The Miami Heat would entertain buying and selling Jimmy Butler if the precise provide got here alongside, however the scenario has not risen to the extent the place any transfer is imminent — or, for now, being wanted by any of the events concerned, league sources advised CBS Sports this week.
Trade rumors about Butler, the Heat star who might enter free company this summer season, started earlier this week. They then took a really public and private flip between Bernie Lee, Butler’s agent, and ESPN reporter Shams Charnia.
On Wednesday, ESPN reported that Butler’s agent had indicated his consumer can be fascinated with being traded to Phoenix, together with Dallas, Golden State and Houston. That felt like normal, if important, stuff. This is an period of participant motion, and Butler desirous to go some other place would not be an earth-shattering flip of occasions.
Then got here one thing fairly uncommon: The clapback.
Lee, in posts on social media, refuted the report aggressively and known as the reporting “fabricated.” It was a public spectacle, one which conjured up popcorn-eating social media voyeurs taking within the breaking-news-turned-social-media-melee with glee.
But sources, together with these throughout the Heat group, painted a way more nuanced image of the place issues stand with Butler: One through which everybody acknowledges a commerce might occur, however through which any motion has but to choose up important steam.
A supply with the Suns additionally mentioned whereas there was a sense of some type of Butler curiosity of their workforce, issues had been in no way superior, nor as clear-cut as “folks appear to assume.”
It’s value remembering that Butler entered the season with out the extension he’d hoped for, creating sufficient daylight between himself and Miami’s entrance workplace to lift eyebrows throughout the NBA, and push hypothesis that Butler could be a viable and necessary commerce goal.
That would make Butler commerce speak, or groups calling the Heat about Butler’s availability, the possible end result.
Sources say that is simply what’s occurred — however solely in probably the most early of levels and typical of how. Nothing has superior to something that may very well be described as severe talks.
“Everyone is aware of Jimmy may very well be accessible — that was at all times the case with how issues went together with his contract,” one league supply who’s conversant in the Heat’s pondering mentioned. “But what constitutes a ‘commerce speak’? People name on a regular basis. And normally they’re advised no. Is that ‘commerce speak?’ Technically, it’s. But there’s ranges to it.”
Added a Heat supply: “We haven’t any sense Jimmy needs out, or that we wish to commerce him. But we at all times pay attention.”
Still, sources say, the Heat have thought sufficient about this to know just a few key factors:
- They wish to win now, and any Butler commerce — or the choice to not commerce him — would hinge on nonetheless remaining a contender. “We do not do rebuilds,” one Heat supply joked. They’d need a key piece that would assist them now as a part of any deal.
- The Heat aren’t nervous about their place within the first apron and the way it may hamper a Butler commerce. Sources they really feel they will efficiently navigate these challenges if the time comes to take action, and that they’ve thought of what such a transfer may require.
The Heat supply additionally mentioned ESPN’s report about “listening” to commerce presents wasn’t essentially unsuitable as a result of “commerce conversations — ‘hey, what do you concentrate on this’ — occur on a regular basis.”
A high-level supply with the Phoenix Suns mentioned there’s fact in each side of the reporter vs. agent brouhaha — and a few misunderstanding within the present dialogue on the market surrounding Butler.
“What’s been reported might be 50-50 by way of accuracy,” the supply mentioned. “But I do not assume Bernie (Lee)’s not on the market calling folks about Jimmy.”
As for whether or not or not Butler has indicated the place he’d want to be traded if one thing did materialize? Whether the Warriors, Rockets, Mavericks or Suns might flip the Heat’s willingness to pay attention right into a willingness to deal?
That comes all the way down to who you wish to consider — NBA media’s most profitable working news-breaker, or an agent saying very publicly and really forcefully that it is not so.
