Dwyane Wade MPG: 21.7
Wade is going to be 35 in January. 35 just doesn’t seem right, but I guess time flies when you’re busy being one of the best players to step on the court over the past 15 years – that would be Wade.
Look, Wade has been around a long time and he has played several metric tons of basketball over a considerable span of time. Most Bulls fans probably didn’t put in much work or have that much success with anything other than eating fast food over that same stretch of years. Maybe that was just me. The point is that he’s been doing this for a long time, and he has not only survived but excelled.
Of course, the last few seasons have seen a gradual decline in minutes and more than a handful of missed games.
In 2010-11, Wade averaged 37.1 minutes per game. Since that season, he hasn’t averaged even 35 minutes. In each of the last three season he has set a new career-low average for minutes per game. Last season it was down to 30.5.
Minutes are down for Wade, but so are games played. During his career, his game totals each season have been a bit of a roller coaster ride. In the last three seasons, the same where his minutes per game dropped to new career-lows each year, Wade only played more than 62 games once. That happened last season, when he was playing all-time low minutes.
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Those numbers matter an awful lot if you’re trying to predict the preseason minutes of a 35-year-old man that has never played 80 games in a single regular season during his career, a legend that only played 30.5 minutes per game last season with a squad that had more success and more talent than this Bulls teams.
If we were going with regular season over/under numbers, Wade would be an easy over. However, starters generally don’t really ramp up their minutes in the preseason. It makes little sense to run Wade full go for 41 minutes in the first week of October. That would make the under seem like the obvious choice. But it isn’t the obvious choice. Wade spent his entire career with the Miami Heat before signing with Chicago this summer. The Bulls also added Rajon Rondo, Denzel Valentine, Jerian Grant, Spencer Dinwiddie, and Robin Lopez. Coach Fred Hoiberg has his hands full with strong-willed newcomers and young talent looking to establish themselves in the league. If the Bulls “Three Alphas” are going to get on the same page and give Chicago a fighting chance at beating the 38.5 win mark, those guys will need to be on the court together, developing in-game chemistry.
I’m taking the over, but it won’t be by much, maybe a minute or two.