Charles Barkley And Ernie Johnson Had Jokes About Miami’s ‘Awful’ Dwyane Wade Statue

The Miami Heat’s unveiling of their statue for Dwyane Wade over the weekend did not go as they’d hoped, as all of the talk about Wade’s new bronze presence outside the Kaseya Center was about how it didn’t look much like Wade at all. Fans on Twitter naturally piled on with jokes about all the people it looked like that weren’t Wade, but they weren’t alone, as Paul Pierce thought it looked more like Tony Allen than Dwyane and even Tim Walz got in on the fun during an appearance with Dan Le Batard.

Unsurprisingly, the jokes did not stop Tuesday night when the ‘Inside the NBA’ crew made their first appearance on TV since Wade’s statue was revealed and had plenty to say about the depiction of their former TNT colleague. While Kenny Smith tried his best to defend the statue, Charles Barkley wasn’t letting it slide, saying the Heat have to take it down, while Ernie Johnson even got in some jokes — which is how you know the statue is bad.

Shaq wasn’t willing to chime in with jokes of his own, as he’s got too many ties to Wade and the Heat organization for that, but the fact that he was just chuckling off to the side and didn’t join Kenny in defense of the statue said plenty. It must be said that sculpting a bronze statue seems extremely difficult, but at the same time, the whole point is for it to look like the person its immortalizing and as Ernie notes, the face on the Wade statue doesn’t make you immediately go “yeah, that’s D-Wade.”