With Heat and Butler now in their offseasons, both parties move forward from eventful year

The Miami Heat’s tumultuous season ended nearly three weeks ago. Now, Jimmy Butler’s eventful and turbulent season is also over.

After the Heat was swept out of the first round of the playoffs by the Cleveland Cavaliers in late April, Butler and the Golden State Warriors were eliminated by the Minnesota Timberwolves, 4-1, in the second round of the playoffs. The Timberwolves ended the Warriors’ season with a 121-110 Game 5 win on Wednesday night in Minneapolis.

“Great,” Butler said following Wednesday’s season-ending loss when asked about his time with the Warriors following the midseason trade to Golden State. “A bunch of great guys that work incredibly hard, young talent that’s going to be incredibly successful in this league. It’s all about staying healthy, as it always is, and getting more and more comfortable playing with one another.”

Butler, who started this season with the Heat before he was traded to the Warriors on Feb. 6 after a drama-filled ending to his time in Miami, recorded 17 points on 4-of-11 shooting from the field, 0-of-3 shooting on threes and 9-of-11 shooting from the foul line, six rebounds, six assists and three steals in 42 minutes in Golden State’s season-ending loss Wednesday.

The reality is the Warriors needed more from Butler after losing future Hall of Famer and 11-time All-Star Stephen Curry to a strained hamstring in Game 1 of the series. Curry missed the rest of the second round.

After the Warriors’ Game 1 win, Butler averaged 20.3 points, 6.5 rebounds, five assists and one steal per game while shooting 45.8% from the field in Curry’s absence during the final four games of the playoff series. Butler totaled just 31 points on 20 field-goal attempts in Games 4 and 5 after scoring 33 points on 26 shots in Game 3 of the series.

By the end, Butler, 35, seemed to be affected by an illness in the final two games of the second round and was less than 100% after sustaining a pelvic contusion in the first round of the playoffs.

“He was definitely compromised all series,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said, referring to Butler’s pelvic injury. “I think the injury in Houston definitely impacted him. He’s been playing through pain. And I think the biggest thing in this series is that without the spacing that Steph gives us, Minnesota did a great job of just playing us 1-on-1. They guarded us on the perimeter. They were trying to take away our threes. And that forced Jimmy to play a lot of 1-on-1 against a long, athletic team.

“Because they have a lot of length and athleticism, it wasn’t easy for him to get anything at the rim.”

Butler didn’t want to use his lingering injury as an excuse, though.

“Fine,” Butler said Wednesday when asked how he felt physically. “Good enough to go out there and compete. We’re not going to use anything as an excuse. We just didn’t win.”

But Butler still helped turn around the Warriors’ season after being traded to Golden State. He averaged 17.9 points, 5.5 rebounds, 5.9 assists and 1.7 steals per game in 30 regular-season appearances following the move, with the Warriors posting a standout 23-7 record in those games to go from 10th place in the Western Conference on the day the trade was made to the West’s No. 7 playoff seed.

“This was a hell of a run for us, considering where we were at the trade deadline,” Kerr said. “Jimmy changed our season, flipped everything for us, gave us a chance. We became one of the best teams in the league.”

Meanwhile, Butler’s departure left the Heat reeling. Miami went 12-21 after trading the disgruntled Butler to the Warriors in February for Andrew Wiggins, Davion Mitchell, Kyle Anderson and the 2025 Warriors first-round pick (No. 20 overall) before being on the wrong side of the most-lopsided playoff series in NBA history.

“There’s no doubt that what happened with Jimmy had a tremendous impact on our team,” Heat president Pat Riley said last week during his season-ending news conference when asked how the Butler saga affected the Heat’s season. “There’s no doubt about it. So the buck stops with me. I’ll take that hit if you want it. What happened during the regular season, I don’t want to really discuss.”

Riley doesn’t want to discuss what happened in the regular season leading up to Butler’s departure because it got ugly.

The Feb. 6 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 first suspension lasted seven games, his second suspension lasted two games and his third suspension lasted five games before he was dealt to the Warriors.

According to multiple sources, Butler’s relationship with the team took a turn last offseason when Riley publicly challenged Butler to be available for more games, told him to keep his “mouth shut” and the Heat declined to give Butler a two-year, $113 million contract extension.

“I think one of the things you guys probably missed about Butler and myself is I’m an alpha, too, and he’s an alpha,” Riley continued last week. “I think I am anyhow, I’m not boasting about that. But when you get two alphas in the same room, sometimes it doesn’t work.”

As part of the move to Golden State, Butler signed a two-year max extension worth $111 million with the Warriors — the same extension that he once wanted from the Heat. This extension will pay Butler $54.1 million next season when he’ll be 36 years old and $56.8 million for the 2026-27 season when he’ll be 37 years old.

“I’m not going to apologize for saying no on the contract extension that we didn’t have to [give], and I don’t think I should,” Riley said.

While there was a contentious ending to Butler’s time with the Heat, Riley also went out of his way last week to reflect on the positive moments they shared.

Butler, who was traded by the Heat in the middle of his sixth season with the franchise, helped lead the Heat to three Eastern Conference finals appearances and two NBA Finals appearances after joining the team during the 2019 offseason.

“I remember this about Jimmy, I remember the bubble when he was hanging over the scorer’s table exhausted and trying to win a title [in the 2020 NBA Finals],” Riley said. “I remember that. I have that picture in my office. I remember the exit meeting that we had when we got swept by the Bucks the next year. He wasn’t a very happy guy.

“Then one of my favorite moments with Jimmy was the rebound he had with nine seconds to go in the third year against Boston in the seventh game here [in the 2022 Eastern Conference finals]. I was sitting with [my wife Chris Riley] and I remember telling her we’re going to win this game and we’re going to play Golden State [in the 2022 NBA Finals]. He rebounded it on the left side of the court, he dribbled up left handed and crossed over to the right side of the court and he got right to his spot and he raised on a three. He could have taken [Al] Horford, but he probably wouldn’t have gotten a call at that time of the game, especially today with how they’re refereeing games. I remember I stood up as he was dribbling up and I said, ‘This is going to go in and we’re going to go to the Finals again.’ And he just missed, a little bit to the left. And the next year, the play-in and the great run we had to the Finals out of the play-in [in 2023]. He played his ass off, his heart out for us”

But with the Heat in the middle of the third week of its offseason and Butler now beginning his offseason, both parties will try to move forward and past all that happened this season.

“It’s over,” Riley said. “He’s done. I wish him well. Good luck to him. And I hope deep down in his heart somewhere, he wishes us well, too.”

This story was originally published May 15, 2025 at 11:26 AM.

Anthony Chiang

Miami Herald

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Anthony Chiang covers the Miami Heat for the Miami Herald. He attended the University of Florida and was born and raised in Miami.