Time to go put your Miami Heat gear in the closet….. at least for the time being.
As of Wednesday night, Marquette fans are without a reason to cheer for the Miami Heat. In the evening hours, ESPN inside Shams Charania reported that the Heat are trading Jimmy Butler to the Golden State Warriors.
I’m just going to drop ESPN.com’s writeup on the details of the trade here, because there’s a lot of moving pieces.
The Warriors will send forwards Andrew Wiggins and Kyle Anderson plus a top-10-protected 2025 first-round pick to the Heat, sources said. Also, guard Dennis Schroder, acquired by the Warriors in December, will be sent to the Utah Jazz. Utah will ship forward P.J. Tucker, who played with the Heat in 2021-22, to Miami. Guard Lindy Waters III will go from Golden State to the Detroit Pistons, and Josh Richardson will go from Miami to Detroit.
Sheeesh.
In addition to the trade, Butler is giving up his player option for next season that would have paid him $52 million. Instead, he will sign a two year extension for $111 million.
It’s wild to think that we have gone from “HOLY CRAP, JIMMY’S A FIRST ROUND PICK, HE GETS A GUARANTEED DEAL!” in 2011 to “Jimmy’s getting $55 million a year” in 2025. What a time to be alive.
Butler is averaging 17.0 points, 5.2 rebounds, 4.8 assists, and 1.1 steals per game in 25 appearances for Miami this season. The 35 year old from Texas has played in just five games since just before Christmas as he has made it clear that he no longer saw a future for himself with the Heat. That has led to multiple suspensions from the team and left Miami in a little bit of a tough position when it came to trading him. ESPN is reporting that there was a framework of a deal between Miami, Golden State, and Phoenix that would have landed Butler with the Suns (and Oso Ighodaro), but that was going to result in Kevin Durant returning to the Warriors. That deal apparently fell apart due to Durant making it clear that he had no interest in doing that.
Butler goes from a Miami team that is 25-24 on the year and currently in sixth place in the Eastern Conference as of Thursday morning to a Warriors team that is ……. 25-25 and in 11th place in the Western Conference. Officially, GSW is in a tie for ninth place and just a half game back of eighth place, as well as sitting 3 games back of sixth place where they would avoid the Play-In Tournament completely, so clearly there’s a lot that can change over the next 32 games for them.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go make some popcorn and prepare for what happens when you put Jimmy Butler’s overall deal in the same locker room as Draymond Green’s overall deal…….