The visiting locker room at the United Center in Chicago is tiny. Real estate, much less maneuverability, is at a premium. Video coordinators, the position held by now-assistant coach Eric Glass during the 2013-14 season, have to settle for a card table setup right in the thick of things.
“It’s super awkward,” Glass says.
Even though the HEAT were two-time defending champions that season, it hadn’t been a smooth ride. Veterans were getting older. The all-out defensive scheme was wearing on the players as the league evolved, the rise in threes stretching rotations out to their absolute limits. Udonis Haslem, for the first time in his career, was starting to lose his regular rotation minutes as spacing became more and more of an emphasis.
On this particular night, the HEAT lose to the Bulls – with a young Jimmy Butler playing 47 minutes – after being outscored 9-2 in overtime. Chicago doubled Miami up in offensive boards, getting to every loose ball. A few months earlier, they’d been crushed by 20 in the same building. As the game is ending, Glass is sitting at this small table in the middle of the locker room surrounded by large orange water coolers filled with ice, multiple laptops open in front of him as he tries to code the game film for coaches to review. Players and staff begin to filter into the room. Glass, in his first season on the road with the team, is trying his best to keep to himself. Head down, do your work.
In walks Haslem, making a beeline for the coolers flanking Glass’ table.
“He comes in there and f****** picks one up and throws it against the wall,” Glass says, smiling at the memory. “He kicks the other one [over]. There’s ice, water, Powerade, Gatorade, all these things flying everywhere.”
Glass does the only thing he can think to do – he gathers all the technology he can get his hands on and forms a protective human shield.
“I definitely f***** up their locker room,” Haslem says.
Haslem hadn’t even played in the game. It didn’t matter. He was that upset about losing to that team in that way, even with three rings on his ledger. Competitors never say die, and it isn’t always pretty.
“I hate to lose,” Haslem says. “I hate living in mediocrity. I always wanted to at least scratch the surface of winning. After that, overachieve if possible. I don’t like to do as expected, because where I come from most people didn’t expect much from me so I can’t do what people expect.”
Things continued on in the locker room like that for a few minutes, but as things calmed down and debris came to a rest, Haslem returned to the little card table in the middle of the room and tapped his video coordinator on the shoulder.
“My bad, EG,” he says.
THE IN-BETWEENER
Haslem hasn’t played over 900 minutes since the 2014-15 season, and he hasn’t played over 100 minutes since 2016-17. That was six years ago. Since then there’s been some understandable angst about his place on the roster – clearly not part of the regular rotation, but not on Spoelstra’s staff either. There are a finite number of roster spots in the league. Wouldn’t Haslem’s be better filled by someone who projects to play, either now or down the line, particularly during some of the most turbulent years in league history?
Good luck finding a single person in the organization to back you up on that one.
We call the angst understandable loosely, but to a degree it is. You can only see what you can see. When someone isn’t on the court, you’re working with limited information. They call it behind the scenes for a reason. But the show also can’t go on without the back of house.
“I don’t think he needs to be on the court to be impactful, to help us win, to move the needle, as we call it,” Gabe Vincent says. “There’s many ways to help a team win.”
“The people who call him a waste of a spot or whatever, everyone knows internally how untrue that is,” Duncan Robinson says.
“The last roster spot on every team doesn’t play,” says Tyler Herro. “That’s what it is. I’d rather have a guy like UD who can still impact the game and still impact our everyday routines.”
Few have been privy to Haslem’s real work in the same way that you don’t get to sit in the office of a doctor or a psychologist or even a financial advisor and see how they go about doing their jobs. All you see is whether someone got the help they needed. Did they get treatment? Did their finances remain healthy? The HEAT’s body of work when it comes to players improving after they walk through the arena doors is largely unimpeachable at this point. It’s been fairly easy for most to accept the role that Spoelstra and his staff have had in any of the examples – among drafted, undrafted and veteran successes alike – you can come up with. With Haslem, existing in what may seem like a nebulous in-between, it’s been a tougher sell outside the walls even with Haslem having walked the same path himself.
Still, all you have to do is ask, and they’ll tell you.
They’ll tell you about the times he’s a “little bit extra,” as assistant coach Chris Quinn – who played with Haslem for three seasons – calls it. At a recent shootaround, Haslem was assigned to be a specific player on the scout team. Normally players go around 50-75 percent speed in a shootaround as coaches work out the various assignments and coverages for that night. With little delay, Haslem took it there. The coaches had to hit pause and slow things back down.
“It reminded me of why UD is who he is,” Quinn says. “He’s the ultimate, ‘How you do anything is how you do everything’ guy.”
