Dwyane Wade on Donovan Mitchell: “I Wish I was That Good That Young”

You were, Dwanye.

Yeah, I’m getting older, too, Dwayne.

Dwyane Wade spent some time with Donovan Mitchell over the summer, with the future Hall of Famer saying the second-year guard is “hungry for greatness.”

The two exchanged jerseys following Sunday’s game in Miami, a 102-100 Heat win over the Utah Jazz.

Donovan Mitchell called the battle with Dwyane Wade surreal and said he hit him up in advance to make sure he could snag the jersey from him. “He’s an all-time great,” Mitchell said. pic.twitter.com/z2NYGhTzzB



— Eric Woodyard (@E_Woodyard) December 3, 2018

“I wish I was that good that young,” Wade said of Mitchell — that’s the sign of an old head watching the game go by him. I’ve been there, bro 😢

Per the Deseret News:

“To be honest with you, that was surreal,” Mitchell said of Wade. “You aren’t really thinking about it in the game, but you look back at it as one of those things where the guy is your idol.



“I talked to him many times this summer about his career and habits on and off the floor, whatever it may be,” he added. “That was a pretty special moment.”



One of those conversations lasted two hours, which Wade said never happens nowadays, where Mitchell picked his brain about everything under the sun. With Mitchell often drawing comparisons to Wade, with the same physical build and ability to attack the basket, he wanted to take pointers from the man himself ahead of his 16th and final season.



“Outside of probably my better friends in the league, Victor Oladipo and Donovan Mitchell are two of the guys I talk to the most,” Wade said. “They’re just guys who are similar in how our games structure and guys who really want it and want to be great.



“We was on the phone for two hours,” he continued. “I don’t talk to nobody for two hours no more, but he wanted to pick my brain, he had a lot of great questions and we just talked about the game. We talked about my first year to my second year, how did I make the jump, and he had a lot of great questions.”