Dwyane Wade is shedding light on why he’s one of Ed Sheeran’s biggest fan.
On the March 13 episode of TODAY with Jenna & Friends, Wade recalled what it was like to run into Sheeran at the 2024 Met Gala and he told Jenna Bush Hager that it felt like he was having an “out of an body” experience.
“You don’t get a chance to see people that you’re fans of, and so being able to be invited to the Met Gala, you get to see a lot of people. And so I saw Ed. I call him, Ed. Sorry, but we close. We met now so we’re close,” he laughed. “I saw him coming. I got out of body a little bit.”
The former NBA star explained that he used to play Sheeran’s music right before a game to get pumped up. One of the songs on his playlist was Sheeran’s 2014 ballad “Thinking Out Loud.”
When the song started playing on TODAY with Jenna & Friends, Wade then started to sing along with the lyrics.
“And the crowds don’t remember my name / When my hands don’t play the strings the same way,” he sang while impressing Jenna.
“Wait, you’ve got a good voice,” Jenna said.
“No, I just got low with it,” he replied. “But that was it. Those words right there caught me. As an athlete, you go through times where obviously, the crowd is cheering for you, then you go through times where the crowd is not cheering for you. And it was like 2014 when my talents was going this way a little bit, and I felt that. I felt the words to that song. And obviously, he’s an amazing artist. The melody is beautiful, and so I just connected with it and I listened to it over and over and over again.”
Wade then compared artists to athletes and said they go through the same things sometimes when their fans always expect them to be great at whatever they do.
“You hear artists, you hear actors, you hear people talking about they will not allow you to grow from certain characters, and so it’s the same thing in sports. Once you’re great, you got to be great at all times,” he said. “And you know when you’re not at that same level.”
Right before they moved on to the next topic, Jenna played Wade a short video message that Sheeran had made for him. In the clip, Sheeran told Wade that it was “lovely” meeting him at the Met Gala and he invited “The Cube” host to one of his shows in the U.S.
“Ah, ya’ll got me on that one,” he said, shocked by Sheeran’s video.
