Dwyane Wade feels misled by the Bulls and hasn’t talked with anyone from the front office for two months, writes Alex Kennedy of HoopsHype. Those strained feelings have led to rumors of an impending buyout and the possibility that Wade might be headed to Cleveland, Los Angeles or Miami.
Sources tell Kennedy that Wade asked management for assurances that Chicago would have a competitive team next season before deciding to opt in for $23.8MM. The front office promised him it would, so Wade announced June 21 that he will stay for another year. The next day, the Bulls traded Jimmy Butler to the Timberwolves and signaled the start of a rebuilding process.
At 35, Wade doesn’t have a lot of years left in the league and he doesn’t want to waste a season playing for a lottery team. Kennedy states Wade’s only discussions with the organization since the deal were with coach Fred Hoiberg and didn’t involve anything related to the team.
Several recent stories in the national media have been negative toward Wade, which Kennedy speculates is the Bulls’ way of angering him so he might be willing to accept less in a buyout just to get out of Chicago. A recent report from ESPN suggested the Bulls’ younger players don’t like having Wade as a teammate. A Fox Sports story claimed Wade and Butler had a strained relationship, which Butler denies.
Even if a breakup is imminent, all public comments from the Bulls’ front office have indicated Wade is staying with the team. Kennedy adds that Wade is preparing to report to training camp if a buyout doesn’t happen in the next three weeks.
A source tells Kennedy the Cavaliers and Heat are the most likely destinations for Wade once a buyout is completed. If he does go to Cleveland, he will probably become a starter, with J.R. Smith being moved to a reserve role. The Cavs see a Wade addition as a way to improve their roster and appease LeBron James before he enters free agency next summer.
Wade recently took his children out of school in Chicago and moved them back to Miami, but Kennedy warns not to read too much into the move. Wade and Heat president Pat Riley have barely communicated since their 2016 breakup, and Wade wouldn’t be guaranteed a starting spot in Miami. Other teams, such as the Nuggets and Bucks, who both tried to sign Wade last summer, could also get involved.
Sounds like D-Wade is
*puts on sunglasses*
tired of the Bull.
D-Wade & the rest of the Bulls fans are all tired of GarPax. He’s gone very soon.
I doubt they will be gone anytime soon.
If at this point, if you’re having to pick up D-Wade to appease LeBron, then you already feel he’s going to be leaving, and Kyrie was absolutely right in wanting to get the heck out of Dodge…
I call BS on Wade being mislead by the Bulls. He easily could have waited a week after the draft to pick up his option. There’s absolutely no chance he didn’t know there was a possibility that Butler could be dealt and that the team would begin to rebuild.
Players and agents talk all the time. Do Wade and his “people” really think we’re all stupid enough to believe he was blindsided by the Butler trade? Are you telling me he didn’t have any inside information via his own agent or from his buddy Jimmy that something could be brewing between the Bulls and Minnesota, Boston, or Cleveland before the draft? C’mon man!
To try to paint a picture that he was caught off guard is laughable and disingenuous. Wade chose to pick up his option because he wanted to get paid $23.8 million. The truth of the matter is if he waited a few days until after the draft to do so (which he easily could have done), he couldn’t claim or plant anonymous sourced BS stories with the media that he was lied to by Bulls management. What Wade chose to do is guarantee himself, that no matter what, he was going to get a hefty check, and if Butler does get dealt, try to leverage the Bulls into paying him a ridiculous amount of money to go away and then sign a 1-yr deal to team up with LeBron again.
All this buyout chatter is nonsense. Just because he’s D-Wade and was once a great player for MIAMI, are the Bulls REALLY supposed to pay him $23.8 m to go away because “it’s the right thing to do?” Or maybe pay him $20 m, or $18.5 m? C’mon man! That’s garbage. Want to know what the right thing to do is? How about Wade fulfilling his end of the contract he negotiated with the Bulls by showing up and giving his best effort night in and night out?
Dwyane’s a grown up – he’ll be ok, and at the end of the season he’ll add another $23.8 million to his bank account.
