Dwyane Wade is the NBA's last cowboy.

Despite once being a massively lucrative part of the silver-screen industry, there was always something finite about the Hollywood Westerns. They were the comic book movies of another time, with powered-up heroes and moustache-twirling baddies, but they were constrained by the age in which they were made. Where movies are now only limited by our imaginations, Westerns followed a template with their six-shooters, cattle drives, spurs and saloons – things people are told about today but that our ancestors once actually remembered. They were movies destined for datedness by the bigger (guns) and the better (explosions) that would inevitably come with the technological advance of the future.

Clint Eastwood saw this and was part of this happening and he ushered in the modern, though fateful for the genre, Revisionist Western with Unforgiven, in which he played a grizzled, regretful gunslinger. Westerns would become about themselves as much as anything else, and eventually the genre became one that nobody in the younger age brackets cared much about.

As tactics and weaponry change in basketball, we are slowly saying goodbye to a certain genre of player. The mid-range game has been called a lost-art long before threes-and-layups became a philosophical revolution, but there have always been practitioners. Now, if you come into the league without a three-point shot, you get one. Nobody chooses the ancient path, like Wade did.

“I’ve always worked on my mid-range game,” Wade said. “I don’t shoot many threes, so what else am I working on?”

Players like Wade were once commonplace. Since the institution of the three-point line in 1979, there have been 180 player seasons where the guard used over a quarter of his team’s possessions while taking 1.5 threes a game or fewer. From ’79 to ’81, there were 23 of those seasons from players like Andrew Toney, World B. Free and Otis Birdsong.

This year, there’s only Wade. The last high-volume guard using an outdated arsenal, mathematically speaking. The last gunslinger.

“It’s cool. I don’t mind at all,” Wade said. “The game is changing. I like my game. I like the way I play. . . My game is effective to me. Everyone has what’s good for them, I guess I’m an old-school throwback player now with the way the game is changing.

“It puts me my own, so I’m fine with that.”

A HELPING HAND

Wade has scored 25 points in seven straight games, something he hasn’t done since 2010, but it’s not a stretch to say the streak wouldn’t be happening without the help of Goran Dragic.

Without Miami’s midseason acquisition, defenses would be free to load up on Wade, push his catches further and further away from the rim and make him shoot over multiple defenders. But with one of the league’s best point guards on the floor, Wade is free to create without the ball and ghost his defender – another skill many guards lack, but one that will always be emphasized by coaches.

“His cutting ability is unbelievable,” Dragic said. “When I play pick-and-roll, the whole defense looks at me, but then some players they look back, but he’s always choosing the right moment. When the guy looks, he goes.”

Talented as Dragic is, he’s also been willing to sacrifice during this stretch of games. Dragic could easily be a ball-dominant guard on just about any team, but while he’s creating more than he had been in Phoenix – where he often shared the court with two other point guards – he’s actually shooting less during his time in Miami. While he and Wade started off with comparable usage rates in the last eight games, Wade’s rate had spiked, and spiked quickly.

And Dragic is good with that.

“He’s our best player. That’s why he owned the ball. You can see what he did tonight,” Dragic said after Miami’s win over Portland. “We’re going to attack and try to find the best option at the end of games, and so far this is D-Wade. Everyone is fine with that.”

REAL USER POWER

It’s incredible to consider, but Wade has used 45.6 percent of Miami’s fourth-quarter possessions during this scoring streak. And that’s not even factoring in his passing. If you combine assist and usage rates, as ESPN’s Tom Haberstroh did recently, in fourth quarters for the entire season, only Russell Westbrook’s (80.7%) and LeBron James (77.5%) shoulder a greater offensive burden down the stretch than Wade (76.9%).

The first difference, of course, is that Wade rarely takes threes. In some ways that works in his favor, as modern defenses have become geared toward taking away the paint and the three-point line. So, while teams are usually happy with giving up mid-range jumpers and long floaters beneath the free-throw line, they’re really just containing Wade to his comfort zone.

His shot chart might not be the most modern shot chart in the league, but Wade has made it plenty efficient.

The other difference between Wade and a guard like Westbrook is age – the years and the mileage. While elite big men are often productive well into the second half of their careers, volume-scoring guards have typically fallen off, statistically, in their early 30s. So far, Wade is defying the odds. Take the following groups, for example:

Guards who have had multiple seasons of a usage rate over 30 percent, a true-shooting percentage over 52 and fewer than 1.5 threes taken per game: George Gervin, Michael Jordan, Dwyane Wade.

Guards at least 33 years old to post a usage rate over .300 with a true-shooting percentage over .540: Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade.

Guards who meet all criteria: Dwyane Wade.

Nobody has ever done what Wade, at 33, is doing right now, and certainly not in the way Wade is doing it. So, when you see Wade go nova in a fourth quarter…

Realize that you’re seeing it from an original.

“I don’t think I’ve played like any shooting guards,” Wade said. “I’ve never thought I played like anybody. When I came into the NBA they tried to compare me. I’ve never thought I’ve got a good comparison because I wasn’t a typical shooting guard.”

THE DUKE

While Eastwood eventually deconstructed the genre, John Wayne remained true to his legend. During the editing process for his last movie, The Shootist, Wayne insisted on editing out a scene in which he shoots a man in the back. It didn’t matter that he had shot men in the back on screen before, Wayne insisted that he hadn’t. He was who he thought he was, and he was going to keep it that way.

During the film, Wayne says: “Sometimes it isn't being fast that counts, or even accurate; but willing. Most men will draw a breath or blink an eye before they shoot. I won't.”

Sound like anyone?

Wade adds to his game each year, but he isn’t trying to change the essence of his game. He’s not going to wake up one day and take four threes a game, nor does he bemoan the direction the game is taking. He seems comfortable being the player that he is, even while everything changes around him.

This year, it matters that he won’t blink an eye because his team needs him to take them to the playoffs. But years from now, it will matter who he was and how he did what he did. He’ll be a legend, but like The Duke, he’ll be a legend of a bygone era.