A New Video Shows Why Dwyane Wade’s Legacy Is Bigger Than Basketball

Shortly before the beginning of the 2018-19 NBA Season, Dwyane Wade announced it would be his last. The 6’4″ shooting guard from Marquette University began his professional career with the Miami Heat, and after brief sojourns to the Chicago Bulls and Cleveland Cavaliers, insured he would end his career with the team to whom he brought 3 NBA championships.

By all accounts, Wade has been a ferocious competitor, and arguably the best 2-guard to play the game, not named MJ or Kobe, but his basketball accomplishments do not begin to capture the legacy of the man who has worn number 3, in honor of the Holy Trinity, for 16 pro seasons. Wade has carried himself with a sense of honor and humility both on and off the court that puts him in the class of NBA activists and humanitarians like Bill Russell, Oscar Robinson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Paul & Carmelo Anthony Stand Together For Change (Video)

At its most high profile, Wade’s civic service was on full display at events like the 2016 ESPY’s, where he, LeBron James, Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony opened the show with a dramatic stand in protest of the rash of killings of unarmed Black men by the police. However, there were countless good deeds done by D Wade throughout his career that were beneath the radar and out of the spotlight, yet just as impactful to the lives they touched. Five such acts of kindness were the subject of a short film sending off the player dubbed “Flash” by Shaquille O’Neal, as he approaches the last regular season game (and possibly final ever) of his career.

Throughout the season, Wade has been trading jerseys with other elite NBA peers with whom he’s played over the years, to assemble his own farewell collection. With this in mind, Budweiser decided to produce a short film titled “This Bud’s For 3,” in which several people whose lives Wade changed traded their own souvenirs with the vaunted shooting guard.

In the video, Wade is shown walking to half court at AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami, with absolutely no idea of what to expect. Over time, he is greeted one by one by five people armed with stories about the impact he had on them, and mementos memorializing Wade’s transformative acts of kindness. The participants range from a woman to whom Wade gave a full college scholarship, to the sister of a student who was killed in the Parkland, FL high school shooting, to his mother. Each person tells Wade just how much he changed his or her life, in a video that is a fitting tribute to an NBA Hall of Famer whose legacy is bigger than basketball.