For the 119th time since Jimmy Butler joined the Miami Heat, the team played a game without him.
This time was different. And it went terribly for Miami.
Butler is out, suspended for seven games by the Heat due to what they called conduct harmful to the team. He probably won’t play for Miami again. The suspension began on Saturday when the Heat played the Utah Jazz, and the team says it will honor his wishes and look for a trade.
The first game without Butler was a disaster: The Jazz, who had a 7-25 record going into the game, took a 43-point lead and ended up winning 136-100. They out-rebounded Miami 57-32, and the game wasn’t even close.
“It’s disappointing when you see the organization and a player going head-to-head like that,” Heat captain Bam Adebayo said after the team’s practice on Saturday. “But the rest of us got to figure out how to win games.”
They didn’t figure it out on Saturday. Not at all.
Before this game, they hadn’t lost by more than 19 points all season. This loss was by 36, making it the sixth-largest home loss in the team’s history.
“I don’t think we make any excuses for this,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “We just took it on the chin and we have to get to work.”
Butler hasn’t spoken publicly about his suspension. The National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) defended him hours after the Heat announced the suspension on Friday, saying the team’s actions were “excessive and inappropriate.”
The suspension could cost Butler around $2.4 million from his $48.8 million salary this season. “It’s none of our business,” Adebayo said. “It’s for Jimmy and for the management to handle.” How things will be handled and when is uncertain.
With Butler gone, the Heat had a new starting lineup: Miami started the game with Terry Rozier, Tyler Herro, Haywood Highsmith, Nikola Jovic, and Adebayo.
Butler’s locker is still the way he left it—his shower shoes against the drawer, some things hanging on hooks, and a few items taped to the wall. It will be cleaned out eventually, but for now, he is still technically part of the team.
“We’re just going to focus on tonight,” Spoelstra said before the game. “I want to quiet all the distractions. Enough has been said. We have clarity. We’re just going to focus on this group in the locker room. That’s what I want them to focus on and quiet the noise as much as possible. I
’m not a clickbait type of coach, so you’re not going to get anything else really from me. We have a task to do.”
Utah will face Miami twice during Butler’s suspension, with the Heat playing in Salt Lake City on Thursday. Jazz coach Will Hardy knows that even without Butler, Spoelstra will keep his team’s style the same.
“They have a consistency in their program from a competitive standpoint that you know that it doesn’t matter who plays,” Hardy said. “You come here, you play Miami in your building, it’s going to be 48 minutes of highly competitive, physical basketball. Spo has shown that the entire time he’s been in Miami.”
Trading Butler could be tough in today’s NBA, as the collective bargaining agreement limits how teams can trade players. It’s possible, but not certain. Miami could also just let Butler leave as a free agent this summer, which would open up other options for them to get new players before next season.
“It sucks to see that he won’t be around,” Rozier said.
Butler played 380 games with the Heat, including playoffs, averaging 21.7 points, 6.2 rebounds, and 5.7 assists. As of Saturday, since Butler joined the team, Miami won 59.7% of the games he played (227-153), but only won 49.2% of the games he missed (58-60).
Last summer, Butler became eligible for a two-year, $113 million extension, but the Heat didn’t offer it. This was partly because Butler had missed about one-quarter of the team’s games during his time in Miami.
Not offering him such a large sum of money led to problems. The tension boiled over this week. Butler didn’t play in the fourth quarters of Miami’s games on Wednesday and Thursday; sometimes he just stood in the corner on offense, almost like he wasn’t involved.
“I feel like he came to work, he tried to perform, and it just didn’t go his way,” Adebayo said. “I feel like he didn’t want to be in the corner. But like I said, we developed a system where we play around everybody, and we just had to figure out how to incorporate him. But after what happened yesterday, we’re focused on who’s with us now.”
After the second game earlier in the week, Butler said, when asked if he thought he could enjoy playing again in Miami, “probably not.”
Those two words may have been his last official act as a member of the Heat. Just a week ago, Miami wasn’t interested in trading Butler, but hearing him say he didn’t want to be on the team anymore clearly changed things.
“It’s hard to not see him around,” Jovic said.
