Bulls indulge Dwyane Wade's desire - Chicago Tribune

Having a passing familiarity with the term "aged legend," my sympathy is with Dwyane Wade, who somehow has returned to Chicago without anyone having noticed he was gone.


Wade's identification with Chicago always has been parenthetical, and no matter how much help or how great a distraction he turns out to be for the Bulls, he always will be a son of Miami. His uniform number will be retired there, his triumphs will be measured there, his reunions will take place there.


Who remembers Michael Jordan in Washington? Or Allen Iverson in Denver? Or Karl Malone in L.A.? Shaquille O'Neal in Boston? Charles Barkley in Phoenix? OK. That's one.


That is what this is, after all, and the Bulls were suckers enough to fall for it, giving a perpetual antagonist a chance to live out his dream, Wade's words for why he wanted to come to the Bulls.


Nothing about making the team better, making the Bulls a contender, taking another shot at a title, nothing like when Wade engineered the LeBron James and Chris Bosh merger in Miami.


There was a brief moment back there when it seemed possible Wade would become a Bull and bring James with him. Ah, what might have been.


And now it is, more or less. If we have to choose, it is less. And it is all on Wade's side, with creaky knees, no outside shot and one ball to share with more guards than a museum.


Who is going to shoot and who is going to pass and who is going to lead are questions that must be sorted or not. But clearly poor Jimmy Butler, who seemed to have won all of those options by sheer attrition, is worse off than ever, orphaned by the Bulls' folly and Wade's self-indulgence.