‘I want to get my joy back’: Jimmy Butler signals he wants trade from Miami Heat
Jimmy Butler says he needs to find fun on the basketball court again. And when asked if he can find that joy in Miami, he had a two-word answer.
“Probably not,” he said.
The relationship between Butler and the Heat – a topic of conversation for weeks – appears to have deteriorated further. The Heat lost 128-115 to Indiana on Thursday night, Butler scoring exactly nine points and playing exactly zero seconds in the fourth quarter for the second straight game. That also happened on Wednesday in a win over New Orleans.
“What do I want to see happen? I want me to get the joy of playing basketball back,” Butler said. “Wherever that may be – we’ll find out here soon – but I want to get my joy back. I’m happy here, off the field, but I want to get back to a dominant place. I want to hoop and I want to help this team win. Right now I’m not doing that.”
Butler has not requested a trade — ESPN reported on Christmas Day that he would prefer a trade before the Feb. 6 deadline — and the Heat took the rather unusual step last week after that report of saying they would sign him would not trade.
Thursday’s game was obviously not a typical Butler performance. He spent many possessions largely in the corner in attack and made just six shots in 27 minutes; he made five shots from the floor on Wednesday. Heat coach Erik Spoelstra essentially made Butler the point guard for parts of the third quarter in an effort to get things going. It didn’t work.
“He’s obviously frustrated because he’s on the corner,” Heat captain Bam Adebayo said. “So there’s a lot going on in his corner. For us, we keep the most important thing, as our coach always tells us. We play to win and that’s what matters.”
Butler said he felt like he was focused and did his job Thursday, adding “or at least what my job is right now.”
“That’s not what I’m used to,” Butler said. “I haven’t been since my first, second, third year in the league where I just played defense. I joined in. I guarded. That’s what I do now.”
Butler was the best player on two Heat teams that went to the NBA Finals. He was eligible for a two-year, $113 million extension last summer, and Miami has yet to offer the 35-year-old a new contract. Butler has a $52 million player option for next season or could leave Miami in free agency this summer – if he stays with the team past the trade deadline.
Spoelstra has said several times that he wants Butler to Miami and said he believes back-to-back nine-point games are partly due to Butler missing nearly two weeks due to an illness. Wednesday was Butler’s first game back after that stretch.
“It’s about being aggressive,” Spoelstra said, before Butler’s post-game comments. ‘We have to find out. I’ll find out. He has to figure it out too. We have to find out.”
Butler insisted he would continue competing.
“I’m going to go out there and compete to win no matter what, whether I score nine points or 29 points,” Butler said. “I will compete. That’s one thing I’ll say. You won’t say I don’t play hard. It may seem that way because my ball usage is low and I don’t shoot the ball much, but we’re not going to sit here and say I don’t play hard.”