Dwyane Wade arrived in Miami of a historic draft class and teamed up with a formerly undrafted player under Pat Riley. It would take Shaquille O’Neal and his championship experience to lead the Heat to its first title. Then D-Wade formed the Big 3 with LeBron James and Chris Bosh for the next two championships. And every time, Wade took on the Robin role with grace. But he had a major support throughout his career from the ‘Mayor of Miami.’ And this pillar of Heat Culture ranks just a little higher than Shaq and Bron to Wade.

D-Wade finally made his long awaited appearance on Unapologetically Angel this week. The Chicago Sky co-owner gave his star rookie a quick lesson on knowing your role on a team. While he was at it, he confessed to Angel Reese that her Unc, Shaq came second to Udonis Haslem for him. And the reasons are very moving.

“A team is not just a roster full of the most talented people. That’s called the All-Star Game or the Olympics. A team is a roster full of a group of individuals put up that can all play their role to perfection and that’s how you get to the point of winning a championship. And so someone has that mentality like that’s an unbelievable teammate. That’s someone they like who your favorite teammate. You go to someone, like I go to UD, I don’t go to Shaq and LeBron and all those guys,” he told Reese.

She’s not hurt on behalf of Shaq because she gets it. If Wade was a sidekick to the big stars of Miami Heat, Haslem was Robin to him. UD was born and raised in Miami and he signed as an undrafted free agent at the same time as Wade. He was quick to push Wade as the face of the team. But he also took care of him in the background which makes him that special to Wade.

“I go to UD because he did the dirty work. He did the little things and I’m talking about the before the practice, the after practice, when you coming from injury, ‘hey let me get up there with you so you can get some extra work like all these little things that make a teammate great,” he told Reese who had to ask if he found UD’s quality lacking in the current NBA generation.

In longer terms, while talking about how much the attitude in the NBA and WNBA has changed, Wade pretty much said that there’s no one like Haslem. The Miami Heat organization and even Shaq and Bron would agree.

Udonis Haslem takes care of his teammates

On his own podcast recently, Udonis Haslem reiterated he felt compulsive to take care of his teammates. When young Dwyane Wade arrived from Chicago, he was lost and even got mugged. UD had gotten his stolen stuff back and he did it for another teammate who got robbed too.

“My rookie, somebody stole his [Dwyane Wade] truck and stole his chain out of his truck and I told him, ‘listen, I found out where your truck at, you want back?’ He said yeah… got his chain, that’s that simple,” Haslem revealed. He’s invaluable to Wade enough for him to name Haslem the godfather to his youngest child, Kaavia. Haslem even takes goddad duties seriously, making it to California for his girl’s recital with flowers.

Because of precious gestures like this, anyone who plays alongside Haslem has dubbed him the ‘Mayor of Miami’ and it’s also the reason why he’d never leave. He came close though, he was willing to take a trade if it meant LeBron James would come to Heat and lead it to a championship.

But Haslem stayed with a huge paycut to keep cap room for James and Bosh. Wade, Bron, and Bosh also took paycuts to ensure UD got paid close to his worth. Even Shaquille O’Nea admits that Haslem has an irreplaceable presence in the Heat organization and there’s so much the younger generation can learn from him.