Dwyane Wade SEGABABA
So much is made of playing a SEGABABA, but this did a lot to show the age of Dwyane Wade and where he’s at in this stage of his career. The blowout status of the game cut the minutes of all Chicago starters, Wade played just 21 minutes after going hard against the Knicks on Friday night.
His stat lines on consecutive nights were alarming. Wade fired off 33 points on 60 percent shooting, including five made 3-pointers on seven attempts. He always grabbed 10 rebounds, good for a double-double. In 33:20 of game time, he had three fouls and three turnovers. That was Friday.
Saturday night, his playing time cut to 21 minutes, he shot 11.1 percent (1-for-9) from the field with zero assists, two fouls and two turnovers. To put it mildly, he was bad. This early in the year, a SEGABABA shouldn’t take a massive toll on teams, particularly on such a short trip from Chicago to Indianapolis, but Wade must have been feeling the effects to go from “can’t miss” to “don’t shoot” so quickly.
This is what happens when Wade doesn’t get his beauty rest at age 34. It’s fair to say that this clip could be taken out of context, but when it is combined with his stat line and the overall performance of the starting give, it all adds up. I don’t think Fred Hoiberg knew what he was getting from Wade on SEGABABAs, so this is probably an eye opener for him as well. It’ll be interesting to see how they use Wade in these types of situations moving forward as they rely on him for so much of their offensive firepower.
One other quick note on Wade: He’s been gambling on defense in some very questionable ways. He’s been wandering around the baseline against opposing bigs who were operating out of the low block in ISO sets, essentially swiping at the ball and never coming close to a steal, leaving himself standing on the outside of the entire play and creating unnecessary mismatches because he had a whim. This happened again in a smaller way against Indiana, when he gambled on a steal that his mind could read but his body couldn’t complete.
It might be nothing, but it might be a symptom of just how disorganized and truly bad Chicago’s defense is this season.