Jimmy Butler was a perfect fit for the Heat, until he basically announced he wasn’t. (Megan Briggs/Getty Images)
Jimmy Butler has once again found a new NBA team, with the bridge casually burned behind him.
The Miami Heat granted their disgruntled star’s trade request on Wednesday, finalizing a deal to send him to the Golden State Warriors, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania. The deal will reportedly cost the Warriors Andrew Wiggins, Dennis Schroder, Kyle Anderson and a protected first-round pick.
The full five-team deal, as reported by various reporters:
- Warriors receive: Jimmy Butler
- Heat receive: Andrew Wiggins, P.J. Tucker, the Warriors’ 2025 first-round pick with top-10 protection
- Utah Jazz receive: Dennis Schroder
- Detroit Pistons receive: Lindy Waters III, Josh Richardson
- Toronto Raptors receive: Kyle Anderson
Minutes later, Charania reported Butler has agreed to a two-year, $121 million extension to stay in Golden State through the 2026-27 season. Butler subsequently provided his own confirmation, via musical tweet.
Butler was apparently the Warriors’ second choice, as it was reported earlier Wednesday that while Golden State was interested in a reunion with Kevin Durant, the current Phoenix Suns star was not.
This will be Butler’s fifth NBA team, and he still has yet to leave one cleanly, though it’s not like he hasn’t been vindicated with time. He was traded from the Chicago Bulls after clashing with head coach Fred Hoiberg and questioning his teammates’ motivation. He was traded from the Minnesota Timberwolves after similar clashes with Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins. He jumped to the Miami Heat after the Philadelphia 76ers chose Tobias Harris over him.
And now, he’s leaving the Heat after multiple suspensions, all preceded by a surreal news conference in which he pronounced he no longer had joy for the game of basketball and didn’t believe he could get it back in Miami.
The Heat first reacted by suspending Butler for seven games — a grievance from the National Basketball Players Association is still pending — and announcing they would look into trading him.
Butler was then suspended for two games after he missed a team flight. On the day that he was set to return from that suspension, Butler stormed out of a team practice after learning he wouldn’t be in the starting lineup. The Heat suspended him indefinitely, and said he would be out right up until the trade deadline at a minimum.
After half-season that felt like a losing battle against Father Time, the Warriors responded by adding a 35-year-old three years removed from his last All-Star nod.
The Warriors currently sit at 25-24 and were in major need of an upgrade if their objective remains squeezing out what they can in the remainder of Stephen Curry’s career. To do so, the parted with two players in their top 4 in minutes per game this season, Wiggins and Schroder, and one of their top offseason acquisitions in Anderson.
The team now boasts a big 3 in Curry, Butler and Draymond Green, all of whom are at least 34 years old. They currently occupy the final play-in spot in the West, but only via tiebreaker with the retooled Dallas Mavericks. Simply out, there is plenty of work to do just to get to the realm of respectability for a core like this, with not much time to find their rhythm.
All of the recent Butler drama came after the erosion of his relationship with the team’s front office, most notably team president Pat Riley.
The tension began to leak out after the Heat were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs against the Boston Celtics last season. Butler missed the entire series with a knee injury, then implied the team would still be playing if he were healthy. In response, Riley publicly told Butler to “keep your mouth shut.”
That was after Riley announced the team wouldn’t extend Butler’s contract beyond this season. More recently, there was a report on Christmas that Butler would prefer a trade from the Heat before the deadline in February, though he hadn’t made a formal request.
Riley strongly rejected the idea, plainly stating, “We are not trading Jimmy Butler” in a statement. Butler didn’t seem to agree, as he basically shrugged when asked if he wanted to remain with the Heat for the rest of the season. Two days later, he was telling the world there was no fixing his role on the Heat.
Before that news conference, Butler had been returning from a five-gaming absence, with what the team called an illness. When the suspension was announced, he was averaging the fewest minutes in his career going back to the 2012-13 season, his second in the league.
There was plenty of good before that, though. In an NBA that feels increasingly controlled by super-teams, Butler led the Heat to two NBA Finals with a supporting cast that felt refreshingly traditional. Bam Adebayo is an All-Star and Tyler Herro, Duncan Robinson and Caleb Martin were all good players, but the Heat seemed to fully revolve around the culture Butler and head coach Erik Spoelstra built.
Butler was a perfect match for the Heat, until he very publicly wasn’t. The team tried to hold its ground the best it could, but it ended up being one more stop in a career that will probably land Butler in the Hall of Fame, but with potentially fewer friends than you’d expect.
