The two-month saga is finally over. Playoff Jimmy is headed to the Bay Area.
Jimmy Butler has turned into a nomad and once again found a new NBA team, with the bridge burned to a pile of dust behind him.
The Miami Heat granted their angry and frustrated star’s wish to be traded on Wednesday, finalizing a deal to send him to the Golden State Warriors for a haul that includes Andrew Wiggins, Dennis Schroder, Kyle Anderson and a protected first-round pick, sources told ESPN’s senior NBA insider Shams Charania on Wednesday night. The trade also includes the Detroit Pistons, with the Warriors’ Lindy Waters III and Heat’s Josh Richardson headed to the ‘Motor City’, sources said.
The Warriors closed the deal for Butler after negotiations to acquire Phoenix Suns star Kevin Durant fell through when he informed the team he did not want to return to Golden State, sources said. The Warriors, Heat and Suns had been close to an agreement on a trade that would have landed Butler in Phoenix and Durant back where he won back-to-back championships in 2017 and ’18 over LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Butler has agreed to a new two-year, $121 million extension with the Warriors through the 2026-27 campaign, sources told ESPN. He is declining his 2025-26 player option for the new deal. The blockbuster deal comes on the heels of Thursday’s 3:00 p.m. ET NBA trade deadline, and ends a drawn-out divorce filled with irreconcilable differences between Butler and the Heat.
This will be Butler’s fifth NBA team in his 14-year career, and he has yet to leave one without causing drama, though it is not like he has not been proven right over time. He was traded from the Chicago Bulls after butting heads with head coach Fred Hoiberg and questioning his teammates’ work ethic and motivation. He was dealt from the Minnesota Timberwolves after similar
disagreements with big man Karl-Anthony Towns and Wiggins. He joined the Miami Heat after the Philadelphia 76ers made an error in judgement by choosing Tobias Harris over him.
And now, he is leaving the Heat after a bevy of suspensions, all following a bizarre press conference in which he stated he had lost his joy for the game of basketball and did not believe he could get it back in Miami.
The Heat initially reacted swiftly 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 to Milwaukee. On the day that he was scheduled to return from that suspension, Butler shockingly stormed out of a team practice after learning he would not be in the starting lineup against the Orlando Magic. The Heat did not hold back any punches and suspended him indefinitely and said he would be on the shelf right up until the trade deadline at a minimum.
All the recent Butler antics came after the decline of his relationship with the team’s front office, most notably team president Pat Riley.
The foundation began to crumble after the Heat were bounced out in the first round of the playoffs against the eventual champion 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 chastised him and told Butler to “keep your mouth shut.”
That was after Riley announced the team would not extend Butler’s contract beyond this season. More recently, there was a report on Christmas day that Butler would prefer a trade from the Heat before the deadline in February, though he had not made a formal request.
Riley strongly rejected the idea, plainly stating, “We are not trading Jimmy Butler” in a statement. Butler did not seem to agree, as he was nonchalant and 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.
Prior to that news conference, Butler had been returning from a five-game 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 with the Bulls.
There were plenty of good times before everything turned sore. In an era where the NBA was ruled 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 and perimeter shooters, 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 was not. The team tried to hold their ground the best they 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 relationships than anyone would expect.
