By Matthew Roberson,Nick Sethi

Copyright gq

The Hall of Fame basketball player, 13-time All-Star, and three-time NBA champion is meticulous about his body, which in many ways is still his instrument. From 2003 to 2019, he was Flash, an apt nickname for a man who zoomed up and down the court with a controlled recklessness that made him a top-three shooting guard in NBA history. But today, he’s doing vocal warm-ups rather than calisthenics, considering his new gig no longer requires him to dunk someone through the floorboards.
The gargling—which he does while singing Stevie Wonder’s version of “Happy Birthday”—is part of his preparation for a weeklong stint guest-hosting Jenna & Friends, the fourth hour of The Today Show, alongside Jenna Bush Hager. Wade is sporting a butter yellow cardigan and a hoop in his left ear. His nails are freshly manicured and his abs are visible through his undershirt. (He announces to no one in particular that he thinks he might have recently lost some weight.) His debonair, no-hair-out-of-place presentation is so striking that it’s made him the face of numerous fashion campaigns and, most recently, the global ambassador for the fragrance Intuition by Aramis.
In addition to the vocal maintenance, Wade keeps a lit Byredo candle in his dressing room to provide an air of serene, spalike luxury. At first, as we chat with his barber and makeup artist, slow jams from Lauryn Hill and Tamia spool out of a Bluetooth speaker. But when it’s game time, Wade, an elder millennial to the bone, knows exactly what flavor of vibe shift is necessary. To get him in the right headspace to speak to over a million households across America, there’s only one song that will do the trick: Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.”
Choosing to strut out of the dressing room to that staple of pump-up playlists and stadium hype videos confirms something I suspected: Like many athletes in retirement, Wade is still chasing that big-game feeling. “We all are going to chase it,” he admits. “Think about playing in front of—for nine months of the year—20,000 people screaming your name. Or booing you! That ovation, you get used to that. That becomes the soundtrack that you’re familiar with. Then, it just goes away. You walk in the house and your kids or your wife may not run up to you and say anything. They may not even know you’re home.”
Before the cameras actually start rolling though, Wade has to attend the new version of his pregame meeting. He’s getting briefed on the run of show in a very cramped hair-and-makeup room, where he’s got to digest a ton of information—and very quickly—about the news of the day. If they were going over pick-and-roll coverages, Wade would be firmly in his element. The man speaks fluent basketball, but has to ask for a few clarifications on Today Show topics like how to pronounce certain celebrity names or what the hell reverse plastic surgery is.
He’s a natural at working the room, which his cohost expected, but not to this degree. “Dwyane is an empathy machine, he’s filled with compassion, he’s hilarious,” Bush Hager tells me backstage. “You hear praise and think it can’t possibly all be true. But he came and sat down next to me, and it was all true. He is the most lovely man.”
This stint guest-hosting the NBC morning show has a twofold purpose. One, Wade is good at it. His charisma is ideal for a wide-appeal audience: Those who remember him from scoring over 23,000 points in the NBA get to connect with a familiar face, while the suburban parents who just need some morning entertainment are easily sucked into his charm, regardless. You don’t need to know ball to know that the 43-year-old is a cool guy and a generationally good hang with a face made for television. After shooting wraps for the day, I wait in the wings as producers, crew members, and other guests gather around him, pose for selfies, or just soak in the experience of being in the same room as the handsome hooper.
But the second, and more important, purpose is that Wade is bracing for his full-fledged transition to TV talking head. He’s joining the broadcast team for Amazon Prime Video, which will air NBA games for the first time during the 2025-26 season. Amina Hussein, an executive producer of NBA on Prime, and the company’s head of US on-air talent, tells me over the phone that, “when we go about looking for talent, we want somebody who loves the game, is still invested in the game, who’s still passionate about it, and wants to see it grow. Dwyane is that.” Wade, who will rotate between in-game commentator and studio analyst duties, has experience with both, but never to this extent. (During the 2024 Paris Olympics, he was a color commentator for NBC’s basketball broadcasts, and he spent three seasons dabbling in studio work for TNT.)
For the first time since 2018-19, when he capped off his prodigious career with a triple double in his final game, a full season of the NBA hamster wheel awaits him again. When it comes to calling games, rather than dropping 30 points during them, he’s much closer to a rookie than a wizened veteran. He’s throwing himself into a new role within an ecosystem where he was once atop the food chain. As a player, he was an apex predator. As a broadcaster, he’s a tadpole.
He’s also about to be fully immersed in the hot-take inferno, part of the noisy, nonstop world that can drive players batty. Players, for instance, like Dwyane Wade once upon a time. Back in the dressing room after taping, I ask if he paid attention to the talking heads during his 16 years in the league.
“Yes, I did,” he says, chuckling as he repeats himself. “Yes I did. Yes I did. I was guilty of thinking what they said really mattered. People ain’t in the gym with you. They don’t know the work you’re putting in. People just say things. It affects you at times.” Consider, for instance, the spectacularly inflammatory work of Charles Barkley—the best example of a star player turning to television and becoming more famous for talking than balling.
“Me and Charles had a couple of moments, like, ‘Hey, bro. What the fuck? Why do you keep talking about me?’” Wade shares. “Once I retired and I got a chance to go on the other side, then Draymond [Green] came into the [TNT] studio. Draymond had some beef with Chuck the same way. I was able to sit with Dray and be like, okay, look at it this way. You’re in the studio, you’re going to say things in here. If I tune in to watch Draymond Green play and you have two points and five fouls, it’s my job to talk about that. Right? I respect you so much that it ain’t going to just be flowers. It ain’t going to be roses. It’s going to be a little critical at times, but it doesn’t mean that it’s hatred.”

