Pat Riley royally screwed up by not finding a way to bring Dwyane Wade back to the Heat, and it is looking more and more like there were viable alternatives to still pay Wade the money he wanted and keep him in Miami.
Wade was initially insulted by the $10 million per year offer that Riley presented to him, and even though that was eventually bumped up to $20 million a year, it still wasn’t enough to bring him back as he ended up signing with the Bulls for $47.5 million over two years.
Riley had to denounce D-Wade’s bird rights to sign Hassan Whiteside to a max offer, which was the Heat’s obvious number one priority this offseason. Even though Wade tweeted his congratulations to the young center when he got the deal, you would have to imagine it irked him that the Heat prioritized Whiteside over the man who brought the Heat three championships.
The thing is, even though Whiteside took up a significant portion of the cap, according to The Sun Sentinel, he was willing to leave money on the table if the Heat had been able to bring back Wade (and sign Kevin Durant).
A party involved in the process confirmed Thursday to the Sun Sentinel that Whiteside had been willing to forgo as much as $9 million for the Heat to both add Durant and re-sign Dwyane Wade, if such a package could be completed.
That potential $89 million deal with Miami was significantly less than Whiteside was being offered by his second choice, the Dallas Mavericks, so you know he was serious about not just staying in Miami – but also having a quality team around him.
Whiteside was just as shocked as the rest of us that Wade decided to go to Chicago, but he probably was even more surprised that the team didn’t take him up on his offer to sign for less money to bring D-Wade back to South Beach.
(Via The Sun Sentinel)