The Miami Heat suffered a potential blow to their playoff chances on Thursday, when star guard Dwyane Wade announced his latest hamstring injury will prevent him from playing for the foreseeable future.
At an impromptu press conference called a day before the Heat host the Dallas Mavericks on national TV, Wade told The Miami Herald's Joseph Goodman and others that the right hamstring he pulled against the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday will keep him out of the lineup for a minimum of 2-3 weeks.
“I won’t be seeing y’all for a little while, so take a good look at this face.” [...]
“You can’t put a time on it,” Wade said. “You can’t look at the hamstring and say you’re going to be out this amount of games. Like many muscle strains, you’ve got to go day-by-day.” [...]
“Where this thing has me is frustrated and where I stand I have no idea,” Wade said. “It’s just the second day of a pulled hamstring."
Even after losing LeBron James to the Cleveland Cavaliers over the summer, the Heat were expected to comfortably settle into a middling playoff seed this season, but instead they find themselves having to hold off a handful of teams within five games of their current seventh-seed status in a dismal Eastern Conference.
Three weeks leaves Wade on the bench for a span of just eight games between now and Feb. 20 — thanks to an eight-day layoff for the All-Star Game, which the former Finals MVP would be forced to miss should he be named a reserve — and that still gives Miami plenty of time to circle the wagons. Plus, games against the Minnesota Timberwolves and New York Knicks (twice) in that time span should help them stem the tide.
Still, the Heat have to be weary of that three-week timeline, since this latest ailment marks the third leg injury Wade has suffered this year, including a right hamstring pull that cost him seven games in November. And that doesn't include knee ailments that have plagued him since winning his first title nearly a decade ago.
The Heat (20-25) are currently 15-20 in Wade's 35 appearances this season and 5-5 in his absence, but that number's a bit skewed by injuries to Chris Bosh, Chris Andersen and Josh McRoberts, among others. In fact, only point guard Mario Chalmers has appeared in all 45 games for Miami in 2014-15.
At full strength, the Heat are still a dangerous playoff team, particularly since Hassan Whiteside's emergence, so for the sake of the sport — and an Eastern Conference void of exciting first-round matchups — here's to a speedy recovery for Wade, one of the game's greats at picking himself up off the mat.
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