Dwyane Wade could be about to sign one of the most lucrative contracts of this free agency, despite not having received any offers from NBA teams. According to separate reports by ESPN and Sportando, the three-time NBA champion has been offered a three-year deal worth $25 million by the Zhejiang Golden Bulls, a team in the Chinese Basketball Association. The amount is before taxes and would make the 36-year-old the highest-paid player in China and it would also be one of the largest ever deals in terms of an NBA player joining an overseas team. By comparison, the deal Josh Childress signed when he swapped the Atlanta Hawks for Greek club Olympiacos in 2008 paid him $6 million after taxes. Because of tax breaks from playing overseas, the three-year, $20 million contract was equivalent to $32.5 million with an NBA team and exceeded the five-year, $33 million deal the Hawks had offered him. The offer for Wade comes just a week after the 2006 NBA Finals MVP signed a lifetime contract with Chinese sports company Li Ning, which he has represented since 2012. Wade, who was in China for a promotional tour when the deal was announced, indicated he would make a decision on his future upon returning to the U.S. "When I get back from China, I'll focus on that,'' he was quoted as saying by the Associated Press on July 18. "Right now, I'm focused on the game after basketball. Whatever happens in basketball, it happens. I've done everything that I can to this point to put myself [...] in this position I am today, where I can do something that hasn't been done globally yet. The basketball will take care of itself. I'll sit down and figure that out once I get back from this tour at some point.'' In recent years, a number of NBA players have moved to China. NBA journeyman Mike James played for the Golden Bulls in 2010, while Cleveland guard J.R. Smith joined the franchise during the 2011 NBA lockout. Eddy Curry, who won the 2012 NBA title alongside Wade in Miami, spent the 2012-13 season with the Golden Bulls, while former Phoenix Suns guard Jerel McNeal had a 15-game stint in China in 2013 and former Los Angeles Clippers guard Willie Warren played for the team between 2015 and 2017. Based in the city of Yiwu—in China's eastern province of Zhejiang, approximately 856 miles south of Beijing—the Golden Bulls play in the South Division of the Chinese Basketball Association. Founded in 1995, the franchise changed name five times before settling on the current Golden Bulls moniker in 2009. Wade could of course still receive an offer from an NBA team, although any deal will in all likelihood be nowhere near as lucrative as the one the Golden Bulls have put on the table. Last season, the 12-time All-Star averaged a career-low 11.4 points in 67 games for the Cavaliers and the Heat, to which he was traded in February. Wade averages 22.5 points per game in his career, but last averaged at least 20 points per game in a season in the 2014-15 campaign with the Heat. Last week, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported that the most Miami can offer Wade next season is the $5.3 million mid-level taxpayer exception, as the franchise is currently above the salary cap.<doc-sep>Photo : Mitchell Leff ( Getty Here’s a really startling, ominous sentence: The deal, which is before taxes, would make Wade the highest-paid player in China, slightly ahead of Andray Blatche, who plays for Xinjiang in the Chinese Basketball Association. Advertisement Dw ya ne Wade reportedly received a $25 million, three-year offer to spend the next chapter of his basketball career playing in China. There was a time in NBA history where a fading and nearly washed star like Wade would’ve had opportunities to be overpaid by teams making expensive runs to the bottom of a conference playoff pack. But draft incentiv es and the current salary cap landscape have combined to wipe out the middle ground between rebuilding and contending—nowadays it’s considered bad business to spend money on incremental improvements that fall short of pushing a team towards the top of the league. There’s no longer much prestige to be found, for an otherwise stagnant team, in bringing in a player with Wade’s résumé. The only real opportunities left for Wade are with teams tinkering in the margins, around proven and established cores, and those are few and far between—teams at the top of the league are calibrating themselves for showdowns with the Warriors, and a 36-year-old ball-dominant non-shooter whose defense has been declining rapidly for years is almost definitionally unplayable in that matchup. China may not be his only option, but it will almost certainly be the one that offers the most money and the most security. This Wade report circulated on the same day as this video, which shows a washed up Carmelo Anthony, a useless Brandon Jennings, and a deeply disappointing Stanley Johnson doing ferocious and cool basketball shit in a series of one-on-one possessions: It’s a pretty vivid reminder that even ho-hum NBA players—and Wade is very much a ho-hum NBA player at this stage of his career—are still impossibly good at basketball. It’s not that he’s suddenly bad at basketball—he was doing heroic shit on an NBA floor while playing important rotation minutes in the playoffs against the Sixers just last season. But the league is incredibly crunched for cap space, and the game has evolved enormously in the second half of Wade’s career, and being good at basketball is only part of the equation when considering a player of his age and abilities. There’s a reason Wade is still a free agent today, and a Chinese team is offering him this deal, and we all know about it. Wade was contemplating retirement following Miami’s playoff loss to the Sixers in April. He recently signed a lifetime endorsement deal with a Chinese apparel company. Maybe he should spend a little time playing in China! Either way, it’s another weird quirk of this strange universe that Dwyane Wade’s value to a basketball team, anywhere on Earth, is only “slightly ahead” of that of Andray fucking Blatche.<doc-sep>If free agent Dwyane Wade decides not to continue his NBA career, he always can play in China. According to Chinese media, the Zhejiang Golden Bulls have offered the guard a three-year, $25 million contract. It would make him the highest-paid player in China and also would be one of the most lucrative overseas deals in history. Josh Childress, who played for Olympiacos in Greece in 2008, earned $6 million after taxes. Wade, 36, is a three-time NBA champion and 12-time All-Star whose philanthropic ties to the Chicago and Florida communities run deep. So what about the Heat? Well, the team would have to maneuver through some salary cap issues to be able to offer Wade a comparable deal. More:Dwyane Wade wants to join an NBA ownership group after playing career, eyes Seattle Team owner Pat Riley told the Palm Beach Post this week that no decision had been made on Wade, but discussions would begin soon. Wade's wife, actress Gabrielle Union, whom he wed in 2014, is attached to a TV pilot this fall titled L.A.'s Finest, which is set to debut on Charter Communications. Union also is an executive producer on the show. Follow Tucker on Twitter @HeatherR_Tucker<doc-sep>
NBA superstar Dwyane Wade has reportedly received an offer to play in China for a three-year deal worth $25 million. Should the three-time NBA champion and 12-time All-Star choose to give up his NBA career for the opportunity being offered by the Zhejiang Golden Bulls, it would make him the highest-paid basketball player ever in China, ESPN reports. In 2016, he turned down a two-year, $40 million offer from the Miami Heat and instead signed up with the Chicago Bulls for a two-year deal worth approximately $47 million. Last season, the talented 36-year-old shooting guard averaged 11.4 points for the Cleveland Cavaliers and Heat in 67 games. “If I decide to come back and play the game of basketball, I would love for it, obviously, to be in Miami,” Wade told Fox Sports Radio (via Palm Beach Post) in a recent interview. “It’s just crazy because in this league you never know what will happen. I never thought I would leave Miami. Caron knows that I thought I would be here forever, but things happen.” According to Heat team owner Pat Riley, the organization has not decided on Wade’s return to the team for this upcoming season yet but committed that discussions would begin soon. The most amount of money Heat can offer Wade for next season is $5.3 million as the team is already above the league’s salary cap. Wade, who visited China recently for a promotional tour, signed a lifetime contract with Chinese apparel company Li Ning. #SmileBi*** 👟7️⃣s! A post shared by dwyanewade (@dwyanewade) on Jul 18, 2018 at 11:15am PDT Featured image via Instagram/dwyanewade