Dwyane Wade confirmed the fears Thursday at AmericanAirlines Arena: He will be out for an extended period.
Shortly after Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said that both Wade and forward Luol Deng would be sidelined for Friday’s game against the Dallas Mavericks at AmericanAirlines Arena, Wade made it clear that his strained right hamstring is far more serious than Deng’s bruised calf.
Wade missed two games earlier this month with a strained left hamstring, but emphasized this is a more severe ailment.
“This is obviously a totally different injury,” he said outside the Heat locker room. “This is more in the belly of the hamstring, so it’s a little tougher one.”
Wade was injured during the third quarter of Tuesday’s loss to the Milwaukee Bucks that dropped the Heat to 20-25.
He said Thursday that when he was injured, the hamstring, “just went.”
Wade missed seven consecutive games in November with a strained left hamstring.
“It’s not an ideal situation for none of us,” he said of a series of injuries that already have had the Heat utilizing 18 lineups this season. “And I know our fans are very frustrated. I just want them to know they’re no more frustrated than we are.
“Nobody can be more frustrated than me because I want to be out there.”
The reality is that the 33-year-old veteran is facing an absence to that could carry up to the Feb. 19 NBA All-Star Game, if not beyond.
“It’s just a part of basketball and a part of getting older,” he said of his third hamstring-related setback of the season. “Your body responds differently. So you’ve got to find a way to kind of work with it.
“When you work as hard as me and to deal with the same thing, it’s kind of frustrating. But what are you to do?”
Wade made it clear this would not be a brief absence.
“When I got this, I said, ‘Why can’t I get a bruised wrist or something? Why can’t I fall on my wrist or elbow or something?’ ” he said. “I’d take that right now. Because when it comes to the muscles, certain things you can’t play with.”
Teammates also are bracing for an extended absence.
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“We haven’t had our whole team. I just want to play with our whole team, just once,” center Chris Bosh said. “But it’s not going to be [Friday], maybe not be for the next couple of weeks.”
Spoelstra said there is no room for pity.
“You have to embrace this,” he said. “We have to have fun with this right now. We have enough. Does that mean it’s not frustrating? Does that mean it’s going to be easy? No. But we have enough to circle the wagons and give ourselves a chance to win every single night.
“It can be something that can be a real bonding experience for the short term. We understand for the long term, there are too many guys out. But for the short term, we have enough.”
Wade said he knew something was wrong before pulling himself from the loss to the Bucks.
“[Bucks guard] Brandon Knight got a steal and went down and dunked it and I was chasing him and I felt a little bit right there,” he said. “A couple of more plays happened, where I was able to still play the game. But then I was chasing [Khris] Middleton off a screen and it just went. So that’s when I called over from the bench.”
Wade said he empathizes with the team’s fans after so much recent playoff success.
“I haven’t seen nothing this bizarre,” he said of the Heat’s injury woes. “Obviously teams have deal with different players in and out, but here in Miami I haven’t seen that. And it’s bizarre: Any time that we get to the point where we’re feeling the least bit comfortable about our team and where we’re at and what we can do, something happens.
“It’s just one of these seasons that right now you want to forget kind of everything that’s happened from the injury standpoint.”
The reality is again having to work with a patchwork lineup Friday against the Mavericks and then going forward.
“Sometimes you ask yourself, ‘I am being too selfish?’ because you went to the Finals four years in a row,” Wade said, with the Heat playing deep into June each of the past four seasons.
“You’re looking at the basketballs gods, saying, ‘Am I asking for too much? Am I being too selfish to just want to play basketball and see our whole team together to see how good we can be?’ “
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