Chicago Bulls: The Reasons To Pursue

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Wade is the only great player on an otherwise pretty putrid team. Without Wade, the Heat are absolutely lottery-bound. Michael Beasley might have the potential to be a 20-10 type player, but he’ll do it without playing a lick of defense.

Jermaine O’Neal may be healthy, but his athletic ability has noticeably deteriorated as of late and he’s being forced play out of position. Mario Chalmers has decent potential, but I can’t help but thinking that his ceiling is along the lines of Chris Duhon; he’ll be a solid defender, good passer and floor leader but won’t have a great amount of offensive game to speak of.

And Udonis Haslem is, well, just a nice role player to have but nothing special. Lastly, Carlos Arroyo will play big minutes. And no offense to Arroyo, but if he’s your sixth best player and he‘s not far off in talent compared to players three to five, you’ve got problems. So it’s no wonder that there is a lot of talk regarding Wade leaving Miami.

I hear this argument often that the Heat can give Wade an extra year on his contract which should equate to upwards of $25+ million compared to what he can earn everywhere else. And to that I say, so what? Miami is not a big sports town. It’s just not. They love to talk about college football there more than anything else.

And can you blame them? This is the kingdom of fashion. There’s great weather almost year-round and you just don’t get the same sports atmosphere that you see in other cities. Sure Miami has the Heat, the Dolphins, the Marlins, the Panthers and their beloved Hurricanes. But despite having relatively successful franchises, a big portion of the talk around the town is about the Jets, the Giants, the Yankees, the Mets and the Red Sox.

There are so many snow birds and transplant New Yorkers down here that sometimes Miami sports gets dominated by the northeastern U.S. Add the fact that Miami is the seventh largest market in the U.S. and you have to consider how big the Heat following really is. What percentage of that seventh largest market is actually following the Heat and not other teams?

Granted, Wade has a big pull with fans of other teams, but the key here is endorsements. I’d be willing to bet that if Wade moved to one of the big three markets of New York, LA, or Chicago, his endorsement money that he would earn in the long run would most likely come close to or possibly even surpass that extra salary that Wade would earn with just one extra year in Miami.

There’s no question that Bulls fans as a whole are a lot more loyal to their team. And they will buy all things Wade in bulk compared to Heat fans. And I mean no disrespect to Heat fans. But let me give you an example of the difference between the two teams.

Two years removed from a title, the Miami Heat ranked 15th in attendance. That’s down from fifth in attendance in their only title year. In contrast, the Chicago Bulls, who ranked second in attendance last season, were ranked first in attendance two years removed from their last title with a 17-win team.

In fact, during all of those awful years for Chicago in the post-Jordan era, the Bulls have never been out of the top ten in attendance and were only out of the top five just one season (where they ranked ninth).

You mean to tell me that fans like that won’t overcome the difference that Wade would make with an extra year in Miami by buying his products? I know that’s a lot of dough, but I find it a bit difficult to believe that a super-star level hometown product playing with another up-and-coming potential super-star hometown product (Rose) wouldn’t make more money in his hometown of Chicago than in his adopted town of Miami.

The latter three dynasty Bulls teams did not have a post presence big man. Instead they substituted a classic post presence with a 2-guard in Michael Jordan who can actually be considered a post presence. Jordan had a habit of playing with his back to the basket. All he needed was for good rebounders to collect his misses and either give the Bulls a second chance to regroup or to quickly put the ball into the hoop.

The current Bulls you would think badly need a post presence. But after re-analyzing the situation, I don’t think that’s the case. Having a post presence is extremely overrated. What you need if you don’t have a super-star level guard or small forward capable of playing the post presence roll is at least one big man who is capable of scoring inside on a consistent basis.

It doesn’t matter how that ball gets into the hoop as long as it gets in there. If you don’t have a big man capable of averaging 20+ points per game, you need to have a number of quality big men who are all capable of doing some damage down low.

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