The Miami Heat have redone the head of Dwyane Wade’s statue. He agreed to it. The first version dated from 27 October 2024, outside the Kaseya Center, and Omri Amrany and Oscar León had spent some 800 hours on it.
Eight hundred hours. I worked it out on the corner of the club bar, stirring my coffee. For us, eight hundred hours is every Saturday of youth games from nine to six, the club bar staffed, the chairs stacked, the minibus driven to Andenne and back, for almost two seasons. With the same three volunteers. And nobody makes them a statue, mind you.
We’ve got the founder’s portrait above the counter. A photo, in a frame from the hardware shop. It’s gone yellow on the radiator side, because the heating has its moods, and nobody has ever suggested redoing it. We should have asked the supporters, like Dwyane Wade. He wrote that he wanted to respect the artists while listening to the supporters. Back then, he said: “It doesn’t have to look like me.” This time, he said: “Why not try to improve it?” That’s a very club-president thing to say. It’s what I say every year at the AGM, about the raffle.
The sculptor Juan Carlos Carrillo had explained that a simple facelift of the bronze was no longer enough, that part of the work had to be remade. I know the feeling. At some point you stop repainting the minibus and change the door. It starts, but you change the door.
And they redid it out of sight, Chantal. No unveiling in the dark. What a waste of a moment.
The work was done out of sight, yes. Like the cleaning at our place. I’m not jealous, I’m a club president: I wish them someone to dust the bronze. As for me, I’ve still got the founder’s frame to straighten, and the key to hand back.
It’s true, we checked: Basket USA.
