Why didn’t Miami Heat take advantage of Bird rights to sign Dwyane Wade?

What was Pat Riley thinking during contract negotiations with Dwyane Wade?

The Heat’s final offer of a two-year contract worth $41.5 million is well-known at this point. Wade, 34, turned that offer down, leaving Miami after 13 seasons to sign with the Bulls on a two-year, $47 million contract.

But it sounds like Riley would have preferred to take advantage of Wade’s “Larry Bird rights,” working with the 12-time All-Star on a season-by-season basis.

Miami owned Wade’s Bird rights because he played three or more consecutive seasons for the Heat without being waived or changing teams as a free agent. With Wade’s Bird rights, the Heat could have exceeded the salary cap to re-sign him.

“Well, if you’re rolling over year to year, and you’re looking at the free-agent class, then having your best and most important player at a time in his career, he’s 35 years old, having him on a one-and-one, on a two-year deal, one-and-one, so if he does opt out then obviously the next year if there’s people out there in the market that you want that could come in under, and then you have that flexibility versus being locked into a three-year deal where you don’t,” Riley said Saturday of Wade. “He could opt out. If you miss on somebody, then, because he’s got Bird rights, Bird right is the golden pass here, for any veteran player. You don’t have to give players $20 million, $20 million, $20 million, you can give them $20 million, $8 million, $37 million, $25 million.”

With the Heat missing out on Kevin Durant this summer, Wade could have received the rest of Miami’s cap space on a one-year deal. The short-term contract would have allowed Miami to remain financially flexible next summer, giving Wade the choice to take a pay cut to make room for a big-name free agent.

All of this could have set up for Wade to get close to his max number over the last few years of his career to make up for the money he sacrificed. With the Heat owning Wade’s Bird rights, they could have exceeded the salary cap to sign him.

Riley’s example, which is probably pretty close to what he envisioned, for Wade’s salary using this Bird rights loophole was $20 million for the 2016-17 season, $8 million for the 2017-18 season, $37 million for the 2018-19 season and $25 million for the 2019-20 season.

Under that example, Wade would have made $90 million over the next four seasons. But it seems like Wade just didn’t trust the Heat to come through on that promise.

“That was the partnership we had, not with him, but that’s the partnership that the players had with the Big Three,” Riley said looking back to the players’ flexibility during the Big Three era. “This was a very cooperative, collaborative, what is it going to take to get players in to help us win. So that’s where I kept reaching and that’s where probably I missed the point with [Wade]. And if I had a chance to really sit down and rethink my thoughts patiently at that time, maybe I could have made a difference in explaining the big picture versus the now picture.”