One constant on the Miami Heat’s roster from the Big 3 days in the early 2010s that saw LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade help Miami to four straight Finals appearances all the way up to the team’s pair of Finals runs with Jimmy Butler in the early 2020s was Udonis Haslem.
He spent a long time in a Heat uniform and was a member of the team for every one of its seven Finals appearances in franchise history.
Haslem was able to be a part of plenty of great Heat teams over the years, and while speaking to his former Miami teammate Mike Miller, he said that the Heat reached the Finals in the Big 3 era and again years later thanks partly to the “power of friendship.”
“The last couple years we went to the championship with the Miami Heat, we weren’t a superteam,” he said. “We just had a couple stars and the rest of the guys with chips on they shoulder and a hell of a f—— coach and the power of friendship, you know what I’m saying?
“… And that’s always been my MO and recipe, you know what I’m saying? Yes, I’ve been on the teams where they call superteams where we had the three max players, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t ’cause of those three max players that we got to the Finals.
“As great as they were basketball players, it was ’cause of the power of the connection. You was on those teams, killer. You know how much time we spent together off the basketball court. You know the kind of relationships that we had with each other.
“You know how important it was for us to have each other’s back and perform well for the other guy ’cause we knew those guys were dependent on us. So, even though they were the Big 3, we took our ‘little 12’ role serious as f—, you know what I’m saying?”
It is worth noting that Haslem’s role with the Heat was majorly different during their recent Finals runs compared to his time playing with the Big 3.
In both of Miami’s two title runs in 2012 and 2013 during the Big 3 era, Haslem was a key rotational piece. In the 2012 NBA Playoffs, he logged 22 appearances and 11 starts. Then, in the 2013 NBA Playoffs, he once again appeared in 22 contests but logged plenty of more starts with 19.
Across 44 total playoff contests during those two championship runs, he averaged 4.9 points and 5.0 rebounds per game.
Comparatively, he didn’t play a single game in the 2020 NBA Playoffs and hardly saw the court in the 2023 NBA Playoffs. But he served as a valuable vocal leader for the Heat even if he didn’t make much of an impact on the court in that time.
Haslem retired from the NBA after the Heat lost to the Denver Nuggets in the 2023 NBA Finals and came up three wins short of a title. He retired having spent all of his 20 seasons in the NBA with the Heat organization. Nowadays, it’s out of the ordinary even for the brightest of star players to spend their entire NBA careers with just one team.
