Jimmy Butler stuns the Heat with trade bombshell

The Indiana Pacers tore through Miami at the Kaseya Center on Thursday, looking like the impressive team that amazed during the first half of last season.

They won easily (115-128 - at one point leading by 28 points), with Tyrese Haliburton back at his supreme best. The point guard finished with 33 points, 15 assists, 6/13 on three-pointers and not one turnover. Their first quarter was stellar (16 points, 5 assists) and that established (25-38) the overwhelming superiority of the Pacers who shot 21 times more because they swept the offensive rebound (5-13) and the points after turnovers (9-23).

Pacers targeting a playoff berth

Rick Carlisle’s team is now 17-18, in a good run that was somewhat spoiled on Tuesday, when they let the Bucks come back from 19 points behind. But they have won eight of their last 12 games, and are eighth in an East which is affording teams a lot of lives and safe passages to overcome the bad times. The Pacers are, for example, only a game and a half away from sixth, the last in the zone that avoids the play-in… and right now it is Miami Heat (17-15). And, it seems, there are no weeks of stability and tranquility coming in South Florida. So…

Because the game, in the end, became an inconsequential blur when Jimmy Butler decided to make official his desire to leave the team he has been with for more than five years, one whose sacrosanct culture he came to personify and with which he played two NBA Finals (both lost - to the Lakers and the Nuggets). Butler has not left yet, and we will see when and how he manages to break ties (the market closes on February 6) but his time with the Miami Heat is over. What will come is a forced extension that surely will not be pretty.

Butler did not play in the fourth quarter again, as in the victory against the Pelicans. And he was again limited to nine points with few shots and a visibly passive attitude.

Jimmy Butler: “I want to get my joy back”

Afterwards, he began the dance in front of the press: “I have felt good, focused. I think I did my job. At least, what is my job now.” His job now seems to be to stay in a corner without participating in the attacks: “Maybe that is my role here, but it is not what I am used to. It has not been like this since my second or third year in the NBA, when I only went out on the court to defend. But I compete, I defend. I try to make sure that the player I am in charge of does not score. That is what I do now. I go out and compete. That is how it is if I score nine points or if I score 29. You cannot say that I do not play hard, although it may seem that way because I am less involved in the plays and I shoot little, but you cannot say that I do not play hard.”

In case the message wasn’t clear enough, Butler also assured, the missing big headline, that he wants to change teams as soon as possible and that, surely, he will return to being the player he was: “We will soon see which team that is, because what I want to happen is to enjoy playing basketball again.” Something that, it seems, will not happen in any case in Miami: “Probably not. 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.”

The message was loud and clear: the crisis is already public and the battle will be experienced first-hand. Butler has already shown in the past that he has no problem in turning a situation into something ugly and histrionic enough to make what he wants happen happen (his departure from the Minnesota Timberwolves was highly publicized). And what he wants is to leave Miami.

Which team could Jimmy Butler join?

If on Christmas Day ESPN assured that it had a list of preferences (Suns, Warriors, Rockets, Mavericks), now the same media, with its heavyweights (Shams Charania, Brian Windhorst) says, a moment after the shooting guard’s words, that there is no preferred destination and that Butler just wants to leave, he doesn’t care where.

Pat Riley, one of the most important characters in the history of the NBA and certainly the most transcendent character in the history of the Miami Heat, is a tough rival, also at 79 years old. A few days ago he responded to the first ESPN news and said that they are not going to trade Butler.

Perhaps that is just Riley marking a line in the sand, a firm starting point for negotiations. The same information that says Butler wants to leave points to talks without a happy ending between his entourage and the franchise and to the Heat’s feelers to see how the Butler market was going. And it is going badly, perhaps that is why Riley wanted to try to make it clear that they are not going to give away the one who is (was?) their franchise player.

Butler is 35 years old, has problems with injuries and an ultra-competitive character but not always easy to manage, not if he is not completely happy. In addition, he will be a free agent in the summer and wants another big contract. It does not seem, seen in this light, likely that juicy offers will be raining down on him.

Because the big problem comes from there, from the summer: Butler is playing in the last effective year of his contract, $48.2 million with a player option for next season ($52.4M) that he is going to skip to sign another last agreement, a longer one and the last big economic bite of his career. When last season ended, he wanted the Heat to give him a two-year extension for $113 million. But the franchise refused and, after a very frustrating (mediocre) season that led the Finals team to a loss without options in the first round against the Celtics, the disconnection between Butler and Riley became evident.

The former missed that playoff series due to a knee injury and said that with him they would have beaten the Celtics, like a year before. Riley, in his public appearance at the end of the season, pulled him by the ears without hesitation: “If you are not on the court at the important moment, the best thing you can do is shut up.”

The Heat did not want to even consider a maximum extension for Butler, due to his age, the restrictions imposed by the new contract and his absences from last season, and Butler took it as an affront. Something personal that has already exploded in the face of the lack of progress in recent months: the Heat still do not want to give him those $113 million and he has already decided that he does not want them either, that it is time for a change of scenery.

The situation, in any case, is critical for the Heat, who are moving through the warm zone of the East without making any noise, far from the level of the true title contenders. Butler has already missed 10 games, in the last few his attitude is that of someone who is frustrated but above all he wants it to be very noticeable that he is, and the roster is good for what remains.

Spoelstra changed the starting five on the fly (taking out Rozier and Jovic; bringing in Highsmith and Robinson) and things improved, but it cannot be hidden that a team led by Tyler Herro and Bam Adebayo isn’t aiming for the top of the league - not if you add the bad contractual decisions that the Heat have been making for years. Plus gambles that could have been instrumental but that have not worked - Rozier, Jovic or Jaquez Jr who is far from the excellent sensations with which he debuted in the NBA.

The Heat don’t seem to have enough talent, not without an optimal version of Butler with plenty of miles on his legs... and now also wanting to leave and, above all, to do everything possible to leave now. A will that will be met, in front of him, by the steel armor of Riley. So, yes: complicated, and surely ugly, days are coming in Miami.