If you remember correctly, Wade reportedly met woth Bulls management prior to that stuff happening, and he said they told him, the same way Jimmy Butler says they told him, that they weren’t moving Butler……..
From Joe Cowley’s Chicago Sun-Times story on June 5, 2017 (Cowley’s the Bulls beat reporter who w/out a doubt despises both Gar/Pax) reporting on the Bulls and Jimmy Butler’s after-season meeting held on June 4 —
— “The source said Paxson told Butler that if a team called with a trade proposal that was stacked in the Bulls’ favor, the front office would explore it. But Butler always has been realistic enough to understand that was a possible scenario.” —
So what you (formerlyz) seem to believe really isn’t true at all – the Bulls actually told Butler if they received a (trade) proposal that they believed was stacked in their favor, they WOULD trade him.
Six days later on June 10th GarPax told Wade the exact same thing they told Butler — Here’s an excerpt from Chicago Tribune beat writer KC Johnson’s story on the Bulls/Wade meeting:
— The meeting, which was described as positive and came on the heels of a similar meeting between management and Butler earlier last week, covered a wide variety of topics, including the possibilities for next season’s team, one source said.
Wade has until June 27 to decide on his $23.8 million player option to return to the Bulls next season. The Bulls haven’t pressed Wade on his decision out of respect for the process. But the franchise has been preparing for Wade to opt in all along, and most league observers believe Wade will return.
For his part, Wade was publicly consistent all of last season on the factors that would drive his decision — state of the team, family and money. He addressed those issues in a reflective and transparent 19-minute session with reporters on April 29.
“Jimmy is, you know, a huge component in me being here. You know, what’s his future like? But at the end of the day it is a me decision,” Wade said. “Everyone knows that Jimmy’s my guy, and I’m here because of our conversation (last summer). But a lot of it depends on the whole big picture. Jimmy’s a big piece, but it’s a big picture as an organization.”
Wade, who averaged 18.3 points in 60 games last season, said on April 29 he enjoyed his first season in Chicago and had no regrets in leaving the Heat. He said he looked forward to a blunt exit meeting with executive vice president John Paxson and general manager Gar Forman.
“I want it smack dead in my face of how it’s going to be, what their thought of my role or position could be here — all of it,” Wade said in late April. “I respect Gar and Pax from the relationship I’ve been able to develop with those guys.
“Whether there are a lot of options (elsewhere in the league) or not, I’m in a very good situation. As a player, you can decide what you want to do. And I have a lot of money to decide if I want to take it or not. It’s not a bad thing because I worked my butt off for it over my career, so no rush in my mind. I’m just going to get away and let my hair grow a little bit, get a tan.” —
From a second KC Johnson/Chicago Tribune story on June 21, 2017 reporting that the Bulls were involved in Butler trade talks with several teams, including Cleveland …
— In fact, one source said Wade all along planned to pick up his option regardless of what happened with Butler. He has enjoyed living in Chicago and obviously wouldn’t command a similar salary on the open market after years of sacrificing paydays for the Heat. — KC Johnson, Chicago Tribune, June 21, 2017
If Wade had any doubts or believed he was being mislead or lied to by Gar/Pax, he could have waited until JUNE 27TH to p/up his option – but HE CHOSE NOT TO DO THAT – he picked it up early so he’d be paid handsomely one way or the other.
This “I was mislead” or “I was lied to” is fake news. It’s a planted story in hopes of getting some sort of leverage where he forces the Bulls to pay all or most of his contract to go away. #NoDiceDWade
To be perfectly honest, the reason why the NBA is my fourth favorite major American sports league is because it feels sometimes like the league is composed of a bunch of 7 foot tall kindergarteners. I realize ego management is always a factor for running a pro sports team, and of course with the size of a basketball roster versus the other major sports, any one guy is a much bigger part of his team than a guy on a 25 or 53 man roster. Still, watching the NBA and seeing some of the butthurtery over the last couple years, you’d think that nobody had ever seen a player change teams before. It makes it hard to root for these guys sometimes.