Breaking Down How Dwyane Wade Fits After Signing with Chicago Bulls
The Dwyane Wade saga ended in a way most did not anticipate: He left the Miami Heat—the only team he's ever played for—and joined the Chicago Bulls.
Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical announced the news on Twitter:
The fit between the Bulls and Wade is somewhere between bizarre, self-defeating and might just work.
Worth Questioning
During a news conference to introduce first-round pick Denzel Valentine a couple of weeks ago, the Bulls' front office tandem of Gar Forman and John Paxson stated, "But we've got to put this back together now, going younger, more athletic and building it back up moving into the future."
They have since made two signings this offseason: 30-year-old Rajon Rondo, according to Marc J. Spears of ESPN's The Undefeated, and 34-year-old Wade. Both have a history of knee injuries, and neither is particularly "athletic" at this stage.
How this fits with the Bulls' goals is difficult to see.
All-Star Jimmy Butler played shooting guard last year but was originally a small forward. The addition of Wade means he will likely move back to the 3.
There are now three players on the team—Rondo, Wade and Butler—who are at their most effective with the ball, but none are marksmen off it.
Wade was a miserable 15.9 percent from deep last year. Oddly enough, he made 12 threes in the postseason on 23 attempts compared to just seven on 44 tries in the regular season. Rondo enjoyed a career-high 36.5 percent shooting clip from deep but averaged under one three-pointer made per game. Butler's percentage dropped to 31.2 last year, and he shot only 24.4 percent after he returned from a knee injury March 5.
New starting center Robin Lopez hasn't made a three-pointer in his career.
Also, they hired Fred Hoiberg last spring to run his pace-and-space system as head coach. Saddling him with aging starters who can't shoot won't help.
Worth Watching
There are Bulls players who can shoot. Doug McDermott shot 42.5 percent from deep last season. Nikola Mirotic shot 39.0 percent from long range and a nifty 44.5 percent after the All-Star break.
K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune reported McDermott will see some time at the 4, and that should help:
While the Bulls' perimeter players aren't shooters, they're all excellent at creating shots. Rondo is a facilitator, while Butler and Wade are scorers.
If they're sharing the ball and working as a unit, there is a way this could work. In a pre-Stephen Curry revolution world where shot-creating was all that mattered, we'd be talking about how great a pairing Butler and Wade were on the wings.
Both are former Marquette players and form an interesting tandem.
While neither are great three-point shooters, they're both good at the rim. Wade shot 64.7 percent and Butler 67.3 percent from there last year. They're also both exceptional at drawing fouls (45.0 career free-throw rate for Wade; 48.4 for Butler), and both hit around 80.0 percent from the stripe—the equivalent of 53.3 percent from deep.
Hoiberg must devise ways to keep defenses from stacking the paint. He'll need to come up with an array of cuts, loops and screens to spring his ball-handlers for drives to the rim or to set up one of his decent shooters from deep.
It helps that Butler is more effective on corner threes, where he's 42.2 percent over the last two years. Between that and Rondo's career high, maybe this can work.
It's on Hoiberg to put his three playmakers in advantageous positions. Perhaps it won't lead to a title in 2016-17, but the Windy City Bovines could be competitive. If it doesn't work out, it will be a spectacularly entertaining dumpster fire.
Either way, it'll be entertaining.
All stats obtained from Basketball-Reference.com or NBA.com.
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