It’s a bit difficult to imagine Wade ever spewing hatred. Despite being six feet four with a physical presence that greets you muscle-first, Wade is far from intimidating. He’s got perennially kind eyes and a blinding smile, one that any politician would kill for. Except that when Wade flashes his pearly whites, it’s genuine, not plastic.
There’s something almost frustrating about his naturally urbane, smooth-tongued demeanor. It’s rare to see Wade slip up, say the wrong thing, or make a fool of himself. His NBA career spanned three presidents but spawned zero controversies. I ask him where this comes from, and if he’s always been the cool, calm, and collected dude that can skillfully acclimate to any situation life throws at him.
“I grew up with my mom in prison. That sucked. Life sucked,” he says. “The life that I’m able to live and experience now is like, Come on, man! You know what I mean?” In other words, how could he not be chill today, when life was anything but growing up? Watching him host Jenna & Friends—where he’s surprised by his sister and mother (who details the drug use that led to her incarceration), endures a quick workout with Bush Hager and a Pilates instructor, and shares some stories from his Hamptons summer—the ease to which he does everything is by far Wade’s standout quality. He’s preternaturally skilled at connecting with people across all walks of life: fashion bigwigs at the Met Gala, basketball big bros like Shaquille O’Neal and Gary Payton (both at least 10 years his senior) who helped him grab his first championship ring, or daytime-television hosts. An NBA icon from Chicago and a Texan woman whose dad spent eight years in the White House don’t seem like the perfect match on paper, but, perhaps akin to Wade’s welcoming a new teammate into the fold, everything with Jenna goes off without a hitch. When we’re debriefing the show, Wade explains his stormless attitude.
“Think about it as a leader in big games, trying to win NBA championships. If I go into a huddle and my coach, if I don’t feel calmness from him, now I’m jittery. Leaders, you have to feel that calmness in them to lead you,” he says. “Also, just to feel good in someone’s presence. When someone’s calm, you’re like, Oh, I like this guy.”
That’s certainly the plan for his shift to Amazon, where he has the opportunity to become a Barkley, Shaq, or Stephen A. Smith–type figure, but will surely employ less yelling. On the subject of Stephen A., we organically drift toward the idea of the ESPN orator running for office, a popular talking point that has taken on varying levels of seriousness over the years, with some pundits even urging him to do so.
“I’ve talked to Stephen A. about this,” Wade tells me. “I’m sure at first, it was shocking to him, but you understand why people say those things. People who follow him, they follow him. Like you said, it don’t matter what he say, but they’re watching.” When he hits the airwaves along with Blake Griffin, Steve Nash, Candace Parker, and other members of Amazon’s basketball A-team, Wade plainly understands that people may start to view him the same way as Stephen A., that the general public will use whatever he says as a springboard for disagreement, no matter the opinion.
He knows he likely won’t display the raw, provocative emotion that’s turned so many modern broadcasters into superstars. For him, it’s always going to be about the game first. As someone who’s been on the receiving end of those late-night barbs, his appetite for conflict has waned.
Wade is excited about the idea of getting to talk basketball—one of his favorite pastimes—in a more elevated way than he does with his friends. But he’s also aware of the fact that someone who lived and breathed the game like him has to package his firsthand analysis in a way that the average viewer will not only understand, but keep tuning into. Or, to put it more plainly, he has to keep them entertained. Of the TNT crew that made Inside the NBA a must-watch, Wade characterizes it as “a comedy show,” before taking a beat. “When I played,” he admits, “I wasn’t laughing as much.”

