Wade confirms he's returning for another season in Miami

MIAMI - Retirement can wait at least one more year for Dwyane Wade.

Wade announced on Sunday that he's returning for a 16th and final NBA season with the Miami Heat.

He basically spent the past four months weighing his options, and retirement was "an extremely real possibility" in his mind.

Instead, he'll be back in Miami, as the Heat desperately hoped. He's expected to sign a one-year deal for the veteran minimum of $2.4 million later this week.

"I've always done things my way," Wade said in an emotional social media video that he taped on Sunday afternoon and released in the evening.

"Whether they've good or whether they've been bad, I got here because I've decided things the way I feel is right for me and right for my family.

"I feel it's right to ask you guys to join me for one last dance, for one last season.

"This is it. I've given this game everything that I have, and I'm happy about that, and I'm going to give it for one last season."

Wade is Miami's career leader in points, assists, steals and games played.

His status was an enormous question mark this summer, especially now with the team a week away from going to training camp.

Miami has signed 19 players for camp, one shy of the maximum preseason allotment, and it was never a question why that last spot was kept open.

It was hardly a guarantee that Wade, who has a career average 22.5 points per game, would return.

His decision took months longer than some expected, partly because he was deciding what he wanted to do, partly because he was dealing with some personal business and some family business and partly because it took him and the Heat some time to figure out what made sense for both sides.

Wade's return basically means that Miami will have the same team - a young, rising team - this coming season as it had last season, when it went 44-38 and claimed the No 6 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

This time, though, the Heat will have Wade from the season's outset.

Wade returned to the Heat in a trade last February, after spending the 2016-17 season with Chicago and the start of last season with Cleveland.

He appeared in 26 games with Miami last season including playoffs, all off the bench, averaging 12.9 points.

The plan going into this season will be to keep Wade in that reserve role, probably somewhere between 20 and 25 minutes per game.

While he likely won't be starting games, it's fairly certain that he'll be finishing them. Coach Erik Spoelstra utilized Wade as a closer down the stretch last season, and the role is one in which Wade still flourishes.

Wade also signed a lifetime contract this summer with Chinese apparel company Li-Ning, a brand he's endorsed for the past several years.

That seemed to be the first real indicator that he was leaning toward returning for a 16th season, and another hint came in late July when he posted a video on social media of him playing a pickup game with his son and making a reference to "Year 16."

From there, it simply became a matter of Wade making up his mind.

"Let's enjoy it," Wade said. "Let's have some joy through this last season.

"Let's push this young team over the hump and let's write our own story to the end of this career, together. Together."

Associated Press