Hidden in the shadows, Wade comes of age

— Dwyane Wade is walking through Championship Alley, the mural-draped hallway leading to the court from the Heat locker room at AmericanAirlines Arena that celebrates the team's 2006 NBA championship.

As he heads to a team function, he is told of Kobe Bryant's 61-point game that night in New York.

"With Bynum out, there goes your scoring championship," a passerby says, as Wade heads for the postgame obligation after yet another Heat victory.

"He can have it," Wade says with a smile. "I've got no issue with that. That's not what it's about."

With that, he continues down the corridor plastered with faces of euphoric Heat players and disconsolate Mavericks.

With a championship ring already affixed, Dwyane Wade is traversing a path unlike any other in the NBA.

He started on top.

Yet he never truly had to lead. There was always Pat Riley or Shaquille O'Neal or some other legend alongside.

Seemingly from the instant he arrived, he had the cell-phone commercials with Charles Barkley.

Yet it was as a straight man, Bud Abbott to Charles' Lou Costello.

And he had the leading scoring average on the U.S. Olympic redeem team in Beijing. But it was as a reserve, a sixth man behind Kobe, LeBron, Kidd and Carmelo.

He had it all. But what did he really have?

Coming off a league-worst 15-67 season, after spending May and June watching Kobe and LeBron from the couch, after knee and shoulder injuries cast doubts on his future, there suddenly were questions of whether Flash merely was a flash.

At 26, it was as if the table-for-two NBA of Magic and Larry, Magic and Michael, Kobe and LeBron no longer had room for what had stood as one of the league's freshest faces.

And then?

And then the kid grew up, and the kid stuff ended.

On the eve of training camp, Wade led a team meeting, stressing that the woe-is-we attitude of 15-67 had to cease, that everyone, everyone, would be held accountable.

After practices, there would be rigorous weight training, because leadership would come by example.

And along the way, there would be candor about a marriage not so perfect, failings like any other 20-something trying to find his way, and, yes, that is Gabrielle Union over there as a divorce wends its way through the Illinois court system.

Dwyane Wade, you see, has no time to be caught up in scoring leads or MVP races. He has moved past all the stories that extol relative sainthood, be it tithing to the church or purchasing one for his mother.

His world is more defined these days.

He wants to be part of a winning team. Wants to be respected for enduring talent. And wants to lead in a manner that makes it only logical for teammates to follow.

"It takes more than just putting up points to be the guy in this league," he says. "A lot of people say if they got the shots they could be this or that. Well it takes more than that. It's a day-to-day thing.

"I've got some young guys on this team and sometimes I feel like I'm carrying my sons around, I swear. They make it all worthwhile coming here every day and seeing the new challenges that they're going to bring. These young guys, I haven't seen nothing like 'em. But we need 'em, and they're very big for us and you've got to make sure you give them that confidence. But you stay on them as well."

For the first time in his six-year NBA career, Dwyane Wade is a team captain. Last season, it was Udonis Haslem, a serviceable grunt, who was chosen to lead.

"I'm more vocal than I've ever been," Wade says. "And they understand it and listen. It's not in a disrespectful way. It's, 'Get the job done.'"

It was a difficult message to deliver the previous two seasons, considering it all too often would have come from the sideline, as he missed 31 games in both '06-07 and '07-08.

"I'm in there every day with the guys," he says. "I'm in a battle and I think that builds more of a team, when you see everyone in the battle, whether a guy is going the whole practice or not, to see everybody out there after you play 40-something minutes. That just makes the other guys feel more comfortable."

Until this season, it was difficult even for such a dynamic presence to find a place for true leadership. Call out Shaq for lack of effort? Take a position of leadership when Alonzo Mourning is on the court? Explain professionalism to Gary Payton?

But this season, his is the voice of experience, particularly with Shawn Marion still adjusting to the Eastern Conference and Jamaal Magloire and Mark Blount simply trying to hang on.

"He really stepped forward early on in training camp, set the tone for this team," says coach Erik Spoelstra, Wade's former practice-court confidant as an assistant coach. "First at every drill we did, setting the example and also even being vocal and stopping drills to explain, 'This is how we do it here.'"

It is a story similar to the one in Los Angeles, when Kobe started hanging around more, loosening up, becoming one of the guys.

And working. Always working.

If anything, Wade's injuries taught lessons that otherwise might not have been appreciated.

As he worked the shoulder and the knee and Tim Grover's Chicago gym, he also strengthened calves, tightened abs, increased flexibility.

"He got his body in the best shape that he's ever been," Spoelstra says. "He's as strong as he's ever been. His legs are as strong as he's ever been and he's continued to go at it.

"It wasn't just all the preparation he did in Chicago, lifting weights and all the exercises. But now, after every practice, you see him in the weight room. He's got his routine. He's doing a half-hour, 45-minute routine in the weight room, just to prepare his legs for battle."

No, this isn't LeBron at 260.

But it also isn't a Wade so worried about recurrence of injury that he spent the past two seasons settling for the jumper.

"He looks great," Nets coach Lawrence Frank gushes at a recent game. "It's amazing how quickly people write people off in this league. The guy's a great player."

For Wade, individual greatness used to be the sole pursuit. Get his numbers. Get his accolades. And get out.

Now? Now there are jokes with teammates in the training room and locker room. Now there is fascination with more than points and trophies.

"If you lead in scoring and your team wins, it's great," he says. "You lead the league in scoring and your team is not winning, it's not so great.

"To me, at the end of the day, it's all about what can I do in that game to help this team win? I'm just fortunate enough right now where the ball's going in the basket a lot and I'm one of the top scorers in the league. But if I was 10th in the league in scoring and we had a better record, I'd be even happier."

As for those two-man debates about Most Valuable Player, the ones centering on LeBron and Kobe? He's fine with that, too.

"I know I'm playing as well as anybody in the league, that's no secret," he says. "But I've got to continue to help this team continue to win, to get over that hump, where we're in the discussion at the end of the year of being one of the top-tier teams in the league.

"If we do that, it's going to take a lot out of a lot of us, but if we do that, then I'll be in the discussion."

There even is perspective about where his team stands.

"With a young team you understand it's going to be an uphill battle all year, it's going to be back and forth," he says. "We're, of course, not built like Boston and Cleveland and the Lakers. We're not them. They're built right now to be championship teams. We're built right now to be a team that grows, to continue to learn from each other and try to get better and better."

As he speaks, the use of "we" resonates, because even with all the points, there also are assists. He currently stands as the league's top non-point guard in that category.

"What he's doing now," says Bobcats coach Larry Brown, "I don't know if anybody could play any better, on both ends. He makes everybody better and every night he just plays at such a high level. It's kind of neat to watch."