The Heat have given their Dwyane Wade statue a new face. ESPN reported that the club unveiled an updated version after the original's face was panned. Yahoo Sports' Sean Leahy wrote that the statue has a new, enhanced head following the criticism, and that fans will see it Friday when Miami returns home to face the Pacers.

Wade spoke about the change on Friday. CBS Sports, through Brad Crawford, quoted him: "I hope when people see it now, they see a better likeness of me." The feeds we have don't say who did the rework, what it cost or how long it took. They also don't say whether the whole statue was altered or only the head.

SB Nation's Ricky O'Donnell supplied the history. The Heat unveiled the statue about two years ago, at the start of the 2024-25 season, and he wrote that nearly everyone agreed it was terrible. In a headline shared with Yahoo Sports, he said it now "actually looks like him." Yahoo's feed also says the before-and-after comparison is "shocking." That is the outlets' judgment. We haven't seen the images.

The unveiling comes at the start of a Heat season that hasn't settled yet. Miami is 1-3 and fifth in the Southeast, but it enters Friday on a one-game winning streak. The Heat won 129-117 at Atlanta on Wednesday, Oct. 28. Before that they lost 113-109 to Dallas on Oct. 26 and 115-110 at Charlotte on Oct. 24. Both losses were by five points or fewer.

The crowd for Indiana at Miami will also be Wade's first look at the finished work with fans present, going by the Yahoo and CBS accounts. Wade's last season in our archive is 2019, when he played 72 games and averaged about 15 points, four rebounds and four assists. The Heat's Friday home game will be the first chance for the home crowd to judge the new face for themselves.