Dwyane Wade

Dwyane Wade
SG, 6’4, 220lbs, 35 years old, 14 years of experience

The decline is evident, and none of what Wade brings is in keeping with what the team both needs and claims to want (youth, athleticism, spacing). Nevertheless, even as the explosion wanes, Wade is still the clear-cut second best talent on the team, and plays suitably to his declining talents. Whether he exercises his option or not is still unclear - if he does, a full scale rebuild will be off the table for another year. But since a full scale rebuild will inevitably mean the impending loss of Butler anyway, this need not be such a bad thing. Wade can still contribute, and the fact that he is now old by NBA standards does not mean those contributions are for nought. So now it is time to make friends with Rondo.

Player Plan: Has exercised his option. He will be a good and respected if declining and oft-injured player to keep the team in very late playoff contention, for the amount of time it takes to resolve his situation. Which could be so quick that it will have happened even by the time you read this.

After yet another bewildering Fred Hoiberg season, filled with big upset wins against quality opposition (normally on international television) followed by sloppy losses against inferior opposition, the Bulls somehow fell into the playoffs, buoyed by the return from injury of Dwyane Wade. That tendency to play big against distinctly better teams must serve them well here, as that is certainly what they now face in the form of the Boston Celtics, the unlikely yet legitimate number one seed.

Having returned earlier than expected, Dwyane Wade will give Chicago all the experience possible, a battle tested poise, as well as significant offensive talent they have sorely lacked. The Bulls have starved for offense all season, and although he will never again be at the peak of his powers, Wade showed in last season’s playoffs (21.4 point average in 14 games and a 22.3 PER) that there is still one more gear in the chamber if needs be. Needs do be right now, and with Wade’s return, Chicago has the slim outside upset chance that would have been non-existent without him.

The idea of a one-club man is a romanticised ideal in sports, yet one increasingly impossible to achieve in this heightened free agency era. Even Paul Pierce eventually got traded. However, it does occasionally happen, and Luol Deng is one of the few true veterans in this league to have spent his whole career with one team. Indeed, the only players to have been with their current teams longer than Deng has been with Chicago are Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, Nick Collison, the Miami duo of Udonis Haslem and Dwyane Wade, and the Spurs trio of Parker, Ginobili and Duncan, while Jameer Nelson and Anderson Varejao are the only other 2004 draftees to have never left the team that first signed them. This kind of longevity, then, is rare - usually, one party is sufficiently disgruntled with the other by now to have moved on.

After the Jones buyout came their renouncements. With the team option on Mario Chalmers exercised, the team promptly renounced everyone other than Dwyane Wade [sic] and Joel Anthony. This meant that 10 free agents from the previous season were renounced; Jermaine O'Neal, Quentin Richardson, Udonis Haslem, Dorell Wright, Yakhouba Diawara, Rafer Alston, Carlos Arroyo, Jamaal Magloire, Shavlik Randolph and Kenny Hasbrouck. Some free agents from previous seasons were also still clogging up cap space; namely, Alonzo Mourning, Steve Smith, John Wallace, Wang Zhi Zhi, Gary Payton, Bimbo Coles, Christian Laettner, and Shandon Anderson. In total, before these renouncements took place, Miami's free agent cap holds amounted to a total of $88,184,132, $24,166,800 alone was for Jermaine O'Neal.

[...] Even though Pat Riley said it wouldn't happen, Miami pawned off Beasley to Minnesota in exchange for the Timberwolves's 2011 and 2014 second round draft picks. [David Kahn might not have a plan, but he's made two unbelievable steals in the last two years that are in danger of going overlooked. This was one of them. More of the other in another post.] Subtracting Beasley's salary and adding one more cap hold put the Heat's total salary number at $24,259,284, cap room of $33,784,716. Wade then re-signed to a less-than-maximum contract, which started at $14,200,000 and paying $107,565,000 over the full six seasons; for reference's sake, this is over $16 million less than Joe Johnson got from Atlanta. (This is also the only time Joe Johnson will ever get mentioned in a "creative" financing post. Nothing creative about that contract.) Sign and trades for Bosh and James were then completed, both players signing identical $109,837,500 contracts starting at $14,500,000.