They’ll tell you about the secret one-on-one games, sessions he used to have with Dwyane Wade that have now become gameday rituals with Jimmy Butler. Haslem and Butler go spot to spot, block to elbow to elbow to block, and Butler typically “dots him up,” says assistant coach Octavio “Coach O” De La Grana. Haslem keeps coming back for more, winning the occasional spot, arguing over calls – 20 years in, he’s pushing Butler to be better through competition. Nothing performative about it.
“He goes, ‘f*** that. That’s bulls***,’” De La Grana says, imitating Haslem. “He’s playing like it’s Game 7. When he loses one of these little games with Jimmy, he’ll say, ‘I can’t sleep tonight. You gonna keep me up m***********. You gonna keep me up tonight.’
“I definitely understand it’s my job to get those guys ready, but I’m also playing to win,” Haslem says. “I lose sleep over that s***. And I think about it headed into the game that day like, ‘That’s my game.’ I got to get Jimmy ready, but I also have to win some f****** games today.”
They’ll tell you about a softer side, too. Years ago, the franchise was united in efforts to draw LeBron James and Chris Bosh to Miami to play with Wade. All departments. All hands on deck. Whatever you can do. In the midst of that whirlwind was Haslem’s June birthday. He was also a free agent, and he was naturally drawing interest around the league. Michael McCullough, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, pitched an idea and the front office said yes. So, every employee loaded up in buses on their way to Haslem’s house.
An entire company waited for Haslem to return home that day, and when Haslem noticed McCullough and a couple others outside of his compound scouting out his arrival, he was so caught off guard he drove right into his gate, damaging the side of his truck. Then he was pissed. But it didn’t last long. As soon as he saw all the familiar faces waiting on his lawn, his face completely changed. One by one, Haslem went around to each employee and thanked them.
As things wound down, Haslem sought out McCullough and took him aside.
“I will never forget this day,” Haslem tells him, tears in his eyes. “I will never forget this as long as I live."
They’ll tell you these things because Haslem is their guy. He’s everyone’s guy.
FROM THE BEGINNING
Malik Allen and Caron Butler, now assistant coaches, were there at the beginning. Butler got to Miami one year before Haslem, while Allen beat him by one before that. By the time Haslem was on his way back from playing in France, his body completely remade with his college weight shed, Allen knew what Pat Riley’s program was all about.
“I knew what it was,” Allen said. “I had seen guys go through it before and sort of quit. Or they just couldn’t handle it.”
He saw a kindred spirit in Haslem, someone who could not only handle the work but cherish it, thrive in it.
“You could tell he was tough as nails,” Allen says. “But there are a lot of guys who are tough but don’t actually like to work. I called it The Gauntlet back then. He was the one guy I was watching because he was up for it every day. That’s where my respect for him started from the very beginning.”
A couple of years later, the HEAT are in a first-round playoff series against the Charlotte Hornets. There were some veterans on that team – Eddie Jones, Brian Grant – but it was mostly a young group getting their first taste of the postseason. Things had started off well, with Wade hitting a game winner in Game 1 and Miami eventually taking a 2-0 lead. But the Hornets had fought back at home and tied things up. In Game 5, Baron Davis had 25 through three quarters – 25 meant a little bit more when games were ending in the 80’s – and was generally getting anything he wanted. The HEAT bench, according to Butler, was feeling momentarily dispirited.
Then Haslem directed a handful of pointed words toward Wade.
“He told him that he has to tap in and stop f****** around with the game,” Butler says. “This is our moment. A lot of times in the league when you’re young, you go through the growing pains. It’s not your time yet because you have to go through adversity first. We were all like, ‘Maybe it isn’t our time yet.’
“UD was more so like, ‘Nah, f*** that, we’re here now.’”
“There was for sure more F bombs,” Haslem says. “But it was more so just motivation. We deserved it just like they do.”
It was one of the first times Haslem remembers addressing the team in full, much less in such an emotionally charged moment.
“It wasn’t scripted,” he says. “I wasn’t asked. I definitely didn’t feel comfortable speaking up, but when you’re in the middle of a heated competition, in the trenches, it brings out the best in you, it brings out the things inside of you. That was probably the day that I started to take those steps into the leader I am today. Baby steps, though."
From that moment on, Butler says, Haslem had the pulse of the team. He knew what to say and how to say it, to “trigger and motivate and poke you over whatever was in front of you.” Maybe that doesn’t sound so impressive, but players and coaches know added value when they see it and hear it. Fifteen years after Miami won that Charlotte series, Haslem’s voice remains just as strong as ever. Everything coming from him, his own way – different from the messaging coming from the top down, trickling out of coach’s meetings.
