While word surfaced earlier this week that a team in the Chinese Basketball Association has offered Dwyane Wade a three-year contract worth $25MM, Rodney McGruder would like to see the future Hall-of-Famer stick with the Heat.
“I hope he stays with us,” McGruder said of his Heat teammate on Tuesday, per Manny Navarro of The Miami Herald. “That’s his personal decision, but I would love to have him back. … I’ve got a sense that he wants to play in the NBA [based off of] when he came back to play for us [at the February trade deadline] and the things that he showed in the playoffs.”
Although Wade hasn’t announced any decisions yet, international basketball reporter David Pick (Twitter link) is told that the rumblings linking Wade to China “aren’t as serious as advertised.”
According to Pick, the Zhejiang Golden Bulls – the club that reportedly made that $25MM offer to Wade – have secured another scorer for the upcoming season by agreeing to sign Marcus Denmon to a $1.2MM deal. A former Missouri standout, Denmon was a second-round pick in the 2012 draft but never appeared in an NBA regular season game.
Here’s more from around the Southeast:
- Ira Winderman of The South Florida Sun Sentinel suggests that if the Heat can lock up Justise Winslow to a long-term extension similar to Josh Richardson‘s four-year, $42MM contract, they should try to do so. Otherwise, it might make sense to evaluate Winslow during the 2018/19 season rather than signing him to a rookie scale extension before October’s deadline. The former No. 10 pick would be eligible for restricted free agency in 2019 if he’s not extended this year.
- The Magic completed a pair of trades within the last week, acquiring cash in both deals. According to Bobby Marks of ESPN.com (Twitter link), Orlando received $2MM from the Thunder and $1MM from the Grizzlies. In addition to the money they acquired, the two trades allowed the Magic to turn Rodney Purvis and the draft rights to 2015 second-rounder Tyler Harvey into Jarell Martin.
- In order to officially complete the Carmelo Anthony trade today, the Hawks renounced their free agent rights to Malcolm Delaney (Early Bird) and last year’s two-way players Josh Magette and Andrew White (both Non-Bird), per RealGM’s transactions log.
Question for Luke – what exactly do the teams do with the money when they trade a player for cash, or sell a draft pick for cash? Where does that go?
I wouldn’t sign Winslow just yet, he’s got to at least average 15-16 ppg next season and prove he can stay healthy before I offer him anything.
Kind of agree that Winslow needs to do more, but I think he has got a lot of potential. Somehow I noticed guys with a lot of potential like Winslow, Whiteside have kind of stagnated & not reached the heights expected of them, just wondering if is the fault of Miami’s developmental team, maybe not up to the task to get the best of this guys, who knows.
I don’t think it’s the Heat’s development team. By all accounts, they’re excellent, and have actually improved a lot of players (Whiteside, Wayne Ellington, James Johnson, an undrafted Tyler Johnson, and so on). Take, for instance, Whiteside. You mention he has stagnated on the Heat, but he was considered a washout before signing with them. His issue seems to be selfishness. The guy doesn’t pass, lets a lack of touches on offense adversely affect his defense, and so on. There’s nothing a developmental team can do if a guy, for whatever reason, isn’t mentally into it. As for Winslow, he was injured most of his sophomore season, and the beginning of last season. He’s still pretty young, and has never really been a featured player. His numbers aren’t very good, but if you watch the Heat on a consistent basis, there’s no denying that he impacts the game in a positive way. I think he’ll show a lot of improvement this year; he started putting up better numbers toward the end of last season.
Dude is a Miami Heat hater, so I would just leave it alone. I’m pretty sure he has never even seen them play
Again….Winslow missed an entire season with an injury and Whiteside is a quitter
I would see if they can get Winslow on a team friendly extension, similar to Richardson, but a bit less. If he takes it, nice. If not, hopefully he plays well enough to make it a tougher decision in the offseason, and I feel like this is going to be a big year for Justise Winslow, as he has been healthy for a year now, and has a chance to continue to improve where he has so far.