{"id":126259,"date":"2025-08-07T11:56:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T11:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/126259\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T11:56:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T11:56:12","slug":"its-now-or-never-for-dean-wade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/126259\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s now or never for Dean Wade"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cleveland Cavaliers forward Dean Wade has one of the most valuable skill sets for an NBA role player. He\u2019s an elite defensive forward<\/a> who can hold his own guarding three through five, is a superb rebounder, and is a career 40% three-point shooter.<\/p>\n

Those are the type of players who can earn $12 to $15 million a season. That\u2019s why the Houston Rockets were reportedly willing to give Wade the full mid-level exception<\/a> if the Cavs had been amenable to moving him. Whether that money was available or will be again next summer when his contract is up depends on how this year goes.<\/p>\n

Despite the elite defensive skill, Wade isn\u2019t someone you can automatically trust in high-leverage situations because of his unwillingness to shoot the three-ball.<\/p>\n

The playoffs often come down to who can attack their opponent\u2019s weak links best. Wade has been one on offense. He registered an extraordinarily low 10.4 usage percentage this past season and attempted just 14 threes and 18 field-goal attempts in 142 playoff minutes. That isn\u2019t going to cut it.<\/p>\n

Even if you\u2019re a good shooter \u2014 like Wade is \u2014 there\u2019s no reason to actually cover him. Defenses don\u2019t guard players because they have good on-off splits or because their numbers look good on a spreadsheet. They guard players they know will burn them if they leave them open. That hasn\u2019t been Wade. Because of that, playoff defenses have been able to effectively play four-on-five when he\u2019s on the court.<\/p>\n

This is part of the reason why Wade was playing less than 10 minutes a game at the start of the playoffs before injuries forced him fully back into the rotation.<\/p>\n

The Cavs know this<\/a> issue well. They\u2019ve been dealing with it for multiple years now. They spent last season talking about it. Unfortunately when the games mattered, Wade still wasn\u2019t confident enough to pull the trigger.<\/p>\n

Wade has the skillset of someone who should make the ownership group think long and hard about re-signing next summer even though it would cost them an exorbitant amount of money in luxury cap payments. However, right now, he\u2019s someone who could be jumped in the rotation by a minimum contract player in Larry Nance Jr. because Nance is going to be a willing participant in an offense. This isn\u2019t a conversation that we should be having based on the current skill level of both.<\/p>\n

The Cavs, and nearly every team in the league, need the type of player Wade has the skills to be. That said, it\u2019s difficult to believe that Wade can put it all together on the offensive end. And that all comes back to his hesitancy to shoot despite having a good shot.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been fooled once, twice, or even three times. The onus is on Wade to show that he can actually be more.<\/p>\n

This season could be Wade\u2019s last real chance to cash in and show he can be a valuable rotation player worthy of a mid-level contract. All he needs to do is confidentially shoot the ball whenever he has the daylight to do so.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s truly now or never for Wade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cleveland Cavaliers forward Dean Wade has one of the most valuable skill sets for an NBA role player.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":126260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[59345,1260,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-126259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-cavs-analysis","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114987361570554070","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}