After weeks of downplay by his agent and denials by Heat president Pat Riley, Jimmy Butler has finally said the quiet part out loud to a room of postgame media about his future in Miami.
“What do I want to see happen? I want to see me get my joy back from playing basketball, wherever that may be — we’ll find out here pretty soon — but I want to get my joy back. I’m happy here, off the court, but I want to be back to somewhere dominant. I want to hoop and I want to help this team win. Right now, I’m not doing that,” Butler said.
In a quick follow up, Butler was asked whether he thought he could get his joy back with the Heat.
“Probably not,” he said without any hesitation.
As a Butler in Miami believer, my surprise stems from the state of the team. That the front office has let the Heat’s roster slowly erode to the strange place of competitive limbo they find themselves in. Losing key role players, like Max Strus and Caleb Martin, plus offensive gap fillers like Gabe Vincent, has left the Heat without much depth. The undeniable talent of Butler, Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro — who is having one of his best seasons, despite it all — and sophomore Jamie Jaquez Jr. is there, and for years Duncan Robinson has worked to be whatever the team needs him to be, but the scrappy longevity and the plucky punches this team was capable of pulling two and three seasons ago are gone.
Beyond Butler’s crystal clear comments, it was reported that he requested a trade after the team lost 128-115 to the Pacers last night. That formal request, and his candor, makes the question of Butler’s future with the Heat questionable, though neither make the timeline of his trade any more urgent. Riley isn’t a person who likes the inner workings of his team to be turned public, and as a middling group the Heat don’t have the same incentive as a top-five team would to get it together.
On the other hand, Riley is unsympathetic to tenure, or nostalgia — he let Dwyane Wade walk in his prime — and isn’t one to unnecessarily muddy the waters. There’s no need to make a bad mood in Miami worse and sour things for the locker room, so if there’s a would-be competitor with picks or role players to spare, Riley may oblige Butler.
The whole thing feels strange, and anticlimactic, and not in service to the functionality and potential this group had when they fought their way deep into the playoffs with the Eastern Conference Finals one season and the NBA Finals the next. That group, injured and seemingly with the lesser star pedigree than either the Celtics or Nuggets boasted, knew itself. All down the lineup was a sense of identity and through that recognition came strength, resilience, and trust.
This group, now, rings hollow by comparison. Not for lack of want, as I wrote earlier much of the core of that competitive group remains and remains just as good, if not incrementally better, but the glue of recognition is dried up.
The East is always better with Miami in the mix, and the league is always best with Butler competing, period, and competing into the postseason. The hope now has to be that both outcomes are still possible at this point in the season.
