams from the 1990s made it as well, including Hardaway (seventh place) and sharpshooter Rice (eighth place).
In perhaps the biggest surprise, Haslem made it all the way to sixth in the poll, despite modest career averages of 7.6 points and 6.7 rebounds per game.