On 20 August, Wade was banned by the PDC for four tournaments regarding his behavior at recent Pro Tour events. He was found to have "acted in a manner which may reasonably be considered to injure or discredit the Darts Regulation Authority or bring the game into disrepute". Wade was free to return at the German Darts Masters in September. In October Wade reached the semi-finals of the World Grand Prix, where he lost 5–1 to Phil Taylor, extending his winless run against Taylor to 18 matches. Taylor remarked afterwards: "James didn't click. He was gone. It's the first time I've ever seen him gone. He told me afterwards that he just gave up." At the inaugural Masters Wade fought a partisan crowd to come back from 7–4 behind in the quarter-finals against Simon Whitlock to finish 91 on the bullseye in the deciding leg to win 8–7. Wade, whose ranking has now dropped to world number six, stated that he wanted to prove that he should be back in the top four. Early on in the semi-final his opponent Taylor threw a broken flight from the stage, with Wade then asking for it back before complaining to match officials. Wade asked the referee to forfeit the match and lost 10–1 with an average of 73.99. Wade returned to win all three of his group games at the Grand Slam of Darts and then cruised past Paul Nicholson 10–1 to face Taylor yet again. The meeting looked to be heading in a similar manner to Wade's recent heavy defeats as he trailed 9–2, but he then won five unanswered legs before missing three darts to reduce his deficit to only one. This was as close as he could get to Taylor and he went on to lose 16–12.