National Basketball Association

Dwyane Wade: The Bemoaned Homecoming King

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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To the ire of Miami Heat fans, Dwyane Wade has somehow found himself playing for his hometown team. While the fit naturally spells disaster, Wade’s playoff play lends hope.

When the offseason began, it was almost a foregone conclusion that Dwyane Wade was going to remain a member of the Miami Heat — as after all, the franchise had built their moniker of “Heat Lifer” around the city’s most celebrated and decorated athlete since Dan Marino.

He and Pat Riley were going to do their usual song and dance, where Wade holds out and threatens for years and dollars, and they’d eventually settle at a fair market medium.

However, the summer of unpredictability took us on an unexpected turn when Wade closed his eyes permanently in their annual staring contest. Pissed, and most likely hurt, by not receiving the “Kobe Bryant” treatment/contract, D-Wade took his ball and went home — literally and figuratively.

Overnight, the kid from Robbins, IL became a member of the Chicago Bulls. He is going to play in the house that Michael Jordan built for at least 41 nights next season (give or take, given Wade’s extensive injury history).

But, instead of the national praise a homecoming of such magnitude should have garnered (see former teammate and banana boat brethren, LeBron James), many basketball enthusiasts immediately lamented the fit of the Wade-Bulls marriage.

Unlike James, who instantaneously turned the Cleveland Cavaliers into the Eastern Conference favorites the minute his return was announced, many are questioning if a ball-dominant perimeter trio of Wade, Rajon Rondo and Jimmy Butler can work effectively in today’s three-point happy, spacing-dependent league.

For the Bulls, their management had sold fans on a more eye-pleasing, contemporary system when the franchise fired beloved defensive mastermind, Tom Thibodeau, in favor of current head coach and pace-and space advocate, Fred Hoiberg.

Chicago would suffer a nightmare of a season, however, when they missed the playoffs for the first time this decade. Hoiberg, in his inaugural coaching campaign in the NBA, proved he was very much still a system’s coach. Even though he didn’t necessarily have the ideal ensemble of floor spacers to run his system, he still tried to pigeonhole the likes of Derrick Rose, Pau Gasol and Jimmy G. Buckets into playing with tempo and pace.

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This season will present many of the same issues. Ironically, as one celebrated, but often-injured, hometown star gets shown the proverbial door, and another older, and just as oft-sidelined star from the Southside mans the backcourt.

The perimeter may be even more congested than last season, though, as the Bulls’ new aforementioned “Big Three” of Rondo, Butler and Wade all prefer to operate on similar areas of the floor.

More explicitly, all three tend to dominate possessions and need the unshackling aid of a high pick-and-roll to unearth their purest and most productive form. In fact, they were all among the league leaders last season in average seconds per touch (a.k.a. they like to hold the ball and dictate the entire possession).

While their inherent approaches are different, as Rondo uses the spread pick-and-roll to unlock his clairvoyant ability to hit the roll man, compared to D-Wade and Jimmy, who utilize on-ball screens to wiggle loose for their advanced midrange games, it is hard to fathom how they will work harmoniously in the same ecosystem — especially one that will operate mostly in the halfcourt, since Rondo and Wade were both among the league’s worst in transition last year.

We’ve seen Wade adapt and eventually flourish while playing alongside another ball-dominant alpha before, but adding another strong-willed ball stopper into the equation may spell disaster.

Dwyane Wade is coming off a throwback playoff run, in which he seemed to have mastered the new phase of his career.

Not the blinding, body-contorting human dynamite known as Flash anymore, Wade’s mastery of the old man game — using his body to create space, manipulating on ball screens, and keeping defenses on their heels with a bevy of shoulder and ball fakes — almost singlehandedly catapulted the Heat into the Eastern Conference Finals last season.

The wildcard and ultimate determinant of the Wade homecoming experience is the Bulls’ cluster of frontcourt players.

Can Doug McDermott spare minutes at the 4 to provide much needed spacing? Was Nikola Mirotic’s three-point prowess in the Olympics just a mirage? Can Bobby Portis develop into a basketball unicorn (a.k.a. a stretch big that flourishes at traditional big man duties like rebounding and protecting the rim)?

If the Bulls can find some modicum of spacing through inverted methods, I would put my money on a highly-motivated Dwyane Wade somehow morphing this puzzling ensemble of misfits into Cleveland’s most feared conference foes.