Chicago ? Dwyane Wade was in Miami, except he was in Chicago. LeBron James was in Miami, except he was in New York. Chris Bosh was in Miami, except no one is precisely sure where he was actually, and really, no one cares because he’s Chris Bosh and not Dwyane Wade or LeBron James.

Which can mean only one thing: clones.

Clones. LeBron, D-Wade and the other guy now have clones. And, look, if clones can defeat a separatist droid army in an incredibly poorly acted war, then, yeah, it’s fairly safe to say the Grizzlies are straight hopeless when they face LeBron’s Heat and LeClone’s Bulls on a back-to-back in December.

The NBA. Where Scientific Progress That Eventually Dooms The Galaxy Happens.

So the much-anticipated 2010 free-agent summit apparently happened over the weekend in Miami, where ESPN’s Chris Broussard and Marc Stein reported that multiple sources saw the James-Wade-Bosh trio gathered.

Then the agent for Wade and Bosh told David Kaplan of WGN, Chicago Tribune Live, the Around Town column and Ghana’s national soccer team that Wade was in Chicago until Sunday night.

And Marc Berman of the New York Post tweeted that LeBron was in New York from Thursday to Saturday afternoon, twice making Page 6 and also shopping for place-settings on “Bethenny Getting Married?”

So, come to think of it, as undeniable and airtight as the logic is, the clones thing probably didn’t happen. LeBron was in New York. How stupid can we be? How did we not see this coming? It was right in front of our eyes the whole time.

Sure, LeBron had his superstar free-agent summit, but with — you guessed it — David Lee.

But if there was anyone who was going to threaten a LeBron-Lee package destined for greatness, it was James Jones. And sure enough, the alliteratively sinister Heat forward was bought out on Tuesday, one day before his $4 million-plus cap hit kicked in for 2010-11.

And, Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel reported, the buyout is amortized in such a way that the Heat have even more cap space than anticipated to sign LeBron, Wade and Bosh.

James Jones. Monosyllables, Mayhem, and, eventually, the Mid-Level Exception.

So the rumors will subside in just a matter of hours now, when the free-agency period opens at 11:01 p.m. Central tonight.

In the face of all this, LeBron won’t have William “World Wide Wes” Wesley at his side, according to James’ business manager.

“All the Wes rumors are untrue, and he will not be at the meetings,” Maverick Carter told the New York Times. “Wes has nothing to do with where he goes.”

Will that be anywhere? Brian Windhorst, the Cavs beat writer who has chronicled LeBron since birth, tweeted Wednesday that a LeBron source told him the Cavaliers “still have an edge in race.”

Because, you know, they can pay him $30 million more than anyone else.

Right. That.