Dwyane Wade might play in China someday. Got that? The operative word is might.
The chances of it happening any time soon are about as remote as Xinjiang Province, which borders no less than nine countries and autonomous regions: Tibet, India, Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
That was supposedly the location of the team offering a “monster” contract. And then, Zhejiang replaced Xinjiang. How do you say “whatever” in Mandarin?
Suffice to say, the winters in either locale are a little more harsh than they are in South Florida.
The BS detectors in the basketball and sports media world were stuck on 11 Tuesday as another utterly ridiculous report about Dwyane Wade’s next team surfaced from a random Chinese reporter and were subsequently aggregated for the rumor-hungry masses around the world.
An extraordinarily teeny-tiny percentage of those reports mentioned the fact that Wade has a son entering 11th grade who is a Top 100 prospect. Or the fact that he is married to a famous actress whose own career is far from over.
But in a world where newspaper and mainstream website news staffs are being eviscerated in a manner that would make Arcade Gannon blush, there is no such thing as a slow news day.
And no such thing as a rumor too ludicrous to repeat.
I spoke Monday morning with the most powerful agent working the basketball universe in China, the United States and all points in between, and his reaction to the article(s) was straight out of Trump 101: “Fake news.”
Over the course of the day, more than a dozen trusted sources and colleagues weighed in with a mix of exasperation and bewilderment.
The Dwyane Wade story was a runaway train.
Here is the deal with Wade, which you can verify by reading anything written and/or tweeted by Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Wade must wait on his next contract, and that waiting game could last another eight weeks — maybe even longer — while Pat Riley tries to find a suitable landing zone for the human baggage also known as Hassan Whiteside.
Offloading that amount of garbage is a task that the folks on the shores of Santo Domingo could appreciate today.
Didn’t anybody learn anything from Decision III?
A remedial: Family comes first.
Got that? In the case of LeBron James, that meant relocating to Southern California in order to enroll his eldest son in Celebrity High School, so that in four years he might be good enough to play in the NBA alongside his dad, whose ultimate wish is for that to happen.
People overthought Decision III, and they are overthinking this one when it comes to Wade.
Repeat after me: He has no reason to go anywhere other than Miami. He has no reason to go anywhere other than Miami. He has no reason to go anywhere other than Miami.
Got it?
Now, here is some stuff you need to know in order to figure out where this goes in the near future:
_ Wade likely harbors some level of resentment for the series of non-max deals he took to make Pat Riley’s vision come true in 2010. It was one of the reasons why he left Miami, but Wade also seems to be a forgiving type of person, which is one of the reasons why he went back.
_ Wade probably would like to rattle Riley’s cage over the course of this offseason, but Riley is too smart to fall for anyone’s ridiculousness. He is a very, very patient man.
_ Every off-the-beaten path team in the Chinese Basketball Association wants to have its name in headlines, and in the rumor mill. It makes them relevant. So they leak things to reporters, whether true of not, and the aggregation mill that is what passes for real sports journalism these days takes it from there. Some people are susceptible to believing anything/everything they read. It is human nature.
But it is also human nature (among the sane) to do whatever is the most reasonable at the end of the day, which is why Paul George is still in Oklahoma City, which is why Danny Ainge has still not made a trade, and which is why casinos in Las Vegas serve free alcohol.
You don’t want to fix what ain’t broken.
When it comes to the Heat, that means taking care of the players who are keepers, such as Wayne Ellington, who is signed.
Justice Winslow, James Johnson, Goran Dragic and Bam Adebayo are keepers, too, and Tyler Johnson is probably going to have to be a keeper because of the $19 million poison pill provision salary that he will make next season as a result of Riley’s decision to call Sean Marks’ bluff.
A landing zone for Whiteside in the short term could be anyplace where dead money resides, and he’ll probably end up returning to China, where he played before he got rich.
He may even end up being a teammate of Wade’s, because Li Ning has a ton of money but has no idea how to sell shoes outside of China.
Sooner or later, they will figure out that they need a retail presence and an online presence outside of China so that people can actually purchase their products.
But because China is a totalitarian state, nobody likes to make decisions. They kick it to the person ahead of them on the corporate ladder. And that person does the same. And so on, and so on.
Nobody does bureaucracy like the Chinese. Insert your own Shanghai DMV joke.
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Wade will likely end up finishing his career there, because there are millions upon millions of reasons for him to channel Stephon Marbury and become an Asia icon even more than he already is.
Until then, let’s all calm down about “monster offers.”
Wade has a son who is entering the 11th grade.
And until Zaire graduates from high school, the smart money says Wade continues to live in Broward County and continues to commute to Biscayne Bay.
It makes perfect sense. End of story.
Year Dwyane Wade signs with China pro team (odds via BetDSI.com)
2018 (+1000)
2019 (+750)
2020 (+100)
2021 (+200)
Does not sign (+350)
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