Miami Heat icon Dwyane Wade is eternally thankful to former assistant and now-New York Knicks head coach David Fizdale for his contributions into his career. Fizdale came in as an assistant to Erik Spoelstra in 2008, serving as his right-hand man for most of his eight-year stint with the team.

 “I allowed him to take my game to the place where I could still play now at 36 without having the same athleticism and everything I had when he first came here,” Dwyane Wade said in an interview with Stefan Bondy of The New York Daily News. “It’s tough. He came in and I’m a six-time All-Star already. So to sit there and show me a different way, to be able to explain it to me, to be able to give me the vision, it’s a talent he has. And I know a lot of people in New York are seeing that. He knows how to get to people.”

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While Wade had played as the primary ball-handler and playmaker during the first few years of his career, Fizdale offered teaching him the ways of a true shooting guard, able to play off the ball and move behind screens to regain control of it.

Dwyane Wade adapting to a natural shooting guard role gave him the chance to mesh with LeBron James, a very active ball-handler, and Chris Bosh in 2010. Yet it speaks of Wade's humble demeanor to take in the advice and be willing to learn, despite coming off a title season in 2006 in which his point-guard-esque antics were the reason he won so early in his career.