“Certain people might say he’s an extension of the coaching staff, but he’s an extension of what the game is supposed to be and he holds that near and dear to his heart,” Allen said. “That’s what makes him pure. People make that assumption; he’s just another coach and he should be on the bench. Nah. He represents what this should be about. We’re lucky to have that. His message that he’s sending, that’s him, that’s what he stands on. It overlaps some, but that’s who he is as a man.
“That’s what makes it so powerful. He really is the gold standard for what this league should be about in terms of the core values.”
TOP SECRET
There’s something Haslem doesn’t know.
Years ago, Haslem came into the locker room around the holidays and sitting right on the seat in front of his locker was a pack of Depends. Adult diapers, for those who aren’t familiar. No wrapping. No note. Just the package. Haslem’s immediate reaction was not, to say the least, smile.
“Man, who gave me this s***,” Haslem said as he walked around the locker room looking for the culprit, according to someone in the room at the time. “Who got me this? Y’all ain’t funny. Y’all think this is funny?”
In typical Haslem fashion, the language was fast and colorful. Despite his best efforts, he never discovered the source of the prank.
“I never told him it was me until literally now,” Bam Adebayo says. “He’ll see this when the article comes out.”
Adebayo, who in the years since has purchased both a walker and a bedpan for Haslem as holiday gifts, sees himself as a Haslem whisperer of sorts. Not that he’s offering up knowledge and wisdom to his own vet. He merely sees it as his job to keep Haslem light on his feet. Nobody could ever dispute how much Haslem cares. He cares so much that the care eats at him. Sometimes, it gets the better of him.
“He’s one of those people, when he gets consumed in basketball and it’s going the way he doesn’t want it to go, he’ll lose his mind,” Adebayo says.
“I crack jokes. Bam harasses me,” Haslem says with a smile on his face. “There’s a difference.”
Not everyone could get away with it. Maybe only Adebayo, who takes his own jabs from Haslem in the form of a ‘Jobu’ nickname – yes, from Major League – that comes up whenever Wade is in their company. Adebayo calls Haslem his best friend. Haslem says he wants to pass the torch – the responsibility of carrying the culture of the team with him – to Miami’s young All-Star.
“I’ve really enjoyed watching him mentor the next mentor in Bam,” Erik Spoelstra says. “That’s so deep, it’s not even just about him, he’s teaching the next wave how to do it and be authentic and real with it. That’s a powerful deal.”
As Haslem has assumed his unique role over the past handful of seasons, he’s had free rein in the team’s huddles. When things start going the other way in a game, it’s not uncommon for everyone, coaches and players alike, to give UD a look and see if he’s going to take the lead chair – the one facing the players on the bench who are about to return to the floor – and ‘impose his thoughts or will.’ Duncan Robinson remembers one such instance that he’ll never forget as Haslem laid into the team during their series with the Los Angeles Lakers.
Lately, Haslem has been taking all those expectant looks and redirecting them back toward Adebayo, nudging the center to take the reins. At first, Adebayo couldn’t figure out what Haslem was trying to get him to do.
“Then [Adebayo] started to realize that UD is saying, ‘Hey, it’s your time to take the chair,’” Spoelstra says.
“It has to be his way, it has to be his words,” Haslem says. “It can’t be my way, it can’t be my words, it can’t be my message. It has to be geared towards him and who he is and his personality. It just took him a while to find himself in this league. It’s one thing to find yourself on the basketball court, it’s another thing to develop those leadership skills and find yourself as a leader.
“Often times you find yourself as a basketball player before you find yourself as a leader. That’s not uncommon what Bam is going through.”
Bit by bit, Haslem says he’s starting to see Adebayo take the steps he took all those years ago against Charlotte. In a recent game, Haslem was about to say something to the team but Adebayo put his hand on his shoulder and stopped him.
“He started talking,” Haslem remembers. “I was like, ‘Take it.’"
“YOU GOOD?”
Max Strus remembers the first time he met Haslem. After the NBA Finals run in 2020, the HEAT had essentially six weeks to put together their roster and prepare for training camp in early December. Strus was added on November 30. There was no summer program. No offseason training. No opportunity to familiarize.
On the first day of training camp, Haslem walked right into the practice court at Miami-Dade Arena and immediately approached Strus to introduce himself. By name.
“A guy like that, a legend in this game who has been around for this long, he shouldn’t have to introduce himself to anybody let alone a rookie,” Strus says. “I think that spoke volumes to who he is as a person.”
