Hassan Whiteside makes his decision

His Heat faced the Mavs in two National Basketball Association finals, with Miami winning in 2006 and Dallas returning the favor in 2011. Wade appears to be pleased with the signing. This time, the Heat are trying to balance the re-signing of center Hassan Whiteside to a four-year, $98 million maximum deal with the pursuit of free agent Kevin Durant.

He isn’t going to be present in the meeting with Kevin Durant when the Miami Heat contingent shows up in NY.

Next up on Pat Riley’s agenda is re-signing Dwyane Wade.

The 27-year-old big man put up impressive numbers in his second campaign with the Heat last season, averaging 14.2 points, 11.8 rebounds and an NBA-best 3.7 blocks per game. Wade is longtime friends with Carmelo Anthony, while his Bucks’ ties are obvious as a Chicago native who played at Marquette.

Overall, the Heat has seven players (Whiteside, Winslow, Bosh, Goran Dragic, Josh Richardson, Briante Weber and Josh McRoberts) in the fold for next season, and six of its own free agents still on the market (Wade, Amar’e Stoudemire, Gerald Green, Tyler Johnson, Udonis Haslem and Dorell Wright).

Part of that is simply because of the enormous jump in the salary cap this summer, but part of that is because of the potential the Heat see in Whiteside.

There are some other scenarios that make it possible to bring in Durant and Wade along with Whiteside, but nearly all of them involve trading Dragic and/or McRoberts. He got $20 million dollar contract past year, by taking a pay cut to get other good improvements to the team.

Wojnarowski said the four teams’ recruitments included “offers in length of two and three years and upward of $20 million a season – a salary the Heat so far have been reluctant to offer”. This might be as close as we’ll ever get to seeing him on another team, and it’s still really not all that likely.

While Wade has never played for the Bulls, he has certainly played his hometown team.