Behind the scenes of Wade's workouts
For nearly an hour Friday morning, Dwyane Wade was in constant motion, shooting jumper after jumper. His red tank top was dripping with sweat, his chest was heaving and fatigue was clearly starting to set in.
Finally, he was down to his last shot, a 20-footer from the right side. When it swished, he whooped and shimmied.
"I feel like it's my rookie year all over again," Wade said.
In some respects, the all-star guard who carried the Miami Heat to the 2006 NBA title might be right in that assessment.
Wade is essentially starting over this summer, eager to put two injury-filled seasons behind him. He believes the solution is spending three hours a day, five days a week, putting his body to the limit at a gymnasium in a hardscrabble Chicago neighborhood, a place where he can focus on basketball and nothing else.
There are no fans. No cell phones, no distractions.
And most important -- for the first time in more than a year, no pain in Wade's surgically repaired left knee.
"No pain when I wake up in the morning, no pain when I go home at night," Wade said. "I know I'm on the right track. Been a long time to get there."
Indeed, it has been a long process, and it's just getting started, too.
He desperately wants to play for the United States in the Beijing Olympics; that team will be selected in about six weeks after a late-June training camp in Las Vegas. And he wants his game razor-sharp for the next NBA season, when the Heat will try to erase memories of a horrid year Wade found both incredibly frustrating and disappointing.
Wade granted The Associated Press access to his workout Friday, a rare look at how he's working toward those goals.
Playing with fellow Chicago-area native Quentin Richardson of the New York Knicks, and under the eye of noted trainer Tim Grover -- Michael Jordan's personal trainer and the owner of the facility where Wade now works out -- Wade began with a series of shooting drills.
After 14 minutes, sweat began saturating his shirt. After 20 minutes, Wade was bent over at the waist, breathing deeply.
But he never stopped, sans for a four-minute break between shooting and the start of weight training.
"He's made a tremendous amount of progress," said Grover, who began working with Wade again just two weeks ago. "He's so focused to get himself ready for these games and also for the season. This is not something that he's doing short-term just to get himself ready for the Olympics."
More than an hour was spent in the weight room, where Wade and Richardson focused mostly on their legs -- Tuesdays and Thursdays are upper-body days. One exercise, on a machine called a runner, was so grueling that both players found themselves straining to survive a mere 60-second interval.
After Wade's second stint on the runner -- a machine that trains the lower body by using speed and resistance -- he shouted in pain.
"It is as medieval as you can imagine," Grover said, smiling.
It's also what Wade needs right now.
Wade's season ended March 10. He missed Miami's final 21 games, a stretch where the Heat went 4-17 and wound up matching the worst overall record (15-67) in franchise history.
But the injuries have been a problem for two years. When the Heat won the title, Wade was the most dominant player, shredding whatever defense Dallas threw his way as he seemed to almost single-handedly rally Miami from an 0-2 deficit in that series.
He was at his best then. He hasn't really been right since.
So he's starting over.
While the facility where the workouts take place is top-notch, replete with state-of-the-art equipment and plenty of courts, the neighborhood isn't glitzy. A couple blocks away from the gym, a homeless man is washing a car parked curbside. There's more than a couple vacant factories and storefronts nearby.
It's decidedly blue-collar, which suits Wade just fine.
"Barring anything unexpected, I cannot see him not being 100 percent by the time training camp opens up for the Olympics," Grover said.
Wade is even more optimistic.
"Oh, I'll be ready," he said.