Haslem isn’t exactly handing out business cards, but there’s a ritual to his introductions. He wants you to know him not so he can be known. He wants you to know who to come to, who can help. He’s been in their shoes, literally.
“Hey man, if you need me, I’m always going to be a phone call away,” Adebayo recalls Haslem saying on their first meeting. “I know the good and the bad people in this city. You need me with corporations or in the streets, I’m willing to come and take care of you. Just give me a phone call.”
“I want these guys to understand that I care about them as human beings, not just basketball players or people that can win games for me or people that can bring a lot of notoriety to the organization,” Haslem says. “Before I even get into anything that has to do with basketball, I approach you as a human being and as a person and build that equity with you. And then we can get into the basketball s***.”
Even though Adebayo was a first-round pick that year, access to Haslem’s aid wasn’t a privilege reserved for certain players. When Gabe Vincent was presented with a business opportunity during the offseason, Haslem was his first call. As Robinson struggled to adjust to a changing role and fluctuating minutes last season, he says he regularly leaned on Haslem to provide guidance through those murky waters. Tyler Herro says only that the first time he had to call Haslem for help, “it was quite the experience.”
“He’s always been the person to turn to,” Adebayo says. “And obviously if you get caught out here in these Miami streets, he’s from here, he knows his people. It’s nothing to call him and say, ‘Dawg, I’m stuck.’
“He’ll do the best thing he can do to get you out.”
Maybe you don’t text. Maybe you think you’re good and you don’t need anything. Maybe you think, ‘I don’t need to bother him.’ You’d be wrong. Haslem will check in anyways, whether you expect it or not.
“He’s the type of dude who just reaches out to you,” Caleb Martin says. “That caught me off guard because he doesn’t have to do that. Someone like him, usually people have to go to them, but he just reaches out to you to let you know that to him he’s not trying to separate levels with anybody – he’s trying to get on the same level as you. He’s making sure you feel he’s there for you.”
“A lot of guys say they’ve got you, but there’s only a handful that really got you,” De La Grana says.
THE ENFORCER
Haslem is hardly a man of few words, but he isn’t a man of just words. Just a couple of years ago, Miami was fighting for playoff seeding against the Philadelphia 76ers in the final week of the regular season. He had hardly been in the game for two minutes before getting ejected for going toe to toe and shoving a pointed finger – not a soft point, a real ‘You Find That Man’ Harrison Ford point – into the face of Dwight Howard. Howard had re-directed Haslem towards the floor on the previous possession, something Haslem says he had noticed Howard doing to many players that season – Howard was among the league leaders in technical fouls – on film. This was not going to be left unaddressed.
“I’d been watching him doing that all year,” Haslem says. “We’re veterans, we both put our work in in the league. I expect a different amount of respect. I didn’t get the respect I felt like I deserved. When it happened, I thought about it for a second. I was playing well. The timing was just bad. Then I said to myself, ‘I always tell my guys, don’t take no s***.’
“If you stand for that once, every time you play them they’re just going to do it again. I chose to stand up and protect myself and be the example that I preach.”
Haslem was ejected from the game. They were his first two, and only, minutes of the season.
For anyone who knew Haslem, his accelerated fracas with Howard was hardly a surprise. This was not exactly someone who had ever let aggressions towards his teammates slide. Back in the 2012 postseason, Indiana’s Tyler Hansbrough put Wade on the deck with a hard foul in the opening minutes Game 5’s second quarter. As Haslem is helping Wade up, you can see him looking directly at Hansbrough and teammate Lou Amundson as they slap hands. At that point, “the decision was made,” Haslem said on Robinson’s The Long Shot podcast. “I’m f****** somebody up.”
After a timeout one minute later – during which Haslem told Spoelstra to stay out of it – Hansbrough caught the ball on a roll to the rim.
“I thought about it,” Haslem told Robinson. “I said, ‘s***, should I? I might never get this chance again.
The ensuing actions from Haslem – who had received eight stiches the game before after taking a blow to the head – can best be described as Clobberin’ Time. The Miami crowd gave him a standing ovation.
Though he was suspended for the next game, which the HEAT took to wrap up the series in six, contrition was not in the cards.
“Rabbit hunting is fun,” Haslem said about the incident at the time, with a line that you could easily mistake these days for a fake quote on a social media graphic. “But it ain’t funny when the rabbit has the gun.”
“This is true, I definitely said that,” Haslem confirms.
