CHICAGO _ For Dwyane Wade, it was one more video tribute, one more jersey swap, one more farewell to another NBA city as his basketball playing journey winds down and begins to flicker out.
Only it wasn't just the usual for Wade on Saturday at the United Center, or on Sunday when his homecoming tour took him up the road to Milwaukee and Marquette University, where his college honored him.
This one felt different to him than all the others. Not in a sad way, he said. But, as he put it, in a "joyous" one.
"Yeah, definitely," Wade said after Saturday's Heat game. "I have more of a connection here than anywhere else. This is my birth city. It's the place where my vision of becoming a NBA player started."
Even for Bulls fans, whose team was in the process of suffering their 10th setback with a 117-103 loss to the Heat, the hometown hero was the attraction. Wade scored 14 points, grabbed 10 rebounds and dished out seven assists, the kind of balanced stat line that would have earned his father's praise.
In his postgame remarks Saturday, Wade referenced his father's influence.
"I just wanted to score all the time," Wade said of his early days inside Chicago's gyms and on its outdoors courts. "I realized early my dad wasn't impressed by that. And I wanted to impress my father. So I had a game where I had 10 points, 10 rebounds, nine blocks and nine steals. I had that whole stat line. And that was the most proud I've seen my dad of me. At that moment, I knew that if I wanted to get that kind of response that's the way I needed to play. I needed to play a total team game. It wasn't just about me."
Wade said his only goal Saturday was to get the win. Everything else was gravy.
"I wasn't coming off that floor until we got that win," Wade said. "And that's how I wanted to end my last game here. I didn't want to go out and score 30, nothing like that. It doesn't matter as much as getting a win for me."
But Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, cognizant of the moment, wasn't about to allow Wade's final hometown appearance go unnoticed. He removed Wade to a warm ovation with just over a minute to play and the Heat comfortably ahead.
"That was cool," Spoelstra said. "That was a special moment, just to see how the crowd in his hometown here reacted, and it's well earned."
Saturday's crowd included his mother, sister, other family members and friends.
"It was cool to look around and see those faces my last time here," Wade said. "No sadness. It (was) joyous. For me today, the only emotion I had that was close to sadness was that there were two people in my life that passed away last year that couldn't be here to share in this last one. My grandma wasn't here and my agent, Henry Thomas, wasn't here. Those two people I wish I could have looked around and seen.
"But outside of that, it was just joyous to see and hear so much great appreciation for what I've been able to do in the game of basketball."
Wade echoed the sentiment on Sunday when he was honored at halftime of the Marquette game.
"Thank you Marquette University for taking a chance on a young kid from the inner city of Chicago, giving me an opportunity to come to this prestigious university, taking me in and showing me love," Wade said. "I will never forget it. I carry that Marquette badge with me proudly everywhere I go."
And then it was on to Boston, where the Heat was set to face the Celtics on Monday.
But not before Wade the player could bid farewell to his hometown.
"A lot of us had a ball and a dream, and that ball and a dream has taken us so many places," Wade said.
