Wade willingly takes demotion
When he signed with the Cleveland Cavaliers, Dwyane Wade promised his ego wouldn’t get in the way. It wasn’t just talk. Struggling through three games in his first season with Cleveland, Wade approached coach Tyronn Lue and asked to be taken out of the starting lineup because he thought it would help the team. With Wade headed to the bench and Cleveland’s second unit, J.R. Smith will return to the starting lineup after being bumped to a backup role.
Wade, who signed a oneyear, veteran’s minimum contract with Cleveland in September, is averaging just 5.7 points and shooting 28 percent. That’s not Wade, and he quickly realized that he would better serve the team as a reserve.
After Cleveland was hammered, 114-93, Saturday by Orlando, which snapped a 17-game losing streak to the Cavaliers, Wade approached Lue with his idea to revamp the lineups.
“We talked about it before we got here, [that] it’d be a better fit with him coming off the bench,” Lue said. “I know he’d been a starter his whole career, so we wanted to try to start him and give him that nod. He came to me and said, ‘You know what, Coach? What you said was right. I’d be able to be featured more in the second unit and be able to handle the ball more, so let’s make that move and make that adjustment.’
“That’s what professionals do. No ego. He saw it was best for the team for him to come off the bench. It was his call and here we are.”
The Cavaliers will be without starting point Derrick Rose, who is still recovering from a sprained ankle. Lue expects the former league MVP to be out a week. Jose Calderon will start until Rose is back.
Warriors
Golden State guard Stephen Curry was fined $50,000 by the league for throwing his mouthpiece “in the direction of a game official” before getting ejected with 43.6 seconds remaining in Saturday’s loss to Memphis. The league also fined Warriors forward Andre Iguodala $15,000, because he was “verbally abusing a game official.” Curry had anticipated such a punishment after he was fined $25,000 for throwing a mouthpiece that inadvertently struck a fan in Game 6 of the 2016 NBA Finals against Cleveland.
Knicks
New York might be willing to reconsider its youth movement in order to get a talented point guard in the prime of his career. A league source confirmed that the team had spoken with the Phoenix Suns about a trade that would bring disgruntled Eric Bledsoe to New York. According to the source, the Knicks reached out to the Suns about a week ago. Bledsoe, who played for Knicks coach Jeff Hornacek for more than two seasons when Hornacek was in Phoenix, went public Sunday with his desire to leave the Suns when he tweeted “I Don’t wanna be here.” The Suns, who fired coach Earl Watson and replaced him on an interim basis with Jay Triano, send Bledsoe home because of the tweet.