Wade addresses talks of his demise

As chronicled previously at The Real NBA, Dwyane Wade is getting "old" in NBA years.  Wade is entering his tenth NBA season and last years' average of 22.1 ppg was the lowest since his rookie season.  Wade has recently stated that he will no longer address talk of his demise and one unknown fact is that despite his scoring average dropping last season, Wade actually had the second highest field goal percentage "49.7" of his career.

"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....I'm not really worried about it, I'm going forward.....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.....We put this team together knowing that you're going to sacrifice....In a perfect world, if everyone could bring their (old) averages, then we would never have to play a game. That's not the case. When you decide to come together as a team, you sacrifice something. Other teams have done it, and it's a pat on the back for them. When I do it, I've lost a step. It is what it is."