Wade reveals what matters most in free agency | Paul says relationship with Griffin ‘better now than ever’ | Rose: ‘Vintage’ version of self is gone | Howard enjoying this stage of career

No. 1: To Wade, player relationships affect free agency most — Chicago Bulls guard Dwyane Wade left the Miami Heat in the offseason after spending 13 seasons and winning three championships in South Florida. Before he landed back in his home state of Illinois, Wade also talked with the Denver Nuggets about a deal there. As the Bulls traveled to Denver for last night’s game, Wade opened up about what shaped his free-agency choice, writes Nick Friedell of ESPN.com:

“The league is different today,” Wade said. “The league is all about relationships, player relationships. Obviously presidents and GMs have their job to do to put teams together, but when it comes to free agency, that’s player relationships more than anything. It’s where an individual wants to go, so you have to feel comfortable with where you’re going and who you’re going with. And it starts in that process. Maybe you have a relationship with a guy, maybe you don’t, but it starts in that process when guys are able to reach out to you and you see.”

Wade’s comments came before his first appearance against the Denver Nuggets, a team he met with during last summer’s free-agency process. Wade, who was complimentary of the Nuggets’ pitch, including his time speaking with head coach Mike Malone, ultimately decided to sign a two-year deal with the Bulls for $47 million, which included a player option after the first season.

Wade’s decision to leave the Miami Heat after 13 seasons stunned many around the league, but the Robbins, Illinois, native has quickly established himself as a leader on the Bulls. He has enjoyed playing in front of friends and family at the United Center. Wade readily admits how important it was that Bulls star Jimmy Butler reached out to him during the process.

“If the star player on the team doesn’t reach out to me then I don’t think he’s really excited about me coming there,” Wade continued. “If Jimmy don’t reach out to me then I’m not coming to Chicago because I don’t think Jimmy wants me here. But Jimmy reaches out to me and says, ‘D, I want you to come,’ it’s a different — that’s simple right there. It’s hard to change my mindset and everything.”

Bulls head coach Fred Hoiberg wasn’t apprised of Wade’s comments but agreed with the star guard’s assessment.

“It definitely is a different era,” Hoiberg said. “There’s no doubt about that. And it does start at the AAU level when those guys are playing against each other. Really since, shoot, going all the way back to eighth or ninth grade the way it is now. Then just the relationships they build over the summers. These guys all seem to get together in L.A. or Miami or wherever it might be. So they build those relationships, they play together with Team USA now and they do build those special bonds.

“So yeah, it probably is a little easier to reach out. You see some of the superteams now that are being created, and I think a lot of that has to do with relationships that are built over the summer.”

Hoiberg, who played 10 seasons in the NBA before having to retire because of a heart condition, admits he liked the pre-superteam era a little more.

“I kind of liked that we hated each other,” he said, drawing some chuckles from the assembled media.

“These guys are together so much in their offseasons,” Hoiberg said, noting the difference in eras. “It wasn’t like that in the past. A lot of people worked out in the cities that they played in, maybe had an offseason home. But it’s just a different environment now, it’s a different structure the way people approach their offseasons. There’s a lot more working out in the offseason. Before, it was great — you got to play golf all summer. Now you’re in the gym every day. Again, a lot of that is with other players, a lot of them have their personal workout guys and they’ll do it together with a group of players. So I do think it’s different.”

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“I cannot sit here and explain to anyone what it’s like to be a free agent,” Wade said. “And what it’s like to have to make a decision about where you’re going. And no one ever thought I would leave Miami. No one ever thought I would be in a Chicago Bulls jersey, but I am, so things happen. And you never know what can happen when it comes to free agency.”

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No. 2: Paul, Griffin on more solid footing than ever — When the LA Clippers landed Chris Paul in a 2011 trade, DeAndre Jordan and Blake Griffin were the first ones to coin the “Lob City” moniker for their squad. Success (and letdowns) have followed for Paul, Griffin and Co. in Los Angeles since then, yet this season, the Clippers find themselves with the NBA’s best record. In a conversation with USA Today’s Sam Amick, Paul explains how his tighter-than-ever relationship with Griffin is fueling the team’s start:

In dissecting the question of whether Griffin and Paul want to keep this partnership that began nearly five years ago alive, two deeper questions must be answered in order to find any sort of clarity. First and foremost: is the Griffin-Paul duo still working? Entering Monday, Griffin and Paul were playing like the perennial All Stars that they are and the Clippers had a league-leading 13-2 mark.

• Griffin entered Monday’s game against Toronto averaging 21.9 points, 9.3 rebounds and 4.4 assists per game, with a Player Efficiency Rating of 26.47 (per ESPN) that is 12th overall. He’s also being credited by coaches for playing a big part in the Clippers’ defense being the second-best so far in defensive rating (97.7 points allowed per 100 possessions).

• Paul, whose PER of 30.36 ranked fourth, was averaging 18.4 points, 8.8 assists and 5.2 rebounds.

