Jimmy Butler eligible for an extension this offseason. What it means for Heat and Butler
Jimmy Butler is one of just five players on the Miami Heat’s season-ending roster who have guaranteed contracts for 2021-22, but there’s an important discussion for Butler and the Heat to have this offseason regarding their future together.
That’s because although Butler is under contract through 2022-23, he’s eligible for an extension from the Heat this offseason. The expectation is that Butler, who turns 32 in September, will likely seek a maximum four-year extension worth $181 million.
The four-year, $141 million contract that Butler signed to join the Heat during free agency in 2019 includes a guaranteed $36 million salary for next season and a $37.7 million player option in 2022-23. An extension would replace his 2022-23 option and begin that season.
A four-year max extension would include salaries of $40.5 million for 2022-23 (nearly a $3 million increase from the player option in Butler’s current contract for 2022-23), $43.8 million for 2023-24, $47 million for 2024-25 and $50.3 million for 2025-26 when he’ll be 36 years old, according to a breakdown from ESPN analyst and former Nets executive Bobby Marks.
This extension would align with the one Heat center Bam Adebayo signed last offseason, as both contracts would end in 2025-26. Adebayo’s five-year, $163 million max contract extension is set to pay him $37.1 million in 2025-26, when Butler’s salary will be $50.3 million if he received a max extension.
Marks noted that “one compromise on an extension is a first-year salary of $40.5 million but having either flat or declining salaries for the remainder of the contract, which would reduce Miami’s risk as Butler ages.”
One veteran who recently signed a max extension in his 30s is Paul George, who was 30 when he signed his deal with the Los Angeles Clippers last offseason.
Following Saturday’s season-ending loss to the Milwaukee Bucks that swept the Heat out of the first round of the playoffs, Butler was asked if he will take an active role in roster decisions during the offseason.
“I don’t know. I’ve got to be active,” Butler said. “Me myself, Bam, hell probably Tyler [Herro], some other guys, as well — they’re going to ask and we have to be honest. But at the end of the day, that’s not our job either. Whoever we get the opportunity to play with, we’ve got to go out there and compete.”
Butler’s first two seasons with the Heat have included incredible highs, like the team’s magical run to the 2020 NBA Finals in the Walt Disney World bubble, and painful lows, like this year’s first-round sweep. All the while, the NBA and world adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Butler was forced to begin his second season with the Heat just two months after averaging 43 minutes per game in the NBA Finals because of an abbreviated offseason.
“As I think about it, the entire time that he has been there, it feels like it has gone by really fast,” Butler’s agent Bernie Lee said to the Miami Herald in May. “In the same respect, it has felt obviously like the longest two-season stretch in NBA history that I’ve ever kind of watched.
“Any time you come into a new situation based on the experiences that he had in other places, you come into it with the best of intentions and you have a high degree of enthusiasm and you want it to go really, really well. I think a lot about the press conference with he and Pat [Riley]. I can remember talking to Pat in his office just before we came out. I would say from my perspective, it has been really empowering to watch just how things have come together and they’ve built just to get to this point. It has been really interesting just to see the positive way that they’ve been able to come together.”
Butler just finished arguably the best regular season of his NBA career, averaging 21.5 points on a career-best 49.7 percent shooting and career highs in rebounds (6.9), assists (7.1) and steals (2.1). He was one of just six players in the NBA this season who averaged at least 20 points, six rebounds and seven assists — a list that also includes Dallas’ Luka Doncic, Denver’s Nikola Jokic, Brooklyn’s James Harden, Los Angeles’ LeBron James and Washington’s Russell Westbrook.
The Heat finished the regular season with a 7-13 record in games that Butler missed and a 33-19 record when he played, as 10 of the 20 games that he missed came because of the NBA’s COVID-19 health and safety protocols.
But Butler could not produce those same numbers this postseason, when the Bucks used reigning Defensive Player of the Year Giannis Antetokounmpo to guard him. Butler averaged 14.5 points on 29.7 percent shooting to go with 7.5 rebounds and seven assists in four playoff games, and the Heat was outscored by 86 points with him on the court in the series.
“He can manipulate a game offensively against any coverage, against any player as well as any player that I’ve ever coached,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of Butler. “We just weren’t able to get it done in this series, and probably it’s a bigger part on me not being able to get him in better comfort zones and strengths more consistently.”
Butler, who said he’s still undecided on whether he would accept an invite to play for Team USA in the Tokyo Olympics this summer, has played for four different teams in his 10 NBA seasons. If the Heat and Butler agree to a max extension this offseason, it could keep him in Miami for the rest of his NBA career.
“Appreciative that we get to call this our job, play the game that we love, being around people we enjoy being around,” Butler said over the weekend. “Maybe it’ll be a little different next year, next season. But for this year, it was fun. Through the ups and through the downs, nobody complained. You just go out there and you can compete, play hard and I think we did that for the most part.”
This story was originally published June 1, 2021 at 12:16 PM.
