The Miami Heat's choice to select Dwyane Wade with the fifth overall pick of the 2003 NBA Draft has proven to be the best decision the franchise has ever made, as Wade went on to lead the Heat to three championships.
But Wade wasn't always such a slam-dunk pick.
Remember: back when Wade was coming out of Marquette, many questioned if he would have a legitimate position in the NBA, as he was ruled too small to be a shooting guard and didn't have quite the skillset of a point guard.
On top of that, Wade apparently stunk up the joint in his pre-draft workout with Miami:
“I always go back to the Dwyane Wade workout,” Heat president Pat Riley said, according to Ira Winderman of The South Florida Sun Sentinel. “He had a horrible workout. We still drafted him.”
Riley's comment was in reference to the current state of the NFL Draft, where teams have had to assess prospects virtually rather than in person due to the situation surrounding COVID-19.
The NBA Draft isn't until the end of June (at least right now), so things could possibly clear up before then, but Riley's message is essentially that pre-draft workouts are not the be-all-end-all.
Heck, if Riley and the Heat used Wade's lousy showing as a reason to not draft him, they would probably have three less banners (so zero), and Wade's No. 3 wouldn't have gone up in the rafters of American Airlines Arena a couple of months ago.
Wade retired from the NBA after last season, ending a brilliant 16-year career.
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