Butler, Wade, Rondo met by themselves for an hour before Game 2
Three Alphas, indeed.
Jimmy Butler, Dwyane Wade, and Rajon Rondo felt it was up to themselves to devise a game plan to topple the Boston Celtics in Game 2 of their first-round series Tuesday, so the polarizing Chicago Bulls trio called an Alphas-only meeting after the team's game-day shootaround, they told CSN's Vincent Goodwill.
At the meeting, they discussed broad strategy, specific play calls, and everything in between, and seemingly all came away feeling like they were on the same page.
"It was great, spending time with those guys," Wade told Goodwill, adding that he would have similar meetings with LeBron James and Chris Bosh during that threesome's glorious Miami Heat run.
"Listening to their basketball minds, all of us listening to each other's mind and on the same page. People forget, we just got together. It doesn't just happen. You gotta go through something for it to happen. The best thing is, we went through the adverse situation."
The adverse situation, presumably, being a wildly up-and-down regular season, in which the three players were frequently at each other's throats and questioning their coach. The Bulls would show an ability to beat the league's best teams one night, and then flop against its worst teams the next.
True to their mystifying form, they're now up 2-0 on the top-seeded Celtics, with the series swinging back to Chicago for Games 3 and 4.
"We didn't even have to talk about it," Wade said of the team's bumpy journey. "Every team I've been on, we've hit adversity at some point. Some, in the playoffs. You wanna hit it before the playoffs and I think we hit it before the playoffs. It made us better, communicate better. Lead better."
It's pretty hard to argue with the results. Wade, Butler, and Rondo combined for 55 points, 21 rebounds, 24 assists, and nine steals, posted the game's three best plus-minus ratings, and led the Bulls to a 111-97 romp in Game 2.
Apparently, talking helps.