Before LeBron James played a single game with the Miami Heat, he boldly claimed that he, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh would lead the team to numerous NBA championships.
Not 1, not 2, not 3, but 9 years ago, the Heat’s Big 3 of LeBron James, D-Wade and Chris Bosh were introduced 🔥 pic.twitter.com/474Z83QPan
— Ball Don’t Lie (@Balldontlie) July 9, 2019
In hindsight, James might have set the bar too high. During his four seasons with Miami, he helped the team reach four NBA Finals, but the team won just two of those four championship series.
The Heat’s two titles with James on the roster came during back-to-back years in 2012 and 2013. Miami beat the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2012 NBA Finals and the San Antonio Spurs in the 2013 NBA Finals.
While speaking with former Heat teammates Udonis Haslem and Mike Miller, Wade looked back on James’ infamous declaration and implied that it probably wasn’t the smartest move for James to say that in the public eye.
“He tripping,” Wade said. “He tripping. Look, I ain’t say a word. … Listen, aye, listen, that would’ve been a moment that was just for our fans, and it should not have been — the world should not have seen that. That’s something that you say internal, you know what I mean?”
While James, Wade and Bosh didn’t win as many titles together with the Heat as James claimed they would, they still were linchpins to the most dominant era in the team’s history.
Miami has won three titles as a franchise, and the Heat’s lone title they won without James and Bosh to this point came all the way back in 2006, when Shaquille O’Neal played second fiddle to Wade.
On top of that, the Heat put together one of the longest winning streaks in the history of the NBA with their trio of James, Wade and Bosh during the 2012-13 regular season. Miami won a whopping 27 games in a row and finished the campaign with a league-best 66-16 record.
The present iteration of the Heat — led by Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro — will try to win the team its fourth title in 2025. Miami’s current core has knocked on the door of winning a title on multiple occasions in recent years, as the Heat have played in two NBA Finals since the start of the 2019-20 season.
