Major key alert!Pearl Jam will be here on April 9th, but first, Dwyane Wade has an invitation for Eddie Vedder and his bandmates...
Posted by Miami Heat on Saturday, March 26, 2016
Pearl Jam is finally on its way to Miami next week after what feels like forever. But this time, the godfathers of grunge may not escape with simply getting drunk at Club Deuce and jamming out in Little Haiti. Vedder and company will have to dribble through Dwyane Wade first – as yesterday the Miami Heat shooting guard raised the most kind-hearted challenge in hardwood history.
“What’s up Eddie?” Wade asks in the video posted to the Heat's Facebook page. “This is Dwyane Wade...” he adds, you know, just in case you aren't familiar. Flash then flashes the key to “his house” – the American Airlines Arena, where Pearl Jam will perform – and invites Eddie and the band to "come and shoot hoops” whenever they'd like. “You got the key,” he says. It’s an offer they can’t refuse.
Though they probably should. Standing at a mere five-foot-seven', the 51-year-old Vedder is a clear mismatch in this case. Even if he manages to stack his remaining four band members on top of him, creating some sort of grunge skyscraper, Pearl Jam will still surely get its collective ankles broken by D-Wade.
Wade’s words may speak friend, but there’s an insidious insult in this invite — the ten-second opening clip shows Wade draining a game-winning buzzer-beater against Vedder’s darling Chicago Bulls. Wade's a born-and-bred Chicagoan, but his loyalty to the Heat runs a decade deep — almost as long as Pearl Jam’s absence from Miami.
With R. Kelly, Justin Bieber, and Julio Iglesias making their way to the AAA soon, this whole basketball thing could be a fun marketing technique for American Airlines Arena. Want to play the AAA, Julio? First you've got to steal the ball from Justise Winslow. Let's all take a moment to imagine Chris Bosh snapping Bieber's tight white cheeks with a wet towel in the locker room.
Still, Wade will have to get through Pearl Jam first. And we’re not sure Wade knows that bassist Jeff Ament apparently plays hard in the paint and that rhythm guitarist Stone Gossard has been known to hide razor blades in the tongue of his Reebok Pumps, so Dwyane may actually have his hands full.
Pearl Jam. 8 p.m. Saturday, April 9, at the American Airlines Arena, 601 Biscayne Blvd., Miami; 786-777-1000; aaarena.com. Tickets cost $67 plus fees via Ticketmaster.com.
