The Miami Heat’s tribute to Dwayne Wade with the unveiling of a statue in his honor did not go as everyone imagined it might, as the special moment the Florida club gave to its No. 3 immediately went viral, but for reasons totally unrelated to what the franchise and the three-time winner with them would have wished.
Thousands of messages came from social networks mocking how the image of the statue looked, which at no time did they see a certain resemblance to the player who knew how to stand up to the 20,000 spectators who knew how to fill in each game the Pat Riley Court at Kaseya Center, which was also called Miami-Dade Arena, FTX Arena and American Airlines Arena.
The worst sports statues: Is that really him? From Wade to Ronaldo, Beckham to Maradona
The tone of the comments were clearly related to the appearance of the statue, which, in reality, bears little resemblance to the Dwayne Wade who shone with the Heat. “Who is that?”, “It doesn’t look like him”, “That’s X or Y or Z” and so hundreds of messages that did not leave anyone indifferent. Even the player himself.
Wade left a phrase that gave rise to thousands of speculations about the acceptance or not of his figure cast in bronze when he said: “I can’t believe it… Who is that guy?”. It is evident that the former player said it excitedly when he saw himself reflected in a statue that the club gave him.
Other ‘failed’ statues around the world
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This situation brought to the minds of sports fans other failed attempts at statues of great sporting idols who were remembered with a statue that immortalized them in the eyes of lovers of great sportsmen.
The images of the statues of Cristiano Ronaldo (Madeira, Portugal), David Beckham (Los Angeles, USA), Diego Maradona, Ray Lewis (Baltimore), Alex Ferguson (Manchester, England), Andy Murray (Shanghai, China), Wayne Gretzky (Edmonton, Canada), Mohamed Salah (Egypt), etc. came to the fore in the minds of fans because of how badly finished the tributes to these characters were.