Dwyane Wade jokes that he shouldn't have to practice 'if I’m saving you guys with 9-1-1 shots'
The Chicago Bulls beat the Philadelphia 76ers on Sunday, restoring everything to order. Jimmy Butler scored a game-high 28 points, Dwyane Wade hit two clutch shots with just 4:19 and 3:10 left in the win, and the team defended its home court by a double-digit score. Chicago won 121-108, the Bulls moved a game behind .500 with 33 left to play, as the group once again went well out of its way to pretend like none of events of last week ever, ever happened.
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But it diiid. Wade and Butler destroyed the team’s players and core in general with a calculated, conniving pair of rants. Rajon Rondo somehow thought playing the tact card via Instagram was a great idea, and all were benched to start the team’s disastrous loss to Miami on Friday.
The Great Sixers Triumph was the needed salve, never mind that the team blew the entirety of a 20-point lead and that the 76ers (working without their best player by far in Joel Embiid) made the Bulls stars stick in the game until the very end. Never mind that Rondo and Butler and Wade still remain a terrible on-court fit during even the best of times, which these very much are not.
Now we have this, an expected leak from the squad’s team meeting from Friday. Bulls youngsters want the oldest of the oldsters, 35-year old Dwyane Wade, to practice more. From ESPN’s Nick Friedell:
“That’s one of the things in the meeting: Young guys just want a little bit more from him,” Gibson said, noting that Wade practiced Saturday.
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These comments come in the wake of not only the team meeting, but Rondo’s assertion in his IG post that his “vets” in Boston (Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce. Not pictured: Ray Allen) “didn’t take days off” and “brought it every time they stepped in the gym whether it was practice or a game.”
Dwyane Wade does not practice as much as others because not only was he selected in the same draft as not only an NBA head coach (Luke Walton), but also born the same year as Adam Lambert – who is so old that he sings for Queen.
Dwyane Wade is not alone, amongst star veterans, in not practicing – an NBA staple that has lasted since the league’s inception. Most longtime NBA vets, however, are either high-usage stars who have been working with the same team and within the system for years, or dogged journeymen who have to do their best work in practice (prior to sitting out games) just to keep a job.
Wade is a high-usage veteran on a new team, in a new system. Presuming the Chicago Bulls have one.
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As such, he has precious-to-no reflex to fall back upon when the options dwindle, and the shot clock runs out. He doesn’t know these Bulls, these Bulls (numbering just four that worked during Tom Thibodeau’s final season with the team) don’t know each other, and the shot clock is still running down. Sometimes, in approximating the former brilliance that will lead him into the Basketball Hall of Fame when he retires, Wade is able to save these Bulls. D-Wade averages 18.9 points in only 30 minutes a contest with Chicago.
Mostly, in working for a sub-.500 team with the 11th-worst offense in the, the individual bow-out act doesn’t work for Chicago. Though that hasn’t trimmed Dwyane Wade’s expectations.
All sides have their merits, prior to a conclusion on the bottom line.
Wade can point to Kevin Garnett, who fell and fell hard in his later years, as a reason not to go all-out in practices even while your minutes (KG’s ticks started being counted during his first year with Rondo back in 2007-08) are capped. Paul Pierce isn’t exactly keeping up with Vince Carter these days, while Wade at times seems rather sprightly for a guy whose knees were mostly counted out all the way back in 2008.
Then again, the Bulls badly need some form of cohesion with a guy that seemingly could make threats out of Christiano Felicio, Doug McDermott, or Bobby Portis. Then again, all the chemistry in the world can’t help a roster that is so fundamentally flawed in its construction.
In the end, all points can point at the Bulls front office for screwing up. To date, neither Gar Forman or John Paxson have answered questions from the press. Sean Spicer would look transparent and accessible in comparison, if it weren’t so obvious what Chicago is doing with something so minor and ridiculously unimportant by comparison.
A step removed from what the rest of the NBA thinks for whatever number of reasons, the Bulls built a team out of the hope that relevance is counted by the number of national television broadcasts. The fact that they were played by Rondo in free agency is badly eclipsed by the laughable way they were absolutely charmed and taken advantage of by Dwyane Wade once it became clear that Miami wasn’t going to pay Wade to have his cake and eat it, too.
Wade deserves the rest and benefit of the doubt after a legendary career, we submit, but the Bulls had to know something was up when the Miami resident willingly agreed to vacation for the winter in Chicago, prior to making that second year of his contract a player option.
A way out in the summer. Just in case anyone worth respecting came calling.
We’ll let the final word come from the captain of this crew, head coach Fred Hoiberg. Fittingly, his last actions were documented by the Chicago Sun-Times Joe Cowley:
During his news conference after the game, Hoiberg was asked if he could sum up the last five days.
He gave a long pause, smirked and simply said no before getting up and leaving the press room.
Who wouldn’t want to stare at a wall for this guy?
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!