Dwyane Wade is walking through Championship Alley, the mural-draped hallway leading to the court from the Heat locker room at AmericanAirlines Arena that celebrates the team's 2006 NBA championship.

As he heads to a team function, he is told of Kobe Bryant's 61-point game that night in New York.

"With Bynum out, there goes your scoring championship," a passerby says, as Wade heads for the postgame obligation after yet another Heat victory.

"He can have it," Wade says with a smile. "I've got no issue with that. That's not what it's about."

With that, he continues down the corridor plastered with faces of euphoric Heat players and disconsolate Mavericks.

With a championship ring already affixed, Dwyane Wade is traversing a path unlike any other in the NBA.

He started on top.

Yet he never truly had to lead. There was always Pat Riley or Shaquille O'Neal or some other legend alongside.

Seemingly from the instant he arrived, he had the cell-phone commercials with Charles Barkley.

Yet it was as a straight man, Bud Abbott to Charles' Lou Costello.

And he had the leading scoring average on the U.S. Olympic redeem team in Beijing. But it was as a reserve, a sixth man behind Kobe, LeBron, Kidd and Carmelo.

He had it all. But what did he really have?

Coming off a league-worst 15-67 season, after spending May and June watching Kobe and LeBron from the couch, after knee and shoulder injuries cast doubts on his future, there suddenly were questions of whether Flash merely was a flash.

At 26, it was as if the table-for-two NBA of Magic and Larry, Magic and Michael, Kobe and LeBron no longer had room for what had stood as one of the league's freshest faces.

And then?

And then the kid grew up, and the kid stuff ended.

On the eve of training camp, Wade led a team meeting, stressing that the woe-is-we attitude of 15-67 had to cease, that everyone, everyone, would be held accountable.

After practices, there would be rigorous weight training, because leadership would come by example.

And along the way, there would be candor about a marriage not so perfect, failings like any other 20-something trying to find his way, and, yes, that is Gabrielle Union over there as a divorce wends its way through the Illinois court system.

Dwyane Wade, you see, has no time to be caught up in scoring leads or MVP races. He has moved past all the stories that extol relative sainthood, be it tithing to the church or purchasing one for his mother.

His world is more defined these days.

He wants to be part of a winning team. Wants to be respected for enduring talent. And wants to lead in a manner that makes it only logical for teammates to follow.

"It takes more than just putting up points to be the guy in this league," he says. "A lot of people say if they got the shots they could be this or that. Well it takes more than that. It's a day-to-day thing.

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"I've got some young guys on this team and sometimes I feel like I'm carrying my sons around, I swear. They make it all worthwhile coming here every day and seeing the new challenges that they're going to bring. These young guys, I haven't seen nothing like 'em. But we need 'em, and they're very big for us and you've got to make sure you give them that confidence. But you stay on them as well."

For the first time in his six-year NBA career, Dwyane Wade is a team captain. Last season, it was Udonis Haslem, a serviceable grunt, who was chosen to lead.

"I'm more vocal than I've ever been," Wade says. "And they understand it and listen. It's not in a disrespectful way. It's, 'Get the job done.'"

It was a difficult message to deliver the previous two seasons, considering it all too often would have come from the sideline, as he missed 31 games in both '06-07 and '07-08.

"I'm in there every day with the guys," he says. "I'm in a battle and I think that builds more of a team, when you see everyone in the battle, whether a guy is going the whole practice or not, to see everybody out there after you play 40-something minutes. That just makes the other guys feel more comfortable."

Until this season, it was difficult even for such a dynamic presence to find a place for true leadership. Call out Shaq for lack of effort? Take a position of leadership when Alonzo Mourning is on the court? Explain professionalism to Gary Payton?

But this season, his is the voice of experience, particularly with Shawn Marion still adjusting to the Eastern Conference and Jamaal Magloire and Mark Blount simply trying to hang on.