Wade didn't have impact Bulls had hoped, especially with younger teammates

CHICAGO

-- The defining moment in Dwyane Wade's yearlong stint with the Chicago Bulls didn't come during a game. It came during a team meeting.

After ripping his younger teammates following a Jan. 25 loss to the Atlanta Hawks, questioning just how much some in the group wanted to win, and dealing with the public fallout from Rajon Rondo's Instagram the following day, in which Rondo publicly called out Wade and Jimmy Butler for how they handled the situation, Wade sat with the rest of his teammates inside the Advocate Center prior to a morning shootaround to discuss the comments of the past two days.

Each player had the opportunity to speak on that Friday morning, and what became clear as the meeting progressed, according to multiple sources, is that several young players angrily voiced their displeasure to Wade regarding how he had called them out.

Veteran Taj Gibson would explain later that the younger players were upset, at least in part, that Wade wasn't practicing all the time. At 35, Wade acknowledged he wasn't going to be on the practice floor every day at this point in his career, but it bothered many in the young group that Wade was calling them out for a perceived lack of effort when he wasn't exerting the same kind of effort on a regular basis. Young players like Denzel Valentine and Bobby Portis had spoken openly after Wade signed about how much they were looking forward to playing with the future Hall of Famer.

Now, the young group had collectively turned its back on the aging star, and the Bulls' locker room was never the same from that point on. Wade mostly kept to himself, developing an even closer relationship with All-Star swingman Butler, while the younger players continued to look for guidance from Rondo.

The narrative of Wade's happy homecoming back to Chicago wasn't supposed to play out like this.

After signing Wade last summer, Bulls GM Gar Forman was confident that Wade would serve as a sounding board for the younger players and would help unify what had become a fractured locker room in coach Fred Hoiberg's first season. The Bulls were also hopeful that Wade would help Butler become more comfortable as the face of the franchise.

After some early-season success, the good vibes that Forman was hoping for didn't last. Wade was helpful to Butler as he took another developmental step in his career, but his relationship with many of the young players he was supposed to guide soured, culminating in the angry words in the Jan. 27 meeti ng.

From that point on, it wasn't just the players who seemed frustrated with Wade. Many within the organization believed that the 35-year-old was more interested in his business ventures off the floor than he was his performance on it. Midway through last season, Wade told ESPN: "At the end of the year, you sit back and see what the team is, what direction they're going in. I would be a liar to say that I want to play on a team with all 21-yearolds. You know what I mean? And be a part of the future building. I would be a fool to say that. But you also want to be in the best position for what you think is for you at that time, too ... One of the main reasons I'm here is Jimmy. He's the one who called me and got me to come here. So that's a big part of my decision and everything else, is what Jimmy's doing, what his future looks like and all that. And I've made it very clear. So I have no idea from that standpoint. You just have to wait and see and then see what works out."

After reading those quotes, several Bulls officials privately chuckled, believing there was no way at this point in his career that Wade would opt out of the player option in his Bulls deal that would pay him almost $24 million in the upcoming season. So when Wade informed the Bulls two days before the NBA draft that he was opting into the deal, despite the fact that trade rumors involving Butler swirled, nobody in the Bulls organization was surprised.