• The Clippers’ starting lineup of Paul, J.J Redick, Luc Mbah a Moute, Griffin and DeAndre Jordan, according to NBA.com/stats, had the second-highest rating of any five-man lineup (plus 26.6 in 308 minutes) that, entering Tuesday, had played together for at least 50 minutes. It’s worth noting how coach Doc Rivers is leaning extremely hard on this grouping, though, as there is only one other five-man lineup that entered Monday having eclipsed the 200-minute mark (The Detroit Pistons’ five-man lineup of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Andre Drummond, Tobias Harris, Marcus Morris and Ish Smith at 227).

And secondly: after all this time together – five consecutive playoff berths that included three trips to the Western Conference semifinals and two first-round bow-outs – do Paul and Griffin like each other enough to keep chipping away at these championship pursuits together? It sure seemed that way when I was around them both recently (two weeks ago in Los Angeles and last week in Sacramento).

We all know that Paul can be the hard-driving sort, his personality having been compared to that of Kobe Bryant’s. But as he detailed in our discussion about Griffin, the two are in sync in ways before unseen – on and off the floor.

“Oh, no question (it’s) better now than ever,” Paul told me on Friday. “Like I’m saying, we both have matured so much, and our communication is amazing right now, so sometimes it takes time. That’s what (happened) with me and BG, and there’s nothing like it right now. We are having some of the most fun that we’ve had in our time together.”

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As noted in my column on Griffin, he and longtime girlfriend, Brynn Cameron, had their second child in mid-September (they have a three-year-old boy along with their new daughter). Paul, who married his Wake Forest sweetheart, has a seven-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter.

“I know for me, when I got my family and my kids it gave me a different perspective on everything,” Paul said. “To see Blake now, with two kids and stuff like that, I just – it’s different, you know what I mean? You see the sense of urgency, you know what I mean? I think we both share that, and understand that we’ve got everything that we could ever want, as far as an unbelievable family, you get to play the game that we love, and have all the accolades, and now we just want that one thing (the title that has eluded them both).”

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Griffin had re-aggravated the left quadriceps injury that plagued him all season long, and Paul suffered a fractured bone in his right hand. Suddenly, both stars had to deal with the most depressing of realities: tied with the Portland Trail Blazers after four games in the first round of the playoffs, their season was over.

“I think we both share that too,” Paul said. “When the injuries happened last year to me and him in the playoffs, you appreciate stuff a lot more. And so you just don’t take it for granted anymore.”

All of which makes for a potentially-special season.

The Clippers, facing key questions that extend to Redick’s unrestricted free agency this summer and knowing full well that this core won’t be together forever, will have an easy decision to make if they can get the job done in the form of a Larry O’Brientrophy.

“Yeah, that (free agency reality is) all obviously there,” Griffin told me. “And even on top of that, year after year, after experiencing (playoff disappointments), after feeling like we were close, and going back to when we first came together. I think I was 22 (years old), I’d just turned 22 (when he first started playing for the Clippers). DJ (Clippers center DeAndre Jordan) was about the same age. It was my second year in the league, lockout year, and like we have grown a lot over the course of the last five years.

“It’s kind of amazing to think back to that time, but year to year you go through those ups and downs. A lot of heartbreak in the playoffs, obviously, well documented, well talked-about everything that we’ve gone through. And some of it has been, for lack of a better word, back luck. Injuries here or there. Some of it has been our own fault, but I think you go through a year like last year, where CP and I both get hurt, and you’re not even really 100 percent to start with, and you cherish these moments, you cherish being a good team. Whether people want to admit it or not, we’re a solid team.”

More than solid, Blake.

“That sense of urgency is there, and I think it’s a combination of a lot of things,” he concluded. “But we have matured a lot as a team, and I think we realize what’s the most important thing – which is winning. Winning it all.”

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No. 3: Rose says ‘vintage’ version of himself is long gone — It may be hard to believe, but it was six seasons ago that Derrick Rose compiled his NBA MVP campaign as the star of the Chicago Bulls. Injuries and time have sapped Rose of those glory days, something he wholly admitted after his New York Knicks topped the Portland Trail Blazers. But, as Rose points out, there’s a bigger question to answer these days more than if he can ever reclaim those stellar days in Chicago, writes Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News:

Derrick Rose’s first signature moment at the Garden came off a broken play, a missed shot and a rebound that left him in an isolation with the shot clock running out and crowd waiting to explode.

The point guard with a long injury history, an ugly medical sheet with shredded knees, dribbled toward defender Maurice Harkless, stepped back in the rhythm he’d been honing in practice, and nailed the jumper with 6.8 seconds remaining to secure a 107-103 victory over the Trail Blazers.

It was Rose’s first jumper of the game, and the biggest bucket of his short Knicks career.

“I finally shot the ball up. It’s all legs, man. That’s what I mean. Like your whole life you’re used to a 1-2 rhythm. You have one injury, and that kind of resets everything. Let alone you have three, and you’ve got to find your 1-2, how high you want you jump on your shot, how high you want to jump on your threes,” said a reflective Rose. “I missed preseason. All those little things count. Like, this entire time, these three or four years, I’m playing catch-up.”

