Dwyayne Wade kicked off his new podcast Pantheon in partnership with iHeartMedia with a bang. The first episode featured fellow Hall-of-Famers Tony Parker, Pau Gasol, and Dirk Nowitzki. The four NBA greats talked about several topics pertaining to their careers, but the highlight of the podcast had to be Wade and Nowitzki relitigating the infamous coughing video from the 2011 NBA Finals.
After the Mavericks tied the 2011 NBA Finals 2-2 with a resounding 86-83 victory, Dwyayne Wade and LeBron James were seen coughing as they were walking from the locker room. Their cough was meant to mock Dirk Nowitzki, who played Game 4 with flu-like symptoms. According to many reports, including an Associated Press article from 2011, his temperature even spiked to 101 the night before the game.
Still Nowitski was dominant, finishing the game with 21 points and scoring the go-ahead layup with 14.9 seconds left in the contest. The Mavericks also went on to win games five and six to win the franchise’s first NBA Championship in one of the biggest upsets in NBA history.
Although jovial during the duration of the podcast, Nowitzki let it be known that he wasn’t a fan of the moment.
“I didn’t like it. It just, to me, it felt a little disrespectful. I’ve never had to fake an injury, I’ve never had to fake an illness to show anything. I didn’t feel well that day, had a little fever, and really that was it. I thought it was childish.”
Wade wholeheartedly agreed. “It was childish.”
Nowitzki continued speaking about how he felt, saying, “I think I said it at one of the press conference[s] but at the end of the day, that didn’t add to the motivation. Honestly, at this point we [were] at game five, two games away from achieving my dream which in ‘06 we were two games away. So I really didn’t want this to be a big distraction for me.”