Dwyane Wade's prime was relatively short. By the time LeBron James made the decision to spurn his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers and sign with the Miami Heat in the summer of 2010, it would be just one year before a nagging knee pain and additional injuries had sapped the future Hall of Famer of much of the explosion that once made him perhaps the most dynamic player in all of basketball.

Fortunately for Wade, he always had the “old man game” he's increasingly relied upon over the last few years, and used it to mitigate the on-court effects of his body slowly failing him to remain an impact player on both ends of the floor during James' years in Miami. He wasn't at his peak, and the Heat didn't live up to James' desire of winning “not five, not six, not seven” titles. Still, looking back on the Heat's iconic run at the top of the decade, Wade recalls just how good he and his teammates had it back then.

“We had it good. We had it real good,” he said in a conversation with The Athletic's Shams Charania. “To be able to have not just LeBron, but Chris as well. Myself. Being able to have the guys around us that we had. The Mike Millers of the world; Shane (Battier), UD (Udonis Haslem), James (Jones), Mario (Chalmers). We had a great group of guys. Then we got Ray Allen. We had a hell of a team.

“We stayed together for four years,” Wade continued. “Maybe that’s all we needed to stay together. We did our job: We went to the Finals four years in a row. We didn’t win four years in a row — we won two — but we went four years in a row and there’s not a lot of people that can say that.”

Wade, a three-time champion and 2006 Finals MVP, is retiring at year's end after an historic 16-year career, mostly with the Heat, that positions him as one of the several best shooting guards of all time. Would he rank even higher on that list if injuries had allowed him a more extended prime? Surely, but Wade certainly isn't complaining with how his career transpired.