A couple of months after shadowing him on The Today Show, I connect with Wade again over Zoom while he’s being driven to a golf lesson.
Seven years into retirement, in addition to being one of the multitude of men who get really into golf in their 40s, Wade has also taken a keen interest in wellness. Hot yoga, extensive bodywork, sauna sessions—you name it, Wade has tried it. Part of the increased attention to his personal health stems from his own experience. In 2023, he had 40% of his right kidney removed after a cancerous mass was found, and discussed that process very openly on his podcast, Time Out, on the WY Network, where everyone from Bob Iger to Donatella Versace to Rick Ross have been his guests. After the cancer scare, he’s urging others to be more vigilant about their health. “If I’m just talking to Black men in the community I grew up in; we ain’t going to the doctor until it’s, like, DEFCON,” Wade says. “Obviously, that’s selfish in a sense.” He goes on to say that he doesn’t know many people who made it to their 60s, and while everything is good for him now, he shudders to think how many people convince themselves everything is good without checking under the hood.
Wade knows that people often look in from the outside in general—the trophies and accolades, a loving relationship with his kids, a Hollywood marriage with actress Gabrielle Union—and think his life is perfect. On our Zoom call, the conversation shifts to the people who have helped guide him best in postretirement. He raves about the core of brothers (not in a biological sense) that know him deepest and are always around to chat, but is adamant about the fact that he does not have any sort of miraculous playbook for navigating health, fatherhood, or especially marriage. “People come up to me asking me, ‘Hey, D, you’ve been married for years. What should I do?’” he says. “I don’t know! I don’t know your wife.”
With so many people looking to him as some sort of oracle, I’m reminded of our previous conversation at 30 Rock, where he brought up his deliberate departure from what he describes as the “hood masculinity” he grew up around in Chicago, telling me, “As I got a little older and I got my own money, I got out there. I was able to now do the things I wanted to do and not stay under that certain kind of way that you have to be if you grow up in this community. A certain way of thinking, a certain way of being, a certain way of walking, a certain way of talking.”
I wonder whether his decision to get into the professional-talking space is born from a desire to give representation to other young men who have always felt constrained by their environment. “Absolutely not,” he states, a fitting response from someone who was an excellent shot blocker. “That’s not my reason. It’s certain platforms that I use to talk about modern masculinity or to have conversations…. I use basketball to talk about basketball.”
Well, let’s talk about basketball then! The 2025-26 NBA season is the most wide open in recent memory, with several injuries to prominent superstars leveling the playing field. About one-third of the teams in the league have somewhat realistic Finals expectations, but Wade has his eyes on the purple-and-gold behemoth that always dominates the headlines.
“I want to see what Luka [Doncic] can do this year,” Wade says after taking a second to look out the car window, clearly running through a mental list of all the juiciest basketball storylines. “He is fully a Laker now, and he has done everything in the summer to get himself prepared. Luka is the number one story for me.”
Luka, of course, shares a roster with LeBron James, who was a member of the 2003 draft class like Wade. But while Wade already has several postretirement side quests under his belt, James—who seemingly defies both the limits of what the human body can do and the space-time continuum—is still going strong on the court. Wade, on the other hand, tries and fails to stifle a laugh when he talks about some of the creaky noises his body makes these days. There’s a bit of whiplash in going from the leaping, spinning, slashing dynamo to someone whose knees feel it during every long flight. When the aged version of D-Wade could no longer find that “explosion level”—the ability to take off like a rocket with its final destination at the rim—he started to think about life after basketball. “Once I knew that I didn’t have that special quality anymore, that I lost all my powers and I became a regular basketball player, the game was not as fun as it used to be,” he explains. So, no, he does not envy the King, or any of his former running mates who are still playing.
At one point, Wade had the league’s highest-selling jersey. He’s got a scoring title to boot, and a spot on the NBA’s 75th anniversary team. He is beyond comfortable watching the game with a headset on now.
“When you had the career I had, you don’t envy someone else’s journey,” Wade says, sagely. “I got everything out of the game of basketball that I possibly wanted.” He does struggle to throttle down, though, to replace the adrenaline withdrawal. The dilemma for so many athletic titans like himself, whose career comes with an inherent expiration date, is how to go from the locker room old head to a relatively young member of general society. And in Wade’s case, he knows that inactivity could breed contempt in the ones who love him. “What else are you going to do? I retired at 37. There’s no way I’m just going to sit around. I wouldn’t be fulfilled, and people would not want to be around me.” He does not yearn for training camp, does not pine for a game in Cleveland on Tuesday and another in Boston on Wednesday.
The missing piece for him is less tangible. “What I do miss is being better than people,” Wade says with a mixture of playfulness and I was one of the greats in his voice. “I miss being good at something, really good at it.”

PRODUCTION CREDITS:
Photographs by Nick Sethi
Styled by Mobolaji Dawodu
Skin by Sam Fine
Grooming by Donato Smith
Tailoring by Jessica Yuen
Special Thanks to New Vibe Yoga