Jimmy Butler happy with Heat max extension: What he had to say
The Miami Heat is committed to Jimmy Butler and Butler is committed to the Heat.
That commitment resulted in Butler signing a maximum four-year extension worth $184 million on Saturday that keeps him under contract with the Heat through the 2025-26 season. Friday marked the first day that Butler, who turns 32 on Sept. 14, was eligible to sign the deal.
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. The extension replaces Butler’s 2022-23 option and begins that season, which means he’s set to earn $220 million over the next five years.
Butler, in a Saturday morning news conference, said signing the extension was an “easy” decision: “They allow me to be me here, love who I am as a person and player. Love the guys I have an opportunity to hoop with. I think we’ll be a really good team. We’re consistently getting better, adding the right amount of vets to get over the hump and win a championship. It means everything to me to represent this great organization.”
He said of the Kyle Lowry addition: “I’m glad to have my guy with me. He’s been a good friend of mine for years and years. I’m excited and happy about it. Kind of bummed we had to give the guys we had to give up - a lot of respect for those guys, Precious [Achiuwa] and Goran Dragic,” who are both headed to Toronto.
Just hours after Butler spoke to the media on Saturday, multiple league sources confirmed an ESPN report that the NBA has launched an investigation into whether the Heat tampered in its sign-and-trade acquisition of Lowry from the Raptors. Two years ago, the NBA raised the maximum tampering fine to $10 million and also said that tampering could result in forfeiture of draft picks, suspension of team executives or even voiding of contracts.
Whether the NBA will be able to prove tampering remains in question.
Before that news surfaced, Butler said Saturday that Dragic is “a winner through and through” and he will always appreciate Dragic and how much Dragic enjoyed the game and how he taught him about being a father.
“I still owe him a trip to Slovenia,” Butler said. “I didn’t get to go this summer. This was one of hardest FaceTimes I had to do in a long time, saying we wouldn’t be teammates any more.”
He said Lowry, who’s a close friend and godfather of his daughter, “is a Miami Heat guy. I’m going to tell him the truth and he’s going to tell me the truth.”
Butler said that even though there are new players, “good basketball players find a way to play good basketball. We have a lot of those types of guys on the team.”
He said he hopes the Heat defense “is elite. We’ve got to stop teams from scoring. We have some guys who can put the ball in the basket. We’ve never had a lack of that.”
Butler said he wants to finish his career here and knew that in his first season here. “I knew I would be good for a very long time,” because he fits here.
With the Heat “they’re not afraid to butt heads and have the hard conversation, make sure everyone is playing their role,” Butler said. “It’s a place for me. Teammates allow me to be me. When I’m wrong, they’re going to tell me I’m wrong. When I’m right they still probably tell me I’m wrong. I love them for that. Blessing to play with these guys and [Erik Spoelstra] and Pat Riley.”
With the NBA’s moratorium period ending Friday at noon, Miami’s free-agent signings were also able to become official. The Heat formally announced the signings of Lowry, Duncan Robinson, Dewayne Dedmon, Markieff Morris, Max Strus, Gabe Vincent and Omer Yurtseven on Friday, and P.J. Tucker and Victor Oladipo on Saturday.
Butler’s four-year max extension with the Heat is expected to include salaries of about $41 million for 2022-23 (a $3 million increase from the player option in Butler’s current contract for 2022-23), $44 million for 2023-24, $48 million for 2024-25 and $51 million for 2025-26.
The final season is a player option.
“Jimmy is the anchor and face of our franchise along with Bam and Kyle,” Riley said. “With Jimmy, we get an All-NBA player, an All-NBA Defensive player, tough as nails and a complete player across the board. He’s very deserving of this contract as he continually puts himself at the top of the league at his position. Having him in the Heat organization has been a great, great coup for us.”
The Heat has its entire core of Butler, Adebayo (entering first season of five-year extension), Lowry (entering first season of three-year contract) and Robinson (entering first season of five-year contract) under contract for the next three seasons. In addition, the Heat has Tyler Herro under team control for the next three seasons — due $4 million next season in the third year of his rookie-scale contract, faces a $5.7 million team option 2022-23 and can become a restricted free agent in 2023-24.
Butler’s extension aligns with the one 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 is expected to be in excess of $50 million.
The Heat’s salary cap situation is not impacted by Butler’s extension this offseson because his new deal does not start until 2022-23. But there are future cap implications, as just the projected 2022-23 salaries of Butler ($41 million), Adebayo ($30.4 million), Lowry ($28.3 million) and Robinson ($16.8 million) combine for roughly $117 million to take up most of the Heat’s salary cap, which is projected at $119 million for that season.
Among the veterans who recently signed a max extension in his 30s is Paul George, who was 30 when he signed with the Los Angeles Clippers last offseason. Stephen Curry, 33, also agreed to a four-year, $215 million extension with the Golden State Warriors in recent days.
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 last season’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.
Despite that, Butler is coming off of 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). And he was an essential part of Miami’s winning formula, as the Heat finished the regular season with a 7-13 record in games that Butler missed and a 33-19 record when he played.
In the playoffs, Butler averaged 14.5 points on 29.7 percent shooting to go with 7.5 rebounds and seven assists in four games. The Heat was swept out of the first round by the eventual NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks.
Butler, who led the Heat to the NBA Finals in his first season with the organization in 2019-20, was named to the NBA All-Defensive Second Team and All-NBA Third Team for this past season.
The Heat’s roster for next season looks to be nearly complete with 13 players on standard NBA contracts: Butler, Adebayo, Lowry, Robinson, P.J. Tucker, Herro, KZ Okpala, Morris, Dedmon, Oladipo, Strus, Vincent and Yurtseven.
The Heat’s front office only needs to fill one more roster spot to get to 14 players, which is one shy of the NBA regular-season maximum of 15 players but still acceptable under NBA roster rules. Miami has gone with 14 players in previous seasons when up against the luxury tax or hard cap, and the expectation is that veteran forward Udonis Haslem will return for a 19th NBA season and fill that final spot.
This story was originally published August 7, 2021 at 10:41 AM.