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But the Knicks (7-7) needed Rose on Sunday to win for the fifth straight time at home and climb back to .500 for the first time since the second game of the season. He wasn’t MVP Rose – and there seemed to be an acknowledgement Sunday that player is irrecoverable – but he still took an effective and explosive form.

“That vintage (Rose) is gone, man. I told you the question should be: Can I hoop? I can hoop,” he said. “It shouldn’t be like he’s playing like his old self. Like, if I can hoop, I can hoop, no matter if I did that when I was younger or now. I can play the game of basketball.”

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“He was aggressive,” said Carmelo Anthony. “That’s the Derrick, I want, and I need and we all fell in love with. He was very aggressive on the offensive end. Even though he was in foul trouble, he didn’t let that hinder his game. He was good. For him to come back and make the big plays offensively that he did, that goes to show you much as a team we’re growing and he’s growing and feeling more comfortable with that.”

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No. 4: Howard enjoying this stage of his career — The version of Dwight Howard that suited up for the Orlando Magic from 2004-12 was pretty impressive as he averaged 18.4 points per game, 13.0 rebounds per game and 2.2 blocks per game. He also won three consecutive Defensive Player of the Year awards, led the Magic to The Finals and was a near-MVP one season. From 2012-16, Howard’s career was mostly up and down and never as great as it was in Orlando. However, Howard — now with the Atlanta Hawks — is solid once again and is enjoying this late stage of his career, writes Michael Lee of The Vertical:

Howard is in a better place, and not simply because he’s back home in Atlanta, around family, friends, and a community that loves and supports him. He is in a better place because the best opportunity to advance his career just happened to be home, where he believes he’s finally mature enough to handle the responsibilities, find the right personal-professional balance and cut off any unnecessary distractions.

Being in a better place also includes a willingness to share sides of himself that Howard kept hidden in recent years behind “bottled-up emotions” or dalliances as a court jester.

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In Atlanta, Howard has found a coach in Mike Budenholzer who has challenged him to “get out of the box.” In Los Angeles and Houston, Howard would become frustrated over not receiving the same touches in the post that he was accustomed to receiving in Orlando, where he had his greatest career success. “Bud, he’s going to push me to the limit,” Howard told The Vertical. “He knows how to really communicate with me, as far as what he needs from me. Sometimes in life, we need people to hold us accountable. And as basketball players, we always have people that tell us what we want to hear. But when you have somebody that’s willing to tell you how it is, good, bad and ugly, those are the kind of people that you want around you.”

On the drive back to Manhattan, the SUV went past Barclays Center, home of the Brooklyn Nets, a team that he considered joining in 2012 to form an All-Star duo with Deron Williams. Williams is now in Dallas, but Howard admitted that he sometimes wonders what could’ve been. “But I’m a big believer that everything happens for a reason. There is a reason why the Brooklyn thing never happened. I thought it was going to be great, but all that stuff just led to me being back home in Atlanta, to the best situation possible for me,” Howard told The Vertical. “It’s the perfect time, perfect situation, perfect team. Everything has been great. All the things I’ve always prayed for and asked for, this team has it, and it’s crazy that it’s my hometown team. And we’re all very grateful.”

Ever since leading the Orlando Magic to the NBA Finals in 2009, Howard has hungered for a return. Forcing his way out of Orlando led to a more difficult path in the more competitive Western Conference, where only San Antonio and Golden State have survived the past four seasons. LeBron James has ruled the Eastern Conference for six years, but Howard believes he is at least on the right side of the Mississippi River.

“‘Beast of the East’ sounds better than ‘Beast of the West.’ That doesn’t go together. Doesn’t sound right,” Howard told the Vertical with a huge grin. “Every situation I’ve been in, I’ve never looked at it as pressure. Winning a championship in the NBA is one of the hardest things to accomplish and it’s not easy. I know people want to see us win, but that’s nothing new for myself. Every team that I’ve been on, the expectation from the city, this team should win a championship. We have that expectation and we actually have a real opportunity to do that if we stay focused. … I want to make sure that when we get to the big dance, people make sure they experience something they’ve never experienced out of Dwight. I would say the phase that I’m in now is going to be better and more rewarding than the beginning of my career.”

Only a few weeks shy of his 31st birthday, Howard says he feels great physically and is already thinking of ways to extend his career. As the SUV made its way back to his hotel, Howard chuckled to himself as he reflected where he’s already been. “When I first came in the league, I thought I was going to play forever. I still want to play until I’m 40, but I thought I was going to play basketball until I was 60. That’s what happens when you’re young. Once you get older, you realize there are lot of things that are important.

“I know who I am, but in this world, people always try to force you to be what they want you do be, instead of who you are,” Howard told The Vertical. “For a lot of us basketball players, we come into the NBA so young and your whole life is put out there on blast, and you’re forced to have to grow up in front of the world. The world sees all the good things, but they also see all the failures that you have, so you’re forced to really grow up and sometimes you just want to be a kid, but you can’t. There are lot of great life lessons that I’m learning, but I’m happy to see my progress.”

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