Jimmy Butler, Heat seem destined to part: Assessing the potential trade market

All of the people involved in this Jimmy Butler business are prideful, and justifiably so.

Pat Riley has been on — either as a player, assistant coach, head coach or top executive — nine NBA championship teams. And teams of which he has been a part have made 19 NBA finals. There have been only 78 finals in league history. That means Riles’ teams have been in a quarter of ’em. Almost three decades after he came to Miami, his Heat organization remains, as he is, relentless and obsessed with winning, led by a coach in Erik Spoelstra whose tough love brand earns nothing but respect and accolades from players around the league.

Butler has earned everything he’s gotten in the NBA, coming from Tomball, Texas, to become one of the game’s great clutch players, a postseason force unlike most who have ever laced ’em up. To mix sports metaphors, Jimmy Butler rakes in the playoffs. And if the Heat, who seem to have stabilized themselves after a rough start, make another postseason, a healthy Jimmy Butler would likely rake, again.

But, the way things are headed, the player and the team seem destined to part ways. Maybe amicably, which is what mom and dad say when they go Splitsville, so as not to upset the kids. But divorced, nonetheless. Whether it comes during the season or next summer, with the 35-year-old Butler holding a player option at $52 million for the 2025-26 season, we seem to be moving toward that inevitability, with the backdrop of last season, when both sides seemed to be chafing one another, still fresh in the mind.

Unless … the Heat come to the table with the two-year, $113 million extension Butler has wanted for the last year. Which is not likely.

At the very least, the Heat are indeed seriously listening for the first time to trade offers for Butler, league sources said. Nothing has approached a serious offer yet, but even being willing to listen marks a change in where the team was when Butler almost willed them to a championship in 2023, before Miami was overwhelmed by Nikola Jokić and the Denver Nuggets in five games.

But Miami’s sober about its current state.

In 2023, Miami was a Play-In team that got hot at just the right time. Last season, it was … a Play-In team, that got smoked by Boston in the first round, with Butler sidelined by a sprained knee. This season, the Heat seems to have found something with Butler and Haywood Highsmith flanking Bam Adebayo in the back of Miami’s defense. But no one thinks Miami is on Boston’s level right now. And the whole point of Patrick James Riley’s professional life is to compete for championships, not the eight seed.

So if moving Butler brings back players that give Miami more of a shot, the Heat will engage. That likely means taking back players, rather than a deal featuring a bunch of future picks. Riles doesn’t do rebuilds. (Plus, he’s going to be 80 in March.)

They’re not there yet. But, they’re listening.

Butler is listening, too. He hasn’t asked to be traded from Miami, but if he stays, he wants the max.

He took to heart Riley’s admonitions after the Boston series, when he called Butler out for an appearance on a podcast in which he said if he’d been healthy, Miami would have beaten either the Celtics or New York in a first-round series.

“If you’re not on the court playing against Boston, or on the court playing against the New York Knicks, you should keep your mouth shut, in your criticism of those teams,” Riley fired back.

So, Butler came to camp in even better shape than usual, and is averaging nearly 32 minutes per game, though he missed four games early in the season with ankle issues. He’s shooting 55 percent from the floor in 18 games, which would be a career best if it held up all season. He’s still drawing fouls, taking more than seven free throws per game. He believes he’s proving his worth on the court, and is setting himself up to play next season for big dollars. Could be Miami; could be elsewhere. It’s not that he’s ambivalent; all things being equal, he’d prefer to stay.

But … see above. And he does get that Miami has to find out what it could get for him, and that it could go either way.

Along those lines, don’t discount the possibility that Miami is not just trying to gauge the trade market for Butler, but also what it would cost to bring him back if/when he opts out.

No one other than Brooklyn would have the cap space to take Butler in via that route next summer. That’s not a likely destination for Butler, who wants to play for rings. So Miami’s play, if it wants to make a deal, would be the sign-and-trade route. Finding out what Butler’s market is now will also help the Heat determine whether to offer him, say, a free agent deal more like what the LA Clippers gave James Harden (two years, $70 million), rather than what the Philadelphia 76ers wound up giving Paul George (four years, $212 million).

Just how deep is a potential trade market for Butler? One could certainly form by the trade deadline as teams get more desperate to add a difference-maker for the stretch run. This is especially true out West, where Denver and Minnesota are flailing to regain their old form, whether because of injuries to key players (the Nuggets) or just a kind of malaise that has settled over the team (the Timberwolves). New Orleans, flat on its back at 5-21, certainly has to reassess its roster, and exactly whom it can put around Zion Williamson and Dejounte Murray going forward.

But the realities of the second apron, and the massive penalties it triggers for teams that exceed it, make a blockbuster deal for someone of Butler’s talent, age and price tag incredibly difficult to pull off.

Minnesota’s already gone blockbuster this year with the Karl-Anthony Towns trade, and is still trying to figure out how Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo fit best in the Wolves’ rotation. As our Sam Amick detailed Friday, the surging Rockets, heading to the NBA Cup semifinals this weekend in Las Vegas on the strength of an already-formidable defense, are a long shot to get into the Butler Sweepstakes.

Golden State has been linked to Butler, but Miami would have to think an Andrew Wiggins-based package, which would also likely have to include the now-out-for-the-season De’Anthony Melton, gets them closer to games in June than standing pat (no pun intended) with Jimmy Buckets. That’s a doubtful premise.

Dallas is turning the ball over too much right now to be comfortable, but the Mavericks are still a top-four team in the West, and are top 10 in defensive rating. They also have multiple alphas capable of taking over games offensively — Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving — with a third in Klay Thompson who’s no stranger to postseason heroics. So they don’t necessarily need another scorer, though they struggled mightily at times during the finals series with Boston last June to put the ball in the basket consistently. (And, as Spotrac’s Kevin Smith notes, acquiring Butler would require the Mavs to jump through considerable second-apron hoops to fill out their roster afterward, needing to send multiple players/contracts to the Heat just to make a Butler deal work.)

New Orleans wants to move Brandon Ingram, to be sure. But you wouldn’t trade for Butler if you weren’t going to keep him, which means the Pelicans would have to come correct with an extension. And that would make the Pels, whose four-year, $112 million extension for Trey Murphy III kicks in next year, really, really expensive. They aren’t interested in being really, really expensive.

Phoenix has been bandied as a potential destination, as well. And, sure, the Suns are in win-yesterday mode. Having Butler on the floor with Kevin Durant and Devin Booker would make Phoenix that much more formidable, and Mike Budenholzer certainly could figure out ways to employ Butler’s defensive chops to maximum impact at the other end.

But a trade between Miami and the Suns would have to involve Bradley Beal waiving his no-trade clause to facilitate a deal, allowing Phoenix to make a relatively clean swap with Miami for Butler. As Beal chose the Suns over the Heat in the first place in 2023, when the Wizards had the framework of a deal in place with Miami to send him there, it’s hard to see him now wanting to go the other way, even if the Eastern Conference is decidedly less treacherous to navigate than the Western Conference. Beal chose Phoenix over Miami, in part, because it was much closer to his wife’s extended family in California.

Sacramento is certainly underachieving, at .500 through 26 games and currently out of the Play-In round. But even if interested, the Kings would have to know that they could re-sign Butler next summer. With the Kings already at the first apron hard cap, going further to keep Butler, while De’Aaron Fox creeps ever closer to unrestricted free agency, would seem to be a non-starter.

Pride goeth before a fall, it says in Proverbs. The best solution for Jimmy Butler and Pat Riley and the Miami Heat might just be for everyone to swallow their collective pride, make a deal everyone can live with, and play it out on South Beach.

(Photo: Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)