IN THE PIT
There was a time when Haslem was one of the best role players in the entire league. The proverbial Other Guy every team wants to put next to their Guys. Need someone to crash the glass, turn around, bust it back down the floor and get a stop? He was your guy. Need relief points on the baseline? Knockdown. Need someone to put such a stranglehold on everything Dallas wants to run through Dirk Nowitzki that they’ll be throwing rocks at the rim? He’ll make it his mission in life.
To call his career wildly successful would be the understatement of the year. He’s been a part of every sort of team achievement that exists in the NBA. He’s earned generational wealth and turned it into a growing business empire. He’s done it all in the city he grew up in, a city that now calls him a legend. Everyone has a Haslem story, even if most are too colorful to tell. Like the team he called home, he wasn’t for everyone, and maybe that prevents him from being called beloved outside of South Florida – but the respect is universal.
It would all be enough to stop right there, Haslem having literally become the best version of himself, to borrow some Spoelstra speak. But that’s not what we’re going to end with. Accomplishments are firm record. Memories are something else. If there’s a memory most worth leaving about Haslem, beyond the fire and the brimstone and the work and all that staying ready so you never have to get ready, it’s how he treated people you would normally never hear from.
Rob Pimental joined the HEAT before the 2011-12 lockout season having no idea what he was getting himself into. Pimental had been the equipment manager for the Sacramento Kings for nearly 15 years. The Kings had made some playoff runs during his time there, but he hadn’t experienced anything in the same galaxy as the media circus that was the early 2010’s HEAT.
“It was kind of like being thrown into the fire,” Pimental says.
While Pimental was trying to learn the habits and the needs of a star and veteran-laden team, Haslem was low maintenance. Nobody had given him anything on his way up, and his expectations hadn’t changed. Haslem was not, however, above testing the new guy a little bit.
“In his own funny way, he kind of made fun of me a little bit,” Pimental said. “I didn’t know how to take it. One day he said, ‘You can’t be sensitive around here. If you’re sensitive, you’re not going to survive here.’”
“You got to treat the janitor the same way you treat the CEO,” Haslem says. “You have to have that respect for everybody in the locker room. He’s here to work with us, not for us. When Rob came in, he was a little reserved, soft spoken, so I just gave him a little s*** to open him up a little bit and let him know, ‘Hey man, if I give you s*** that means I like you. If I don’t speak to you at all, that’s when you should be worried.’”
Pimental took that to heart but being sensitive is not the same as being stressed out, and he was living in one of the most stressful situations that has ever come to pass in modern sports. Haslem had always been respectful, always a good morning, always a thank you, but it was in those stressful times when Pimental found out who Haslem really was.
“I thought I knew everything when I got here. A couple times I was really stressed out and he was always that guy who would come over and put his arm around you. He’s like, ‘Dude, you’re going to survive. It’s basketball, man.’”
You learn about Haslem, you learn about the HEAT. And once you’re a part of it, Haslem makes sure you know it.
“When we won that first championship, he always made sure that you knew you were a part of it,” Pimental says. “Not just an afterthought. You were a part of the whole thing.
“I really respect the person that he is, because the fact of the matter is that he treats everyone equally. If you’re a player on his team or a staff member on his team, you’re no less or no better than anyone else. That’s the one thing you don’t get all the time.”
If nothing else, that’s who Haslem deserves to be remembered as. A fierce competitor, yes. A walking reminder of everything the franchise has ever valued. Of course. An absolute artist with colorful language, the Monet of the M***********. Funny. Reliable. Accountable. Everything you’ve heard is true, even if the reality of the legend isn’t soft and cuddly.
But he’s also just good people, and he brought other good people together. That’s part of making it to 20 years, too.
Spoelstra says he has tried not to think too much about these being Haslem’s final games, in the regular season at least, wearing a HEAT uniform. Reality is inevitable. It also won’t be too distressing. This is a See You Later, not a Goodbye. Haslem and the HEAT are inseparable, because Haslem is the HEAT, woven into the fabric of the day-to-day with no loose threads.
Several years ago, Spoelstra brought in a group of Navy SEALs to speak at training camp. They told stories about how the best SEAL platoon leaders doubled as the best mentors – driving their units harder than anybody but always doing the work with them. The best leaders were the ones right there in the pit with everyone else.
“That’s UD to a T,” Spoelstra says. “Anytime anybody needs to do extra conditioning, UD will be the one to tell them, ‘Hey, this is how we do it here. You’re not doing it to the standard. You have to do extra work. And I’m going to be with you. I’m going to do all this with you.'”
What else could you ask from a standard bearer?
Man of the people, man for the people, the man in the locker room. Haslem says it’s that room, the camaraderie and bonds inside of it, that he’ll miss the most. But even when he’s gone, he’ll always be there.