NBA power forward Amar'e Stoudemire had a distinguished career that included six NBA All-Star Game appearances and seven seasons of averaging more than 20 points per game.
But the one thing that eluded Stoudamire was an NBA Championship.
Now, appearing on The Boardroom podcast, Stoudamire explains how he almost teamed up with LeBron James and Dwyane Wade with the Miami Heat in 2011:
“The first call I got was from Miami. Pat Riley and Alonzo Mourning called me and was like ‘Yo, we want you to come to Miami. We got everything set up for you, don't worry about nothing.' He's like, ‘we're going to take some time to figure out, you know what's going to happen, but we want to bring you down.' I'm like, ‘alright cool we'll figure it out.'
At that time, I was still, you know, trying to figure out what the best scenario was, and I think D Wade and Chris Bosh had the same agent. So because they had the same agent Miami went, D Wade and Bosh kind of had a, you know, “all right, we have the same agency we should play together type” of deal. So, they end up brokering that deal with Bosh. But that's when I went to New York.”
How would Amar'e Stoudemire have fit with the Miami Heat?
In the famous Heatles big three's first year together, they were a rousing success; following a middling 10-8 start, the Heat proceeded to go 48-16, finishing first in the Eastern Conference. They carried over this momentum towards the postseason, as they took care of their Eastern Conference opponents in the playoffs in a total of 15 games (five games per series) en route to an NBA Finals rematch against the Dallas Mavericks that was five years in the making.
Replacing Chris Bosh with Amar’e Stoudemire would’ve been interesting because Stoudemire lacked the outside shooting that Bosh had, which is what is what opened the floor up for LeBron and Wade.
Bosh was also willing to take a backseat offensively to Wade and LeBron, allowing his numbers to suffer for the benefit of the team. While there's no evidence that Stoudemire wouldn't have done the same, he ended up with the Knicks that same season where he competed with Carmelo Anthony for shots.
It's still fun to imagine a team like the Heat from that era with a prime Stoudemire crashing the boards and playing in the post. At his peak, Stoudemire was one of the most feared players in the NBA, able to take over games with his physicality on both ends of the floor.
But it didn't work out too poorly for the Heat. The super team won a pair of NBA championships with LeBron, Wade, and Bosh.
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