When a superstar hits the trade block, the reaction is almost always centered around the star himself. Where should he go? How much is he worth? Can he win a championship with a new team? In Jimmy Butler’s case, these questions aren’t just valid. They’re essential. For a variety of reasons, he’s an extraordinarily difficult player to trade. His playing style, his age, his injury history, and most importantly, his contract status limit the number of viable destinations. In all likelihood, we’re going to spend the next two months debating who makes sense. We might not have the answer until the trade deadline.
Here’s what we can say right now: despite all of the uncertainty on the Butler side, this all makes perfect sense for the Miami Heat. While Butler, a six-time All-Star, may still have championship equity in the right situation, the Heat, in their present state, do not. A reboot of some sort was essential.
The Heat seemingly recognized this even in the immediate aftermath of their 2023 Finals berth. They tried to trade for Bradley Beal before he landed with the Phoenix Suns. They had a much more publicized flirtation with Damian Lillard that ended with the Portland Trail Blazers defying their superstar’s wishes and sending him to the Milwaukee Bucks. They were even reportedly interested in snagging Jrue Holiday as the consolation prize off of the Lillard blockbuster before he went to the Boston Celtics. The Heat are perpetual big-game hunters, yes, but they also understood the reality that their 2023 playoff push was really more of an outlier.
After all, they were a Play-In team when they reached the 2023 Finals and a No. 5 seed when they got there in 2020. Their No. 1 seed in 2022 was the exception, not the norm. They’ve now been a Play-In team in consecutive seasons. They are currently the No. 5 seed in the Eastern Conference, but on an unimpressive 45-win pace.
In the past, the Heat have been comfortable hovering around the middle of the pack so long as they retained the flexibility to make a jump later. They lost consecutive first-round series in 2009 and 2010 before landing LeBron James and Chris Bosh. They hoarded cap space after their 2020 Finals run, hoping to sign Giannis Antetokounmpo, and even when he fell off of the market, they used that flexibility to nab Kyle Lowry and earn that lone No. 1 seed in the Butler era. Miami always has a broader plan. They tend not to tread water without knowing when they expect to climb out of the pool.
A free agency-boosted reload isn’t happening this summer. The Heat have $191.5 million on their books with Butler’s player option included. That’s nearly second-apron money before considering any changes. It’s hard to imagine it coming through a blockbuster trade, either. The Heat are still out two first-round picks from older deals: last year’s Terry Rozier addition and another that dates all the way back to their need to dump Hassan Whiteside in order to free the cap space to get Butler all the way back in 2019. Landing a star with limited draft resources is difficult under the best of circumstances. Doing it when you’re already pushing up against the second apron with a mediocre roster is borderline impossible.
Could the Heat trade for someone older and perhaps less costly from an asset perspective? Sure. When the Bucks were 2-8 and Antetokounmpo rumors swirled, Miami seemed a natural solution to Milwaukee’s simmering post-Giannis Lillard problem. Well, now the Bucks are winning and Lillard looks like an All-Star again. They could sniff up the LeBron James tree as the Warriors did a season ago, but if that didn’t work for Golden State, why would it for Miami? If there’s a lower-cost star upgrade out there for the Heat, it’s not immediately apparent.
Under different circumstances, the Heat could afford to be more patient. These are the Heat, after all. Give one of the NBA’s best front offices time to figure things out and it usually will. They pulled Butler out of thin air once. Who’s to say they couldn’t do something similar again? Well, maybe they could if they had a bit more time.
Butler is 35 years old now. He has a player option that he is expected to decline in search of one last long-term deal that the Heat, to this point, have been hesitant to give him. Such a contract might make sense to a team ready to win the championship today. But the Heat aren’t there, and there’s no guarantee they can get there before Butler ages out of stardom. The likeliest outcome for an expensive contract given to an aging player that doesn’t shoot 3s and has injury concerns is financial ruin. Do the Heat really want to navigate Apron World with a cumbersome Butler extension weighing them down?
A long-term partnership between Butler and the Heat, at this point, just wouldn’t end well. The Heat are not in a position to take advantage of the precious few star-level playoff runs Butler likely has left to offer. They do not have the assets to work around an albatross contract for a declining player. It is in everyone’s best interests for the two sides to part now, on relatively amicable terms and while a good trade is seemingly still possible.
Butler is likely to benefit in the short term. No team is trading for him without feeling somewhat confident in its ability to re-sign him, so a trade takes Butler one step closer to the contract he wants. It also potentially gets him into a more competitive situation. There are absolutely scenarios in which Butler is dealt, immediately shines on a new team, and the Heat face a chorus of “why on Earth did they trade him” critiques.
But a Butler trade is their best bet in the long run even if it lacks an obvious endpoint. We don’t know what specific asset the Heat could get for Butler that turns their future around or what exactly they could position themselves to do with the extra financial flexibility a Butler trade would create. They just position themselves better for whatever comes next if Butler isn’t a part of it.
The ideal scenario here would be for the Heat to use a Butler trade to refill their draft coffers, wait until the offseason or perhaps even another year after that, and then turn around and flip those picks back for a younger star. Stars will always want to come to Miami. Bam Adebayo is an attractive co-star, and between Jaime Jaquez, Tyler Herro, Nikola Jovic and this coaching staff’s uncanny ability to turn undrafted free agents into viable contributors, there is youth to be cultivated here. Land the right younger star and the Heat could be back in business quickly.
Perhaps he wouldn’t even need to come through a trade. The only two guaranteed contracts currently on Miami’s books in 2026 are Adebayo and Herro. Free agency has more or less died as a vehicle for star movement since the summer of 2019 that saw Butler go to Miami, but Paul George’s move to Philadelphia last summer might have been a harbinger of what is to come. Making star trades is harder in Apron World. Many of the most desirable destinations have spent their draft picks already. The best players might need to use free agency to move in the future.
The class of 2026, for now, appears loaded: Luka Doncic, Trae Young, De’Aaron Fox, Kristaps Porzingis and Jaren Jackson Jr. headline a potentially transformational class. Many of those players will re-sign. Some will not. Fox, a college teammate of Adebayo’s who is currently playing for a struggling Kings team, stands out as gettable. Perhaps the Heat will take the same approach they took in 2010 by clearing enough space to try to pursue multiple high-level free agents together. Having Butler on the books at anything approaching his 35% max kills that plan in the crib.
We’ve ventured into speculative territory, but that’s where most teams who traded superstars wind up. There’s rarely an easy way to bounce back after losing a player of that caliber, but if things were going well, there probably wouldn’t have been much of a reason to trade them in the first place. That’s where the Heat are today. They’re open to Butler trades because a Butler trade is necessary.
