JIMMY BUTLER IS RUINING A GREAT CAREER IN A FOOLISH FIGHT WITH PAT RILEY
A wonderful story has turned ugly in Miami, where Butler looked primed to win an NBA championship until falling off the emotional ledge in a firm organization that prides itself on “Heat Culture”
So much for the raging pest who drove a 2017 Toyota minivan, started Big Face Coffee in Miami’s Design District and records country music after years of hating it. Wouldn’t we always enjoy Jimmy Butler because he had no place to go, at 13, when his mother kicked him out of the house?
Once he signed with the Heat and Pat Riley, he seemed headed for an arena statue that looked better than Dwyane Wade’s. All he needed was a series in May or June to become “Playoff Jimmy.” When would he win his first NBA championship? Who would deliver his induction speech at the Hall of Fame?
How about no one, I dare say now, in an empty auditorium?
With every celebrated performance from Patrick Mahomes, the sports world groans as NBA stars find ways of crashing into walls. The latest is Butler, whose wondrous journey to South Florida has erupted into all-out warfare with an unflinching organization. This is more than a 35-year-old maverick who sees Riley and thinks he’ll fall dead as he would in “The Godfather.” He has decided to thumb his nose, his armpit and his butt cheeks at a franchise that poses NBA enlightenment as “Heat Culture.”
Monday, Butler kept betraying Riley’s institution with his amateur conduct. He walked out of practice and was suspended by the team for a third time — for “an indefinite period to last no fewer than five games.” He’ll continue to lose $532,737 for each missed game. Butler wants to be traded soon — to Phoenix, to Golden State, to Milwaukee, to Dallas, to Memphis — and if Riley is thinking properly at 79, he’ll let the trade deadline pass next week and fine Butler tens of millions until the regular season ends. The amount would be more than $20 million.
At that point, Playoff Jimmy would be Timeoff Jimmy. Would he realize his venture into doltism was ruining his career? Butler already has said, “So we'll let people keep talking, like they know everything, like they have all the answers. Sooner or later, the whole truth will come out, but until then, we'll continue to let people talk.” In his latest crack, he used a video clip from the sitcom Martin in which he said, “You ain’t got no job, man.” I wonder which team would risk acquiring him. Kevin Durant might not like him. Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving and Klay Thompson might not like him. Same goes for Steph Curry. Same goes for Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard.
Maybe Memphis. Ja Morant, Grit and Grind? His friend, Morgan Wallen, lives down the road in Nashville. Butler is owed $52.4 million in a player option next season and can become a free agent this summer. So? Well, he inevitably would upset the Grizzlies, just as he caused controversy in Minnesota, Chicago and Philadelphia. Riley and coach Erik Spoelstra are allowing their armed guards to be tested. Who wins?
I’m on Riley’s side. He wants to win his way. He has no time for a phony. When an injured Butler said the Heat would have beaten the title-bound Celtics in the playoffs, Riley broke down and said, “If you’re not on the court playing, you can keep your mouth shut.” That ended a two-year, $113 million extension opportunity. Each hour of every day brings potential ugliness. The Heat are 10-10 without Butler.
“We didn’t talk about anything today other than preparing for the Magic,” Spoelstra said before a double-overtime victory over Orlando. “I get it, what you guys all want right now — and I figure that’s why this media room is full right now. We’re trying to quiet all the noise. We’re just focusing on the task at hand. There’s no better place to be than the present moment.”
Said the team: “The suspension is due to a continued pattern of disregard of team rules, engaging in conduct detrimental to the team and intentionally withholding services. This includes walking out of practice earlier today.”
It’s terrible for the NBA when Riley, who remains iron-clad from the 20th century, commits himself to Butler and is burned in the end. Durant has faded away from his superteam search these days. Joel Embiid won’t compete for a title. Butler is too young for perpetual bedlam. Wade tries to see it from both sides after his Hall of Fame career encountered Riley issues.
“It’s ending tragically. This is a tragic way to end a relationship,” he said on a podcast. “So, as a former player, it’s ugly on our franchise that we continue to have the way that the relationships break up. But also too, on the other side, you don’t run that organization as a player, so you get to that space sometimes where you want to do things your way. It’s (the) Pat Riley way.”
Butler’s teammates don’t know what to say. “Kind of is what it is, but nothing’s guaranteed,” Tyler Herro said. “We’ve just got to be ready to roll with whatever cards we’re dealt. We’ve just got to be ready to go.”
Riley hasn’t won a championship as an executive since two of LeBron James’ seasons, in 2012 and 2013. He hasn’t won as a coach since 2006 after winning in Los Angeles four times in the 1980s. Anyone challenging him should know he has appeared in 34 percent of all NBA Finals, through last summer, as a player, coach or executive.
Those days are gone. Who knew Jimmy Butler, with his 2017 Toyota minivan, would end the long ride? “I love this city with everything that I have,” he said days ago at his padel tournament in Miami.
He just loathes the man who runs the city.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.