Tim Hardaway

Hardaway, frustrated with the team's losing record and unhappy with coach Rick Adelman, campaigned to be traded. In the middle of the 1995-96 season he was, to the Miami Heat, where he had two twenty-point games in his first week. The following season, Hardaway led the Heat in scoring and in assists, propelling the team to a 61-21 record and the Eastern Conference Finals, where they were defeated by the Chicago Bulls. Hardaway was a solid player on the still-solid team for the next two seasons as well, but by 1999 knee problems were beginning to slow his play. Hardaway also developed issues with the Heat's coach, Pat Riley, and these factors both contributed to Hardaway's being traded to the Dallas Mavericks for the 2001-02 season.

Hardaway did not remain in Dallas long; in February 2002 he was traded to the Denver Nuggets. He was in his fourteenth game in a Nuggets uniform on March 23, 2002, when Seattle Super Sonics player Randy Livingston stepped on his left foot and broke it during the first quarter of the game. This caused Hardaway to miss the remainder of the season. That June, only days before the 2002 draft, the Nuggets decided to buy out last two seasons of Hardaway's contract, worth $7.9 million. Although Hardaway attempted to find a place on another team, tough salary caps made teams more interested in promising, cheaper rookies than in established but more expensive veterans, and he could not find a new playing position by the start of the 2002-2003 season.

After he was unable to find a playing position with an NBA team in time for the 2002-03 season, Hardaway became a basketball analyst for the cable sports network ESPN. He appears on the ESPN Shootaround show, which airs on Friday nights before the featured NBA games. Hardaway is married, and he and his wife Yolanda have two children, Tim Jr. and Nia.