They did the Heat legend wrong.

Credit: D.A. Varela/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Dwyane Wade is the latest athlete to suffer the slings and arrows of the internet’s jokes after having the bad fortune of a bewilderingly unrecognizable statue.

In the annals of the internet, typically speaking, you see the word “unrecognizable” to describe a celeb whose weight fluctuated or hair changed. But in this case, I’d wager it’d be hard to decipher if this statue was intended to be Wade, were it not for the Miami Heat jersey. It was unveiled Sunday in front of Miami’s Kaseya Center, honoring a moment in which the retired NBA legend shouted “this is my house” after a big shot.

Tweet may have been deleted I mean…come on. At least, to my eye, that does not look like Wade. It’s perhaps not as bad as that infamous Cristiano Ronaldo debacle from 2017, but it’s reminiscent. There is a long history of these sorts of bad statues, but the Wade one really isn’t great. Sports pundit and Ringer founder Bill Simmons said it’s the worst he’s ever seen.

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The internet, naturally, responded with jokes.

Tweet may have been deleted Tweet may have been deleted Tweet may have been deleted Tweet may have been deleted Tweet may have been deleted Tweet may have been deleted Wade himself said he loves the statue, so perhaps that’s all that matters.

Tim Marcin is an Associate Editor on the culture team at Mashable, where he mostly digs into the weird parts of the internet. You’ll also see some coverage of memes, tech, sports, and the occasional hot take. You can find him posting endlessly about Buffalo wings on the website formerly known as Twitter at @timmarcin.

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