For Heat guard Dwyane Wade, the numbers are pretty stark. Last year’s playoffs were a grind for him as he averaged 15.9 points on a mediocre 45.7 percent from the field and 25.0 percent from the 3-point line. His player efficiency rating was good, 18.7, but not up to his usual level. It was just the third time in his career he did not have a playoff PER of at least 20.
This year? Heading into the Finals, Wade’s scoring is up to 18.7 points per game, and he is shooting 51.9 percent from the field, including 38.9 percent from the 3-point line. His PER is back up, at 21.0.
But, as his trainer, Tim Grover, told Sporting News, Wade can get even better as he seeks to help the Heat to their third consecutive championship.
“I am pleased but there is always more work to do and progress to make,” Grover said. “I am not a numbers guy. I am an end result guy — I do pay attention to his numbers, I do use them in certain situations.
"There are certain circumstances and situations that I have seen him go through that I am extremely happy with, and there are others that I say, ‘OK, we still need to improve on that.’ Whether it is a physical limitation or it is a mental block, there is always a progression. That progression is not over with Dwyane.”
Grover’s name, of course, should sound familiar to NBA fans (he can be found on Twitter at @ATTACKathletics). It could be argued that no individual outside the NBA has had more of an influence on the league’s championship winners in the last 25 years than Grover, who got his start by helping Michael Jordan to six titles in the 1990s, and followed that by working with Kobe Bryant and Wade.
His book, “Jump Attack,” in which he outlines the principles he used with Jordan and applies to all athletes he trains, is being re-released on Tuesday by Simon & Schuster.
One of those principles is to turn around what had been the traditional model for player training — putting in hard work during the offseason and simply hoping that work held up over the course of the year. With Jordan, Grover sought to maintain his strength and conditioning by working with him before practices and games.
It has been the same with Wade. After an intense offseason in which he focused on dropping weight and building up his injured left knee, for which he received shockwave treatments (known as OssaTron), Wade needed frequent in-season maintenance.
And so Grover became a familiar face at the AmericanAirlines Arena this year, working with the Heat training staff to ensure Wade was progressing.
“We had to make sure he is consistently staying on his program,” Grover said. “A lot of people put in the work in the offseason and they are in great shape in November, but then during the season, they stop so the gains have a tendency to go away. You are not going to be 100 percent physically at this time of the season, there is nobody that’s out there who is not going through something.
“Some are going through things more than others, but it becomes your mental approach and how to adapt your game to different situations and adjust to your physical limitations at this time of the season. Whether your fingers are hurting, your ankles, your knees — how to still get the results you want. That comes from being consistent in your training throughout the whole offseason and the season. You won’t be able to make those adjustments unless you continue to show that progress all the way through.”
The Heat also sought to protect Wade by giving him a spate of games off, especially in back-to-backs. In all, Wade missed 28 games. That was frustrating, at times, for Wade — who is still only 32 — and his teammates, but the benefits have shown themselves now.
“This was the plan,” Wade said during the Heat’s conference finals win over Indiana. “I just want to continue it. I just want to continue to keep going, continue to keep getting better. There’s a lot of basketball left, but I feel good.”
That might be the most important aspect of Wade’s health heading into the Finals — he needs to not only feel good, but also feel good enough that he is not even worried about his health. Grover wrote about that in his last book, “Relentless.”
“It’s the don’t-think principle, I talked about that in that book,” Grover said. “That’s what we would like to see, but when you’ve gone through what Dwyane has gone through, that’s extremely difficult to do on a regular basis. Overall, he has done an excellent job, you can see that. But in order to get to No. 4, he is going to have to be in the 100 percent range of that don’t-think mentality.”