Jimmy Butler trade: Heat send disgruntled star to Warriors after trade demand, suspensions

Jimmy Butler has once again found a new NBA team, with the bridge casually burned behind him.

The Miami Heat granted their disgruntled star's trade request on Wednesday, finalizing a deal to send him to the Golden State Warriors, according to ESPN's Shams Charania. The deal will reportedly send Andrew Wiggins, Dennis Schroder, Kyle Anderson and a protected first-round pick back to Miami.

The deal is a three-team trade, as Lindy Waters III and Josh Richardson are both headed to the Detroit Pistons.

Minutes later, Charania reported Butler has agreed to a two-year, $121 million extension to stay in Golden State through the 2026-27 season.

This will be Butler's fifth NBA team, and he still has yet to leave one cleanly, though it's not like he hasn't been vindicated with time. He was traded from the Chicago Bulls after clashing with head coach Fred Hoiberg and questioning his teammates' motivation. He was traded from the Minnesota Timberwolves after similar clashes with Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins. He jumped to the Miami Heat after the Philadelphia 76ers chose Tobias Harris over him.

And now, he's leaving the Heat after multiple suspensions, all preceded by a surreal news conference in which he pronounced he no longer had joy for the game of basketball and didn't believe he could get it back in Miami.

The Heat first reacted by suspending Butler for seven games — a grievance from the National Basketball Players Association is still pending — and announcing they would look into trading him.

Butler was then suspended for two games after he missed a team flight. On the day that he was set to return from that suspension, Butler stormed out of a team practice after learning he wouldn't be in the starting lineup. The Heat suspended him indefinitely, and said he would be out right up until the trade deadline at a minimum.

How Jimmy Butler and the Heat got here

All of the recent Butler drama came after the erosion of his relationship with the team's front office, most notably team president Pat Riley.

The tension began to leak out after the Heat were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs against the Boston Celtics last season. Butler missed the entire series with a knee injury, then implied the team would still be playing if he were healthy. In response, Riley publicly told Butler to "keep your mouth shut."

That was after Riley announced the team wouldn't extend Butler's contract beyond this season. More recently, there was a report on Christmas that Butler would prefer a trade from the Heat before the deadline in February, though he hadn't made a formal request.

Riley strongly rejected the idea, plainly stating, "We are not trading Jimmy Butler" in a statement. Butler didn't seem to agree, as he basically shrugged when asked if he wanted to remain with the Heat for the rest of the season. Two days later, he was telling the world there was no fixing his role on the Heat.

Before that news conference, Butler had been returning from a five-gaming absence, with what the team called an illness. When the suspension was announced, he was averaging the fewest minutes in his career going back to the 2012-13 season, his second in the league.

There was plenty of good before that, though. In an NBA that feels increasingly controlled by super-teams, Butler led the Heat to two NBA Finals with a supporting cast that felt refreshingly traditional. Bam Adebayo is an All-Star and Tyler Herro, Duncan Robinson and Caleb Martin were all good players, but the Heat seemed to fully revolve around the culture Butler and head coach Erik Spoelstra built.

Butler was a perfect match for the Heat, until he very publicly wasn't. The team tried to hold its ground the best it could, but it ended up being one more stop in a career that will probably land Butler in the Hall of Fame, but with potentially fewer friends than you'd expect.