Wade apologizes to bloodied All-Star
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E-mail China Daily, March 1, 2012
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Dwyane Wade said he had apologized to Kobe Bryant multiple times for a blood-drawing foul. |
Insisting he meant no harm, Dwyane Wade revealed on Tuesday that he has apologized to Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant multiple times for a blood-drawing, nose-breaking foul during the All-Star Game.
The first of those apologies, Wade said, came during the game when he saw Bryant's face had been bloodied. Wade also said he sent the Lakers' star a message after the game in Orlando, Fla, on Sunday night.
Wade said critics who questioned why he never offered an apology for the play - the likes of which seemed to be something not typical in an All-Star Game setting - simply made incorrect assumptions.
"I don't care what I'm portrayed as," Wade said after Miami's first practice following the league's All-Star break. "It's unfortunate, obviously. I don't want to ever hurt anybody in this game, especially on a freak play like that. It's unfortunate. I send my apologies. But it's not intentional. If it's something I did intentionally, it'd be a different story."
A week ago, the Heat could make jokes about how they were out of the NBA spotlight, bumped by the meteoric rise of Jeremy Lin in New York.
Now it's a different story.
Two plays seem to be generating the most attention from the All-Star Game - Wade's hard foul against Bryant and LeBron James' ill-advised pass at the end of what became a three-point loss for the Eastern Conference.
"It's an All-Star Game. I mean, come on," said Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, who couldn't answer a question about what he thought of James' play in the final seconds because he said he didn't watch the game or see any replays of it.
"It's a continuation of the theater of the absurd. I don't even know if it's going to motivate me to actually even look at it. I haven't seen it.
"There's nothing we can do about it, about the extreme exaggeration about everything that happens with our team," Spoelstra continued. "All we can focus on is us. And at the end of the season, hopefully it ends the right way, and that'll ultimately be the only way we can shut people up."
The Heat entered the second half of the season tied with Oklahoma City for the league's best record at 27-7. Miami starts a three-game road trip on Thursday night in Portland, followed by a game at Utah - and then, in a nationally televised game that probably got a whole lot more interesting, at the Lakers on Sunday afternoon.
Bryant stayed in after the Wade hit, and the Lakers said on Tuesday he also got a concussion in the All-Star Game. Bryant is listed as day-to-day by the Lakers, who host Minnesota on Wednesday night.
"D-Wade didn't, at all, go for a hard foul," James said. "He went to wrap his arms up and accidentally hit him in the nose ... He meant to foul him but he didn't mean to hard foul him like that."
Wade acknowledged he did try to foul Bryant, and said he did so to stop the clock so he could approach a nearby referee to complain about fouls that he felt were committed against him and went uncalled.
So not long after a Pro Bowl that was deemed by NFL fans and even commissioner Roger Goodell as lacking any real sense of competition, the NBA's version of a star-studded exhibition got too fiery down the stretch by some standards.
"Hey, what do you want?" Heat forward Chris Bosh said. "It was all about the game. It came down to the last possession. It was all for the fans. That's what they want. You get competitors out there, it may go a certain particular way for a limited amount a time, but after a while guys, they're really going to get after it. And those make the best games.
"That's what people want to see."
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