The Heat could accommodate Dwyane Wade if he ever wants to return to Miami, writes Ira Winderman of The Sun Sentinel. Wade has a player option for next season and may decide he doesn’t want to stay in Chicago with an underachieving and bickering team. The Heat could create room for Wade this summer when they expect to clear Chris Bosh‘s salary from their cap. Also, Tyler Johnson‘s new deal counts just $5.9MM against this cap for 2017/18, but balloons to $19MM a year later. Wade would get $23.8MM next season if he decides to opt in with the Bulls, but Winderman believes the Heat could bring him back to Miami if he agrees to take that money over two seasons.
There’s more news from South Florida:
- Miami’s seven-game winning streak may make team president Pat Riley think about keeping some of the team’s upcoming free agents, writes Barry Jackson of The Miami Herald. The Heat will have about $40MM in cap room this summer, but re-signing Dion Waiters and Willie Reed, who can both opt out, along with James Johnson, who is on a one-year deal, would eat up a major part of that. All three have been key contributors to the team’s recent success.
- The Heat’s streak happened because the team has de-emphasized player development, at least temporarily, Winderman states in a separate piece. With injuries keeping Tyler Johnson and Josh Richardson out of the lineup, veterans like Waiters and Wayne Ellington are seeing more playing time. Elllington has a nonguaranteed salary of $6.27MM for next season that the Heat must decide on by July 12th.
- Reed’s contract for next season calls for the league minimum, which he can easily exceed on the open market, Winderman writes in the same story. Reed is averaging 5.6 points and 4.9 rebounds through 39 games, mostly as a backup to Hassan Whiteside.
See ya Wade! Take your whiny, crippled @$$ back to south beach. I vomit a little every time I see him in a Bulls uni.
You’re a idiot. The Bulls problems are the owner and the front office, along with Hoiberg. Go away
Wade hasn’t helped the situation with the Bulls at all. He just whines about the Heat and publicly criticizes the young players on the team. He’s getting $24MM to sit out practices and road games and basically suck. They should have never brought him to Chicago to begin with. He’s old, entitled and non-committed to the team. Only and idiot sycophant like you wouldn’t see that.
Hoiberg scheduled his missed practices that were earlier I the season. He hasn’t missed n one in weeks, and the 4 games he missed were also decided by Hoiberg
Sounds like excuses to me. I can give you $25 million excuses why he was a bad signing for the Bulls. His comments recently reflect his lack of commitment to the team, and his impact is reflected in the standings. Bad roster, bad team.
Sounds like a great deal – get paid a total of $28.3 million but work two years instead of getting paid $28.3 in one. Yeah, Ira, sounds perfect!
Assuming we move Whiteside, I’d be fine keeping James Johnson, Willie Reed, and Wayne Ellington to a certain extent, depending on who else we get or don’t get in free agency.
Waiters definitely seems like a different person in certain regard, and he has definitely improved defensively, but his deficiencies aren’t worth the potential money he’d want, unless he somehow improves his percentages and develops even further through the rest of the year, but with Tyler Johnson and Josh Richardson returning at some point, I don’t know that happens. Dion is still young, and he has taken the challenge this year to improve, so I can’t 100% say he wont, but he needs to get better at finishing at th rim, and he still sometimes takes bad shots, and can be a ball stopper. I also don’t like he and Dragic on the floor together. Though it’s worked recently, Dragic defers to him to much.