Dwyane Wade and Jimmy Butler open fire on teammates, but their angst is misplaced

Following the Chicago Bulls’ 119-114 loss to the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday—a game in which Chicago blew a 10-point lead in the final three minutes—Jimmy Butler and Dwyane Wade put their teammates on blast.

“If you’re not (ticked) off that you lost, something’s wrong. This is your job,” Butler told reporters, per Mike McGraw of the Daily Herald. “I don’t think that everybody looks at it that way. I want to play with guys that care, that play hard, that want to do well for this organization, that want to win games. Do whatever it takes, just win. Who cares who shot it? When we’re winning, everybody looks great.”

Wade also brought the fire and brimstone when discussing his teammates, per K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune:

For now, it’s unclear which players drew the particular ire of Wade and Butler on Wednesday. Maybe they were pissed at Nikola Mirotic for missing what would have been a go-ahead 3-pointer with 25 seconds left in the game. Perhaps Paul Zipser going 0-of-4 from the field—including a 3-point brick with the Bulls trailing by one in the final 90 seconds—incensed them. Jerian Grant’s 2-of-6 shooting performance may have been even more sour milk in their Lucky Charms.

After Butler and Wade’s comments started circulating, Grant threw some shade back at his elders on Twitter:

Regardless of the budding locker-room conflict between veterans and young players, Wade and Butler should redirect some of their fire toward others. Like Bulls general manager Gar Forman and vice president of basketball operations John Paxson.

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It was Forman, after all, who proclaimed during a June news conference that the Bulls needed to get “younger” and “more athletic,” then proceeded to sign a then-34-year-old Wade and a 30-year-old Rajon Rondo in free agency. As Steve Rosenbloom of the Chicago Tribune noted, Forman invented the concept of “alternative facts” months before President Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway did so.

Forman and Paxson were also the duo responsible for firing former head coach Tom Thibodeau and bringing in Fred Hoiberg, a renowned pace-and-space enthusiast during his time at Iowa State. Over the next 18 months, GarPax proceeded to build a roster antithetical to that style of play, loading up on plodding veterans with unreliable 3-point strokes. Though this year’s squad started hot, going 8-4 over its first 12 games, the ugly beast known as regression to the mean soon came calling.

Following Wednesday’s loss, Chicago is averaging the fewest made 3-pointers of any NBA team, in part due to shooting a league-worst 31.5 percent from deep. Preseason concerns about the spacing in a Rondo-Wade-Butler backcourt proved valid, begging the question of whether Forman and Paxson have watched NBA basketball since Michael Jordan’s heyday in the 1990s. Building around two shooting-challenged guards and wings is difficult enough in today’s game; trying to do so with three should be a complete non-starter for any front office. By constructing a roster so woefully unsuited to compete in a league obsessed with long-range shooting, Forman and Paxson set Butler, Wade and Hoiberg up to fail.

Given the franchise’s success in recent seasons, it’s not as though building through the draft was an option. The highest first-round pick the Bulls have had since selecting Derrick Rose first overall in 2008 was this past summer, where they grabbed Michigan State’s Denzel Valentine at No. 14. Would they be better balanced had they not traded the picks No. 16 (Jusuf Nurkic) and No. 19 (Gary Harris) to Denver in 2014 for the rights to Doug McDermott? Unquestionably. But among Chicago’s series of miscues under Forman and Paxson over the years, the McBuckets trade isn’t nearly as egregious as, say, the Rondo signing.

Perhaps Butler and Wade were taking a page out of LeBron James’ motivational playbook—voicing their frustration to light a fire under their teammates—although with the Rondo situation still festering, that has enormous potential to backfire.

For the #TeamBananaBoat conspiracy theorists out there, maybe Wade is setting the stage to demand a buyout from Chicago following the deadline, whereupon he’d sign with the Cleveland Cavaliers for the minimum to give James his oft-demanded additional playmaker. They may even be following that political playbook; going on the aggressive so no one notices their own shortcomings:

Whatever the case, there’s little sense in criticizing the Bulls roster without blasting those responsible for putting it together. At least James has the decency to call out his front office directly.

According to Joe Cowley of the Chicago Sun Times, Butler has “expressed his displeasure with the roster to anyone in the front office who has asked in recent weeks,” but “he’s not the type of guy to name names.” A source told Cowley, “Jimmy’s attitude is [the front office is] paid to fix it, so fix it.”

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A few more locker room outbursts like this from Wade and Butler, and Chicago will be one of the most fascinating teams to watch heading into the Feb. 23 trade deadline.

Make #TeamBananaBoat great again.