I was going to write about the NBA Cup semi-finals today but Milwaukee head coach, Doc Rivers, beat me to it by putting it all pretty succinctly with this:
“I mean, we’re gonna bring our wheelchairs to the cup because we have these three young teams. You know, everybody’s — Atlanta is young, Oklahoma is young, Houston is young. Then here comes the old Milwaukee Bucks, wheeling in. That’s what we are gonna be. We’re gonna just wheel in our wheelchairs and come in on our canes and see if we can just play some basketball. That’s what we are gonna do.”
So instead, let’s talk about superstars and trades. Not because any are going to be traded, but because the allure of the possibility of people like LeBron James and Jimmy Butler — people who create their own gravity — has once again hit peak saturation in NBA discourse.
The Heat floated the idea of a Butler trade, either directly or indirectly, and speculation over which team would make a ready destination followed suit. These things tend to go like dominoes — one of Butler’s favourite pastimes — but in terms of veracity, look no further than Butler’s own agent quashing the speculation. Yes, things have read as weirdly remiss in Miami, especially involving Butler, going back to team president Pat Riley’s end of season press conference. In it, Riley seemed to suggest the Heat were behind Butler so long as he was behind them. It’s a statement that should be self-evident, which is why it’s worth taking a second look at.
Butler’s played superhuman and most often, hurt, throughout Miami’s last few postseason runs. As he’s getting older, and looking for both job and bodily security, it would not be surprising if he was the one agitating for more help and a better plan of where the Heat are headed. For a franchise that prides itself on a rigorous system of effort, training and discipline cut out for a select few, Miami has not done a great job of retaining those very few. Key role-players have looked for better contracts elsewhere, key role-players like athletes like Butler rely on. It’s one thing to have your league identity be the larger than life guy capable of doing everything in the clutch, it’s entirely another to live that every day through an 82-game season and beyond. It’s tiring.
It’s also what makes Butler leaving Miami, especially for a team with roster help intact (though the new CBA makes it even harder for a team that wants Butler to retain that roster help and land him), not impossible, but my feeling has always been that with Miami Butler found an intensity fit — even if that fit is wearing him out.
The other big name, this one hallowed and strange to think of in trade machinations, is LeBron James. The Lakers won’t do it, and nor should they, given the draw and aforementioned gravity of James. What the Lakers should do is whatever they can to get the win-now support around James he needs to make the most of his last few seasons. That’s what these are, even if it feels bizarre to admit it out loud.
Trade talk around the league’s biggest names, and the rare times the league’s biggest names do get traded, is irresistible because it presents a brand new universe of possibilities almost immediately. The entire landscape of the league upends and shifts. What’s harder, as with anything, is to take cold and clear-eyed stock of the reality in front of us and figure out the smaller adjustments, the toil and tinkering required to turn it into what it is we want.
