Showcase for Bulls? Only if bad is good

By halftime Thursday night, it was difficult to decide which was funnier, the campaign to bring Dwyane Wade back to Chicago or the campaign to save Vinny Del Negro's job.

Flip a coin. They were equally laughable.

Even with Charles Barkley's TNT crew tossing one-liners courtside at the UC, no joke was bigger than the game itself, with Miami pounding the Bulls 103-74, causing a national TV audience to flip off the Bulls by the middle of the second quarter.

And no one would have blamed the local fans for doing the same.

"Everything about it was bad, from our energy to our offense to our defense,'' said Joakim Noah, who played only 10 minutes. "That's probably our worst game ever at home.''

Home is not all it's cracked up to be, especially if you're Wade and you're weighing South Beach vs. Oak Street Beach.

And while he looked very much at home Thursday against the Bulls' defense, almost no one associated with the Heat believes Wade will think much about Chicago come July 1.

That's when free agency tips off, and it has Bulls fans dreaming of a Wade homecoming.

But an informal poll of Heat players taken Thursday revealed precisely no one in their locker room who thinks Wade is coming back to Chicago this summer - unless it's for vacation.

They stressed Wade's desire to remain the king of sunny Miami, not return to the icy winters and frigid springs of Chicago.

"I think that's wishful thinking by a lot of people here,'' said Chicagoan Quentin Richardson, who had 9 points and 8 rebounds for Miami in 25 minutes. "The No. 1 thing on his mind right now is the playoffs, and a game like this shows how good we can be.''

Bulls fans cheered Wade in warmups and during intros, trying to sell Wade on their desire to see him play in a Bulls uniform, but the cheers turned to groans when Wade began chewing up and spitting out Kirk Hinrich midway through the first quarter.

"It always starts off as cheers,'' Wade laughed. "But if I do my job, it changes to boos, and that's good.''

The Heat used the pick-and-roll to perfection against a Bulls team that looked like its coach had never heard of it.

"We had no answers,'' Del Negro said, "for what they were doing.''

Trailing eighth-place Toronto by 2 games and seventh-place Miami by 31/2 to start the night, the Bulls allowed Wade 8 points, 9 assists and 5 rebounds in the first half as Miami took a 30-point lead, in what the Bulls were calling their biggest game of the year.

Not what you'd normally consider the best way to sell a free agent like Wade on signing in Chicago, or the best way to sell the notion that your embattled head coach ought to be retained for another season.

So feel free to chuckle openly at either notion.

Not only does Miami think it will keep Wade, but it also believes he'll bring one of the big names, like a Chris Bosh, to South Florida.

So all in all, just about as ugly a night as the Bulls could imagine, and when Wade was done meeting the media at his locker, his 8-year-old son Zaire summed it up best.

"Go away,'' Zaire demanded. "Show's over.''

Indeed.

brozner@dailyherald.com