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CHICAGO (AP) -For nearly an hour Friday morning, Dwyane Wade was in constant motion, shooting jumper after jumper. His red tank top was dripping with sweat, his chest was heaving and fatigue was clearly starting to set in.
Finally, he was down to his last shot, a 20-footer from the right side. When it swished, he whooped and shimmied.
"I feel like it's my rookie year all over again," Wade said.
In some respects, the All-Star guard who carried the Miami Heat to the 2006 NBA title might be right in that assessment.
Wade is essentially starting over this summer, eager to put two injury-filled seasons behind him. He believes the solution is spending three hours a day, five days a week, putting his body to the limit at a gymnasium in a hardscrabble Chicago neighborhood, a place where he can focus on basketball and nothing else.
There are no fans. No cell phones, no distractions.
And most importantly - for the first time in more than a year, no pain in Wade's surgically repaired left knee, either.
"No pain when I wake up in the morning, no pain when I go home at night," Wade said. "I know I'm on the right track. Been a long time to get there."
Indeed, it has been a long process, and it's just getting started, too.
He desperately wants to play for the United States in the Beijing Olympics; that team will be selected in about six weeks after a late-June training camp in Las Vegas. And he wants his game razor-sharp for the next NBA season, when the Heat will try to erase memories of a horrid year Wade found both incredibly frustrating and disappointing.
Wade granted The Associated Press access to his workout Friday, a rare look at how he's working toward those goals.
"I want people to know that I'm working and working hard," Wade told The AP after the session was over. "This is what I do. This is what I love to do. I don't want anyone questioning my work ethics."
No one seeing these sessions would.
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