Dwyane Wade opens up on recent Miami Heat statue amid memes flooding social media

Evidently, Wade deserves his statue outside of the Heat’s arena to forever cement his legacy with the franchise. While fans were excited to see the statue, they were disappointed with the final product.

Dwyane Wade surprisingly appreciates his statue

Wade gave 15 years of his life to the Heat. One would assume that the organization wouldn’t make any mistakes when revealing his statue. But that was far from the case as D-Wade’s Heat statue doesn’t even come close to his real face.

As a result, the NBA community joked about it and flooded social media with memes. Of course, some fans also tormented the sculptors, Omri Amrany and Oscar León, for an unimpressive job. However, the 3x NBA champion praised the final product.

“What we wanted to do was capture a moment that represented the organization, represented myself and represented the city,” Wade said, per Ira Winderman on X. We felt like we captured that moment in artistic form, in an artistic way.”

He added: “If I wanted it to look like me, I would just stand outside the arena, you’all would take photos. It don’t need to look like me. It’s an artistic version of a moment that happened.”

The statue was supposed to capture Wade’s iconic “This Is My House” celebration against the Chicago Bulls in 2009. Unfortunately, it’s hard to recognize the Heat legend in the final product.

Although Wade says it’s apparently an artistic version of the iconic moment, fans continue to troll the statue.

Wade was initially taken aback by the statue

For what it’s worth, the 42-year-old gave an elegant response after the criticism about the statue’s design. But it’s obvious that even he was surprised by the creation when it was initially unveiled.

Wade’s first reaction to his statue was caught in a mic went viral on Reddit.