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It sure seems like Jimmy Butler has played his final game for the Heat as he continues to serve the suspension he was hit with for “conduct detrimental to the team.” Most fans seemed to be on his side when the news broke, but a new report outlining some of the factors that contributed to the ongoing drama has thrown an interesting twist into the equation.
In December, Shams Chariana suggested the Miami Heat were willing to listen to trade offers for Jimmy Butler as they neared the second half of what had the potential to be his final season with a franchise he joined in the summer of 2019.
That marked the start of a saga that saw Butler’s agent accuse the NBA insider of making up rumors a couple of weeks before Pat Riley publicly announced the Heat had no plans to deal the 35-year-old star with a $52 million player option that could be triggered in the offseason.
That transpired around a week before the six-time All-Star all but demanded a trade during a press conference where he said “I want to see me get my joy back from playing basketball” before asserting he wouldn’t be able to achieve that goal with Miami.
It didn’t take long for the infamously petty Riley to respond by hitting Butler with a seven-game suspension for what he positioned as insubordination, and in doing so, he essentially chucked a stick of dynamite on top of any leverage he might have had to work with when it came to getting something in return for him.
Butler and Riley have reportedly been butting heads since the latter declined to give the guard the two-year, $113 million extension the Heat could have offered him prior to the start of the season, and based on a new report from Jake Fisher, the former has not exactly gone out of his way to be a model teammate in the wake of the fallout.
As Fisher notes, Tim Hardaway Sr. said Riley recently sent a ten-page letter to the NBA Players Association to justify the fairly controversial suspension that led to the union threatening to file a grievance.
While the exact contents of that documentation remain a mystery, Butler reportedly made a habit out of “skipping out on morning shootarounds” and repeatedly insisted on chartering his own private jets to get to and from games instead of joining the rest of the team on the plane the Heat used to travel.
Riley may not want to admit defeat, but Butler really holds all of the cards when you consider he’ll be able to exercise his option if he’s not traded and subsequently leave the Heat on the hook for the $52 million it can’t afford to pay a guy who seemingly has no interest in playing for them.
However, based on these new details, it’s kind of hard to blame the 79-year-old exec for trying to send a message.