Gary Payton talks about convincing Shaq to let Dwyane Wade lead the 2006 Heat to a championship. Payton, as the team's elder, helped the young star embrace his role while Shaq stepped back. The conversation also covers Chris Paul being sent to OKC and the rare conditions needed to win it all.
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So y'all are expected to win the finals. Shout out to the Pistons. Detroit Pistons go on to win the finals. State of Michigan, baby. I respect that. They go on to win the finals. And then you eventually, you sign with the Heat and y'all go on.
Boston.
Boston, and then— Well, y'all go to Boston. You go to Boston for a year, one season. Then you eventually, you sign with the Heat.
Right.
And y'all go on to win a championship. And I thought one of the most interesting things about that championship was, as great as Shaq was, D-Wade was the guy. D-Wade—
Right, absolutely. Flash.
Flash.
And Draymond, let me give you a—
D-Wade was the guy.
Yeah, let me give you a story about that. We were struggling, Draymond, from all, for the whole year. Were struggling from day one. We were just like the Lakers now. We were struggling. They were giving criticism to Pat Riley about putting his team together. But all guys who older, they all in they late, you know, everybody had a time in their times in their teams or whatever. And they were criticizing us. Ben Gundy steps down, Pat Riley takes over. I'm the oldest one on this team now. I'm the oldest statesman. So I did like this. I started seeing Shaq be mad about we're not getting him the ball. And I just told Shaq, I said, Shaq, listen here. Look what young fella did last year. You see how he took over stuff, man. They lost in the Eastern Conference Finals. You guys lost in the Eastern Conference Finals. That's why Pat came and put all of us together. He wanted a championship. Mm-hmm. We're here now. We gotta stop this, man. I said, man, we're gonna make him be the first here, period. You gotta do this for me. And I told Shaq, I said, do this for me. Just let him be the first here. Let him go and do him. If we get you on the block, just get there and score. And when he agreed to it and bit in, man, D-Wade, I ain't never seen nobody perform like this ever. Yeah. He had 35, and I was like, this is incredible, 'cause this young kid was giving them the blues. And he was making shots everywhere, getting to the hole, dunking. And he guided us all the way to that championship. And what it was, is just like you guys right now, Draymond, he had 4 guys around him that was ready for him to do whatever.
Absolutely.
We were ready to do, we were ready for the, if he passed it to us, he hit a shot, we were playing defense, we told him, "Go in the corner, get you some rest, guard the weakest man over there, and we'll have everything else under control." And that's when we start being a team. And then we just rolled through the Eastern Conference. And then all of a sudden we got in the championship, Dallas got up 2-0, and then we buckled down and then we beat 'em 4 straight. And then that was it.
All right, that was beautiful. Incredible. Congratulations. I always like to say that to any champ, 'cause —people don't understand how hard it is to win a championship, man. And as someone who's had the opportunity to win a few championships, I'm starting to have an appreciation for guys that had great careers and didn't win. And the reason being is because people try to judge guys off like, oh, you didn't end up winning one, like all that don't count. It's so hard to win a championship, man. It's so many things. Has to go right in order for you to win a championship. And people don't really understand that. Like, you know, people was talking about Chris Paul and say, oh, he never won a championship. Chris Paul is a winner. And you can say whatever you want about Chris Paul. He hasn't won a championship, and that's unfortunate. And he still has an opportunity to. But he's a winner. He is a winner. He's won— every team that Chris Paul has been on, he's made that team a better team.
Absolutely.
I spoke about— They sent him to OKC to essentially die on his deathbed. And not only did he resuscitate himself, he took that team to the playoffs. And because of what he did there, Sam Presti got him to a place in Phoenix of where he can have the type of success that they are having last year and this year. So that's a very interesting thing that I think people don't really realize is how hard it is. Mm-hmm.
