Jimmy Butler to the Heat is the move nobody saw coming

Jimmy Butler is going to play for the Miami Heat next season, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, after the Sixers sign and trade him for Josh Richardson. Nobody saw that coming. For the first time in Butler’s career, he’s chosen his destination.

Two trades in two seasons later, Butler finally played a star’s role for a contender as a member of the Philadelphia 76ers. They came up just short, but Butler did all he could. That may have prompted his swift exit.

A four-headed beast of Butler, Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, and Tobias Harris played just a half season together. They were then knocked out in the conference semifinals by a Game 7 Kawhi Leonard buzzer-beater. Playing for a winning team had been a priority for Butler, and this was his best chance to see one through. Clearly he didn’t see Philly as a long-term option.

Putting that team together was a rushed attempt by the 76ers to compete for a title, and it came with massive risks. Butler’s expiring contract was one of them. Fortunately for Philly, it was able to gain Richardson in his departure.

Butler’s free agency had been mostly a mystery until rumors surfaced that the Rockets and Heat could lure him in via a sign-and-trade. Houston’s efforts failed, and the Heat’s late-game darkhorse act swooped in for a steal of a move.

Butler was traded from the Chicago Bulls, the team that drafted him, in the summer of 2017 as the team went into a rebuild. Butler founded the “Timberbulls” collection of former Bulls to play in Minnesota under former Chicago coach Thibodeau. That team — which included Taj Gibson and Derrick Rose — made the playoffs for the first time in 13 seasons, but lost to the Rockets in the opening round of the playoffs, 4-1. They weren’t a championship roster.

That led Butler to request a trade that the Timberwolves didn’t honor until after the 2018-19 season started. That didn’t sit well with the all-star, so he made one of the most dramatic stands ever. The saga hit its peak during the preseason, when the guard took center stage at a practice, ran a scrimmage with the team’s third-string players, and yelled “You (bleeping) need me. You can’t win without me” at Thibodeau and general manager Scott Layden. The afternoon concluded with a sit-down interview with ESPN’s Rachel Nichols, during which Butler laid out his broken relationship with the Wolves.

That day ended any hopes that Minnesota could hold onto Butler, and he was traded weeks later to the Sixers.

In Philly, Butler played a leader’s role as the team’s most senior star, and commanded the crunch-time moments despite early friction with Embiid and Simmons. He sunk two buzzer-beaters in the first seven games with his new team, and continued on to finish second on the team in scoring per night. In the playoffs, Butler was debatably the team’s best player, but they fell short to the eventual champions on Leonard’s last-second shot. So ended Butler’s tenure.