Miami Heat shooting guard Dwayne Wade says that he will no longer address questions about his age or health. Wade says he will use those type of criticisms as motivation going forward, according to Shandel Richardson of Sun Sentinel.
"Any time someone questions you, it's going to bother you if you have any kind of competitive nature," Wade said. "It fuels you. You want to see what you're made of in a sense. You want to come back and not only answer the bell, but do a little bit more than expected."
Wade missed 17 of the 66 games of a shortened lockout season last year. He was held out due to various nagging injuries and kept the severity of the injuries an "in house" issue with his teammates, until they were to servere to hide.
The severity of the injuries became visible in a Game 3 loss against the Indiana Pacers were Wade shot 2 for 13 from the field.
Even after he revealed he had his left knee drained and helped the Heat reach the NBA Finals, in Game 1 against the Oklahoma City Thunder, he shot 7 of 19 in a Heat loss and received more criticism about his age.
Wade now feels going into the upcoming season, Wade will just continue to play his game the best way he knows how.
"I'm not really worried about it, I'm going forward," Wade said. "If anyone asks me anything about that, I'm not answering. I don't want to talk about it. We can talk about all that when I get done playing basketball. Right now, I'm one of the best players in the league, and I come in every year and try to work as hard as I can to try to stay there.
"At the end of the day, everyone looks at points," Wade said. "That's what they look at. No one said anything about how my defense has been as good as it's been. No one said anything about how efficient I was last year. I shot 49.7 percent from the field, so that means I hit half the shots I took. People don't look at that. I can't worry myself with that. The only thing I can do is, whatever role I have to play, is play it."
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