Wading In

We weren’t supposed to have this conversation yet. But Dwyane Wade reset the timetable.

He has a way of doing that. The Miami Heat’s second-year guard forces comparisons you aren’t ready to make, sometimes even bringing us to the brink of basketball blasphemy. He makes you feel bad, because no matter how much basketball you watched you didn’t see this coming.

And now he makes you uncomfortable, because you must ask the question: Who’s the best perimeter player in the game, Dwyane Wade or Kobe Bryant?

Put it to Eddie Jones and watch him squirm. He plays with Wade now, but he was on the Lakers when Bryant broke in and has known him since he was at Temple and Bryant played high school ball in suburban Philadelphia.

“Whew,” Jones said. “ ... I can’t pick. I love both. I think they’re both great. One-on-one ... I don’t know who’s better. Kobe’s 6-7, strong. Dwyane’s 6-4, strong, quicker.”

This season, Wade averaged 24.1 points, 6.8 assists, 5.2 rebounds and shot 47.8% from the field, 28.9% on three-pointers. Bryant: 27.6 points, 6.0 assists, 5.9 rebounds, 43.3% shooting, 33.9% three-point shooting.

Bryant has scored 11,189 more points in his career and has three championship rings. Wade has yet to appear in the NBA Finals.

Bryant is more accomplished. But Wade is playing better right now, and he keeps doing things that skip him past Bryant and into the company of NBA legends.

When he averaged 26.3 points, 8.8 assists, 6.3 rebounds and shot 50% from the field in the Heat’s first-round sweep of the New Jersey Nets, Wade joined Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Wilt Chamberlain, Larry Bird, Oscar Robertson and Bob Cousy as the only players to average at least 25 points, eight assists and six rebounds while shooting 50% in a series. When he averaged 31 points, eight assists, seven rebounds and shot 53% in the second round against Washington, he joined Bird as the only players to do it twice in the same postseason.

And just when it appeared the Detroit Pistons had brought Wade back to the mortal plane by holding him to 16 points on seven-for-25 shooting in the first game of the Eastern Conference finals, Wade responded with 40 points, eight rebounds and six assists to lead the Heat to victory in Game 2.

Wade playing while Bryant’s team didn’t qualify for the postseason gives him the edge right now. True, he is playing alongside Shaquille O’Neal, but O’Neal is limping through the worst postseason of his career. In the two playoff games O’Neal missed with a bruised right thigh, Wade went for a total of 73 points.

And when he played with Lamar Odom, Brian Grant and Caron Butler -- the players who were traded to the Lakers for O’Neal -- Wade went to the second round of the playoffs.

Wade should make Bryant that much better next season. After Bryant finishes licking his wounds, he can set about recapturing his old glory that now belongs to Wade -- the accolades, the jersey sales, the great postseason moments.

In the 1997-98 season, when Bryant was a second-year player subbing for Jones, I used to wonder who would be the Lakers’ second Hall of Fame player to go with Shaquille O’Neal. The common belief was that it required at least two future Springfield enshrinees to win a championship. Then one game, while watching Bryant score at will, I had the answer. It would be Kobe.

From then on it was like watching “Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith.” You knew exactly where this was going.

Wade, on the other hand, was a surprise. Heat President Pat Riley drafted him with the No. 5 pick in 2003, and he didn’t expect this.

Others were told how good he was, and still didn’t get with the program fast enough.

Tom Crean, Wade’s coach at Marquette, was an assistant coach at Michigan State when Steve Smith played there and during Wade’s college career Crean let the longtime NBA veteran know, “Steve, we’ve got a special one here.”

So Smith paid attention, but he didn’t see the revolution coming. He saw Wade as a slasher, a guy who could drive the baseline -- about the same as Ruben Patterson, he thought.

Smith, now a reserve for the Heat, has seen the entire package unfold this season. He’s so impressed by Wade’s ball-handling skills, the versatility, the ability to define what he wants to do as a player.

“That’s when you start talking about the Michaels and, you know, the greatest,” Smith said.

Now he’s done it. He evoked Michael Jordan’s name for a second-year player. Watch for thunderbolts.

The only thing saving some Old Testament-style punishment from being meted could be the respect paid by Wade himself. He kneels at the temple of The Game. Ask Mr. Play-the-right-way himself, Larry Brown.

“There’s nothing he can’t do, I don’t think,” the Detroit coach said. “He’s improved his outside shot, but he never settles. A lot of guys settle, but the greatest thing about him is he’ll get every big rebound, he attacks the basket, gets to the free-throw line. What’s he shooting, over 50% in the playoffs, eight and a half assists, gets big rebounds. He’s the real deal.”

And he does it without the big-time attitude.

“He’s a guy that’s very humble,” Jones said. “He’s happy to be here. He’s just happy to be in this situation, playing the game he loves. Something about him, man. He just has it. I don’t know what it is, but he has it. He never tries to be bigger than whatever people think he is.”

He might be the only player in the league who puts more energy into listening than he does into talking.

Ask him a question and see how his eyebrows draw close and his jaw clenches as he locks in. Then, when it’s his turn, a blank look washes over his face. He speaks in a monotone, his words sounding just as flat to the ear as they appear in print.

Take his response to a query about whether he has exceeded his own expectations.

“I don’t have expectations for myself,” Wade said. “I just come in and I believe in my ability and my teammates believe in my ability. I just go out and play. I don’t say what I can do and can’t do.”

At this point, so many people are talking about him that he doesn’t need to say anything to keep the conversation going.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Flashback

Second-year guard Dwyane Wade has two of the six 40-point games in this season’s NBA playoffs.

*--* PLAYER, TEAM PTS FGM-FGA FTM-FTA OPPONENT (ROUND) STEVE NASH, 48 20-28 4-4 Dallas (conference Phoenix semifinals) RAY ALLEN, Seattle 45 17-28 5-5 Sacramento (first round) DWYANE WADE, Miami 42 13-22 16-17 Washington (conference semifinals) AMARE STOUDEMIRE, 41 13-21 15-18 San Antonio (conference Phoenix finals) DWYANE WADE, Miami 40 15-28 10-10 Detroit (conference finals) AMARE STOUDEMIRE, 40 13-21 14-17 Dallas (conference Phoenix semifinals)

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