Over at TrueHoop, Marc Stein reported that next season’s salary cap will be $56.1 million, which is far better than the $50.4 million to $53.6 million range that was originally projected.
What does this mean with regards to Dwyane Wade?
Said Stein: “The combination of a sudden $2.5 million in unforeseen extra cap space along with Toronto’s failure to make the playoffs — which means that the Heat will not have to take on the Raptors’ first-round pick as expected — will give Heat president Pat Riley sufficient financial flexibility to re-sign Dwyane Wade, sign someone like Amare Stoudemire away from Phoenix (as many league insiders expect) and still have room to sign another quality free agent above the mid-level exception.”
In other words, the Heat can now give Wade the help he wants. That fact — coupled with the brutal Chicago winters — will provide some mighty tempting incentive to stay in Miami.
Pat Riley said he has a plan to do “whatever it takes” to keep Wade. I guess his plan just got better.
Honestly, Wade was a long shot from the beginning. Wade is staying in Miami and inviting his friend Boozer over for the next 5 years. LeBron is staying in Cleveland, Amare is going to play for J-Z and Prokorhov on the Nets, and Bosh is headed to NY. We need to make an offer to the best fit on the current Bulls roster, Joe Johnson, early in the post-season, and not let him slip away. He’s a great defender, an excellent shooter, and a quality person, exactly what the Bulls need. He is probably the best fit on the current Bulls roster. Taj is going to turn into a beast after he puts on 25 pounds of muscle this summer after hes shoved around by Shaq, and we’ll have a dominant front court defensively, as well as a potent backcourt offensively. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME COURTING WADE OR BOSH! We need Joe Johnson, the perfect compliment to D Rose!
…and to update this post:
http://sports.espn.go.com/chicago/nba/news/story?id=5101041
“Like sand through an hourglass, these are the days of our lives.”
WHY THE BULLS WILL BEAT THE CAVS: BULLS TRUE RECORD 52-30
Everyone is dismissing the Bulls saying they will be swept in 4 games, but they’re in for a surprise. I tried to be objective when calculating the Bulls true record, here’s what I did. I discounted the first 24 games of the season where Derrick was not playing like himself, I took the Atlanta game (12/19) where he shot 14-24 and had 32 pts as his breakout game and thus the real first game of the season. The Bulls went 9-15 before that. Next I removed any games from the Bulls record where either Rose, Noah, or Deng was not playing, which was a pretty hefty chuck. I figured without those guys we weren’t the same team, the team went 13-15 when one, two, or three of those guys were missing.
So the Bulls record 41-41 minus the games that in my mind are not legit 22-30 (9-15 + 13-15) gives the Bulls a true record of 19-11, extrapolate out that winning percentage to a full season, the Bulls would be 52-30, about an Atlanta or Boston level. Of course everyone doesn’t view the Bulls like this, but I’d say they’ll make Cleveland work for it.
As for Wade, I never expected him to come home, and plus he’s no spring chicken. I’d prefer to have Bosh. And if the Bulls somehow by a Miracle on Madison beat the Cavs in the first round, don’t you’d think that’d pique Lebron’s interest?
I sure hope that Brad Miller technical foul will give them some damn spark! Good idea on his part. This finish to the first half is the game. They need to get funky …
Let’s not get too optimistic guys, this series was over before it started. Look at it as a win/win situation for the bulls though. If we win one or two games, great.But even if we get swept, hey the Cavs are the best team this year and they will most likely win it all.
Overall, this season turned out the way I expected. It took the bulls a while to get adjusted to life without BG, and Salmons’ terrible first have made our offense look worse than it was. We still sneaked in as a low seed and in any professional sports league, successful seasons are measured on whether you make the playoffs or don’t. Some teams obviously have higher expectations, but making the playoffs is still better than not.
i dont know about that true record of 52-30. have to account for when the bulls had the guys they have now. a lot of their games were with salmons and thomas instead of flip and warrick. salmons is better than flip, thomas is even a little better than warrick, warrick is getting even less minutes than thomas did. we were 27-26 before the trade deadline. so after the deadline we were 14-15, i know noah was out a lot of that time but rose was also a lot better in the 2nd half. so yea we did have a good record after the trade deadline when noah and rose played. but that is because noah and rose are great. also because cleveland rested james and we just barely beat them in that regular season game, then toronto lost to us with bosh on the bench, and charlotte lost to us when they had nothing to play for. problem is rose and noah aren’t enough. deng sucks. deng blows. deng shoots jumpers even when he’s missing them, cause he’s afraid to get fouled. then he misses important free throws. his contract really was a big mistake. he is no better than salmons who makes 6 million a year. but we had to get rid of salmons and gordon and thomas cause we wasted most our money on deng and hinrich and i guess ben wallace too. hinrich isn’t a total bust, atleast he doesn’t get hurt every year and can defend a little. it’s a shame we sucked so bad in the first quarter today. we could have surprised cleveland. we are a defensive team, can’t allow 32 points in a quarter, our defense showed up after that and just allowed twice that 64 points in the final 3 quarters. but it was too late. first quarter a lot of those 32 points could have so easily been avoided. most were scored after we had a bad possession and turned it over leading to a breakaway layup. that or cleveland shoots it and we look up at the ball instead of boxing out and a cleveland guy rebounds it and then they score. does vinny teach how to rebound or just tell his guys to rebound? someone needs to step up and help rose. he gets triple teamed and he has no one he’s confident in to pass to and make a shot. our offense is a mess, so we must atleast not turn it over and main thing is we must get rebounds so that our defense has a chance to shine. flip actually did ok today, should have played as much as deng. why did we waste our time in the regular season playing pargo so much, when now he’s just sitting on the bench. cleveland is good, but we must show them they really aren’t the greatest. james is a show off. deng sucks.
People lets face that fact that D-Wade is NOT coming 2 chicago. 4 get him lets focus on getting: Chris Bosh or David Lee with Anthony Morrow! Then we are set 4 next season with an inside presents and a guy that can hit high percent 3 point shots to space the floor.