SAN ANTONIO _ This isn't the official start of the farewell tour, Dwyane Wade's self-proclaimed "One Last Dance."
But it is doubtful that any game at the AT&T Center can be minimized by the Miami Heat guard, particularly with his team not making its lone regular-season appearance until March 20.
So when the Heat open their exhibition schedule Sunday against the San Antonio Spurs, it well could open a window into how Wade's final journey through the NBA will play out.
No, he never won a championship at the AT&T Center, those three transformative moments reserved for Dallas' American Airlines Center and Miami's AmericanAirlines Arena.
But the Spurs' home court is where one of the most impactful moments of his career played out, one that arguably altered not only his career arc but the direction of a franchise.
June 5, 2014. Game 1 of the NBA Finals. Heat up, 86-79, with 9{ minutes to play.
All the while ... sweltering, temperatures inside reaching into the 90s, amid an electrical failure that knocked out the air conditioning.
The Spurs would close the game on a 31-9 run, with LeBron James forced to the Heat bench for good with debilitating cramps with 3:59 to play.
"We apologize for any inconvenience," read a hastily produced statement by the Spurs.
The Heat responded to win Game 2 in San Antonio, before losing the series 4-1.
Which of course leads to the question of, "What if?" What if the Heat instead were positioned to build on a 2-0 series lead? Does James go back to the Cleveland Cavaliers in free agency a month later? Does Wade leave amid the Heat's makeover two years later? Does LeBron's, " ... not three, not four, not five" resonate into Heat reality? Is James even with the Los Angeles Lakers now?
These are the memory lanes for Wade, starting Sunday, at the preseason start of his "One Last Dance."
"Yeah," Wade said, before a lengthy pause, when asked about the impact of that one moment in time. "We definitely left that game feeling like we left one on the table. Obviously the best player in the game cramped out. We had a lead as a team. But we still lost it."
Much, obviously, has changed from that moment. Wade and Udonis Haslem are the lone Heat players with the team from that series, with Patty Mills and Marco Belinelli the only players on the Spurs' current roster who roasted on that June evening, Wade and Belinelli cycling back to their teams.
"Obviously it was unfortunate that LeBron cramped out," Wade said. "It was one of the toughest environments to play at, but also it's the Finals and you have to figure out a way to win it and we didn't."
Wade said his reflections about the Spurs are more about the consecutive NBA Finals between the teams, including the Heat's title in 2013.
He said nights such as Sunday also are about paths crossed, including with Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, who was alongside as an assistant coach at the 2004 Olympics.
"When you spend time around coaches in the Olympics and something that serious like the Olympics, you gain some kind of different perspective of them as coaches, as people," Wade said. "He rode me pretty good that first year. He was on me tough every day, and I respected him for it. From that moment on, I've never had nothing but respect for the way that he pushes players, the way he coaches his team, the success he's had since I've been watching the game of basketball. So, yeah, you pay respects to him."
It turns out that Wade briefly considered the AT&T Center as a potential homecourt a year ago, after he received his buyout from the Chicago Bulls, before he joined James with the Cavaliers.
"When I got my buyout," he said, "I thought about all the teams that I felt not only could use me but I could help. So that definitely was one of those teams, and it was all because of Pop. It wasn't because they were recruiting me. I don't even know if they reached out. But it was more so putting a list together, saying 'OK, what are the teams?'
"That was definitely one of the teams that I thought about from the standpoint of, 'What can I get out of it? How can I get the best out of myself, to add to a team from a veteran standpoint?' "
Instead, there were four months in Cleveland, two more back with the Heat and now this final road to retirement in his 16th NBA season, opening with a reminder of those fateful night sweats.
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