Spoelstra, players address how Butler drama affected Heat’s season: ‘It certainly had an impact’
For the past few months, Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra and players essentially went without saying Jimmy Butler’s name. But in the wake of a second straight first-round playoff exit, Butler’s ugly mid-season departure from the Heat was a popular topic on exit interview day.
With Heat players, coaches and executives gathering for meetings at Kaseya Center on Wednesday before going their separate ways to begin their offseason, Spoelstra and players spoke to the media and reflected on a disappointing season that will be remembered for the Butler drama.
“It certainly had an impact,” Spoelstra said Wednesday when asked how Butler’s contentious exit impacted the team. “We are an organization that prides ourselves on not making any kind of excuses. Even if we managed it perfectly, there’s always second-guessing on what we could have done better just to right the ship. It was turbulent waters. But it’s not as if that would have moved the needle for us to be first in the conference. That’s unrealistic.”
The Heat ended up finishing the regular season with the Eastern Conference’s 10th-best record at 37-45 before winning back-to-back elimination road games to become first 10th-place team in either conference to make the playoffs from the play-in tournament.
Many of those regular-season losses came after the Heat traded the disgruntled Butler to the Golden State Warriors on Feb. 6. Miami closed the regular season with a poor 12-21 following the move that brought Andrew Wiggins, Davion Mitchell, Kyle Anderson and the 2025 Warriors first-round pick (No. 20 overall) to the Heat.
The trade put an end to a damaging few weeks for the team-player relationship between the Heat and Butler. There was a trade request from Butler, three suspensions without pay issued by the Heat and an airing of grievances against each other along the way before the trade.
Butler’s relationship with the team took a turn last offseason when Heat president Pat Riley publicly challenged Butler to be available for more games and the Heat declined to give Butler a two-year, $113 million contract extension.
“I think it was just the overall wondering when is it going to end,” Heat guard Tyler Herro said Wednesday when asked how he experienced Butler’s public feud with the organization. “That was kind of the main thing of when can we just focus on basketball? That’s what this profession is, it’s basketball. That’s what we’re here to do and that’s what we all get paid to do is play basketball. At the end of the day, that’s what we wanted to worry about.”
Bam Adebayo’s leadership was tested during this part of the Heat’s season as the team captain, teaming up with Spoelstra to try to help the Heat survive Butler’s messy exit.
“I feel like Spo tried to do his best to make the team focus on the main thing,” Adebayo said on exit interview day. “Obviously, there was a lot of noise going on around us. There were a lot of things happening, moving fast, not knowing who’s going to be in the lineup, if they were going to show up today or not. So he did a great job of just trying to make it the main thing, which was you got to get out here and compete.
“We can’t lose focus because the outside noise is doing what it’s supposed to do — be outside noise. I mean, we just have regular conversations. You come in there every day and you try your best to keep it positive because it can turn negative really quick if you let it.”
Even after Butler was traded, the Heat continued to face adversity in the form of a 10-game losing streak in March. It marked Miami’s longest skid since dropping 11 consecutive games from Jan. 29, 2008 through Feb. 23, 2008.
The Heat found some momentum late in the season, winning eight of its final 12 regular-season games before winning two straight road play-in tournament games to make the playoffs as the East’s No. 8 playoff seed.
“When I say it’s a memorable season, the memories will be like the last four weeks,” Spoelstra said. “The rest of the season was a grind. But we finally started to turn the corner even during the losing streak and you felt momentum, you felt progress, you felt like everybody was coming together and it led to two play-in games. So that was really it.
“All the other adversities, it made me better. I’ve never been in a situation like that, to try to keep a locker room together and to try to handle it during those weeks. But then also to fully change course stylistically in how to play and what to emphasize at the All-Star break. That was an invigorating challenge.”
But the challenge proved to be too much for the Heat to conquer in the playoffs, getting swept by the top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round. The Heat dropped Game 3 by 37 points and Game 4 by 55 points for its two most lopsided playoff losses in franchise history, contributing to a 122-point margin that made it the most lopsided playoff series in NBA history.
“We deserved it,” Spoelstra said. “We deserved the criticism. We deserved the embarrassment of those last two games. It’s not what our organization is about. But we put ourselves out there to fight in the play-in, two road play-in games to earn our right to go to the playoffs. And those two games were something.
“We felt like it was going to lead to a lot more, and that was irrational on our part. If we handled different parts of the season better and that’s what I’m going to analyze, even if it’s amid all of the adversity and change and some of the things that were extreme. If we handled some of those better, then I think we would have been out of the play-in and we would have been in the middle of the pack and that’s why everything remains to be seen.”
Butler, who led the Heat to two NBA Finals appearances and three Eastern Conference finals appearances in his first five seasons with the organization, is now trying to help lead his new team on a deep playoff run. Butler and the Warriors entered Wednesday with a 3-1 lead in their best-of-seven first-round playoff series against the Houston Rockets.
“It was a good five-year run,” Spoelstra said, reflecting on Butler’s time with the Heat. “When things end, often times they end not as loudly as this. But it ends where there’s something. You can go look at all the other teams out there with players when they change teams, there’s a certain feeling about it. And it’s unfortunate. We all feel like it didn’t have to go to that level. But we have clarity now. We have turned the page, this is a different chapter and we’re moving on.”
A different chapter that now enters an offseason that could include a lot of change, as the Heat closed the regular season this season with a losing record for first time since the 2018-19 season and just the sixth time in Riley’s 30 seasons with the organization.
“At the end of the day, I want to win,” Adebayo said when asked by a reporter what needs to change for the Heat to be better next season. “That’s more of a Pat Riley question. I hope you can ask that question to him and he doesn’t blow you off. He knows how much I want to win. We want to be in the best way possible to do that. After he talks to you, he will probably talk to me and we will figure out what happens.”
Riley is expected to hold his season-ending press conference to discuss this past season and the upcoming offseason in the coming weeks.
“I want to win and be known as a winner,” Herro said. “We have to do some things this summer to help put us back in that position.”
This story was originally published April 30, 2025 at 4:04 PM.
