There were murmurs all summer about Dwyane Wade ending up with the Cavaliers before the end of the year, especially after Jimmy Butler was traded on draft night to the Timberwolves and the Bulls were clearly heading into a rebuilding period.
Wade still opted into his $24 million player option, for obvious reasons, but it was clear the franchise was going in the opposite direction of where the veteran shooting guard would want to go. The two sides eventually worked out a buyout and on Wednesday Wade officially joined the Cavaliers and his old buddy LeBron James.
Prior to Wade signing with Cleveland, he and James insisted that their friendship off the court was just that and there wasn’t anything going on as far as James recruiting him to the Cavs. Now that he’s signed, Wade admits that LeBron did indeed recruit him this summer and it started shortly after draft night. As he told Rachel Nichols, LeBron tested the waters with Wade after the Butler trade in a pretty funny way via text and then the conversations got more and more serious as they started working out together in L.A.
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“The first text message I got early I think it was maybe a few days after Jimmy got traded. He kinda text me to just check my temperature a little bit. ‘Hey man, just checking on you.’ [laughs] And we talked, and then we always talk about regular things.
“Then he hit me later like, ‘I don’t know what you’re going to do. I don’t know where your mind is right now, but if something happen in Chicago and you guys decide to part ways I want you to really consider coming to Cleveland.” And it was stuff like that over the course of time.
“Then once it started getting real, which was about the time we started working out in L.A. And we got the time to sit down and just talk. It wasn’t talking about ‘Ooh, I’m going to be there,’ it was just sitting down talking to him and realizing what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be a part of. Where he’s going in his career and where I wanted to finish my career and how it’s going. I can’t say it was an easy decision, because Miami made it hard because my heart is there and my legacy and everything is there. But from a basketball standpoint, right now — strictly basketball — it was an easy decision.”
It’s an interesting insight into the process and also shows how respectful the two players are of each other to where LeBron didn’t want to go too overboard pushing for Wade to join him and Wade felt comfortable enough talking with James to figure out what he wanted out of his next step. Now, the two are back together for one more year at least and can sip wine and enjoy being on the same team again. And who knows, maybe they’ll start putting feelers out on the rest of their Banana Boat crew for the summer of 2018.
