Dwyane Wade officially signs with Bulls

Dwyane Wade has officially signed with the Chicago Bulls.

We all knew the deal was agreed to, but now it’s official. Dwyane Wade has signed his deal with the Chicago Bulls.

It’s always a good choice to bring a three-time NBA champion to your club, especially when he hails from your city. Wade had a bounce-back season in 2015 and looked truly healthy for the first time in years, which led to his demands for a raise and ultimately his departure from Miami. The Bulls saw the opportunity to bring him in and pounced. It’s safe to say they’re excited about it.

His signing is phenomenal from an organizational perspective, giving Chicago the big-fish free agent they have always lacked and the top tier recruiter they need to sign other stars going forward. It writes a great narrative for the Bulls’ season about the homegrown kid returning to Chicago, and clears up some of the memory of some of the recent ugly divorces the team has faced. If there was anything (short of Durant, which was never happening) that could make angry Bulls fans forget about Rose and Thibs being sent packing, bringing home D-Wade was the move.

What remains to be seen, of course, is how exactly Wade is going to fit in with the Bulls on the court. Fred Hoiberg, the coach who replaced Thibs, runs a pace-and-space offense that places a premium on shooting. The Bulls seemed to be finding pieces to build around that system when they traded Rose away; he’s a great pace point guard but his injury history and spotty shooting made his future in Chicago murky.

But replacing an oft-injured point guard who can’t shoot in Rose which an oft-injured point guard who can’t shoot in Rondo makes no sense; pairing him next to Wade and Jimmy Butler seems to make less sense. All three of them are less than 33% career shooters from three-point range, with Wade and Rondo both checking in around an abysmal 28%. There’s work to be done, for sure, but everyone in the Bulls organization loves Hoiberg and they fully believe he can do it. Ironically enough, this roster is much more suited to running the Triangle offense than are the Knicks—maybe GarPax and Hoiberg should give Tex Winter a call.

In the end, awkward fit or not — this is a move you have to make. The Bulls had lost multiple organizational stars and rebounded with a PR home run. Whether or not it works on the court remains to be seen, but the chance at greatness with the hometown kid is always worth the risk.

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