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It makes sense that Dean Wade is playing, but Cavs' forward is also doing his best Tony Snell impression originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
It would be unfair to Dean Wade to say that the Cleveland Cavaliers forward is just out there getting his cardio in.
But there's also some truth to that -- he just happens to be getting his cardio by doing his best to defend Pistons star Cade Cunningham.
What Wade isn't doing is shooting.
He took a shot early in Game 4 against Detroit, then not again for the rest of the game, then not a single shot for all of Game 5.
It's a stretch of more than 40 minutes of game clock that Wade has been on the floor without taking a single shot.
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It has reminded some of the legendary Tony Snell performance when he went 28 minutes and didn't record a single statistic.
Wade isn't quite that barren -- but it's close. He's had 11 combined rebounds over Games 4 and 5, and he nabbed a steal in Game 5. That's it, though. No assists. No blocks.
The Cavs pretty much never throw him the ball on offense at this point.
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Wade's role is clear, and given that the Cavs have won three games in a row in this series, it's not going to change right now.
It's still quite a tough one to quantify, because basketball fans like the simple stats that they can see in the box score, and Wade isn't compiling any of those.
Right now, Wade's job is to defend Cunningham. Everything else has been pushed aside, and so Wade will just worry about making Cunningham's shots tough without thinking at all about the shots he himself might take.
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