Former Team USA head coach Mike Krzyzewski recently sat down for an interview with Ben Rohrbach of Yahoo Sports to discuss some of the memories from the 2008 gold-medal team. 10 years have passed since the team won a gold medal against Spain in the Beijing Olympics, but Coach K hasn't forgotten about the role that Miami Heat legend Dwyane Wade played.
Wade served as a reserve on the team, but that certainly didn't stop him from causing loads of problems for opposing sides. In fact, Wade managed to blast out 16 points in just 19 minutes per outing.
“As a sixth man or someone coming off the bench, I don’t think anyone in my five [Team USA] championships did that better than Dwyane Wade,” coach Krzyzewski tells Yahoo Sports. “He kind of set the example for that in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.”
Jim Boeheim, who served as an assistant under Krzyzewski on the 2008 squad, had similar praise for Wade's game.
“He might’ve been our best player,” Boeheim noted. “He was phenomenal.”
Wade, now 36 years of age, will go down as one of the all-time greats when he decides to hang em' up. The former Marquette Golden Eagle racked up several prestigious accolades over the course of his career in the NBA, including three championships, 12 All-Star selections, and one scoring title in 2009.
In his 982 regular-season games played, Wade holds averages of 22.5 points on 48.3 percent shooting from the field (28.7 percent from beyond the arc), 3.8 rebounds, 3.4 assists, 1.6 steals, and just under one block (0.9) in 34.5 minutes per outing.
Wade is still deciding on whether or not he wants to return to the Heat for the 2018-19 season.
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