Jimmy Butler has been traded. Our long national nightmare is over.
Yet the irony, now that the deal is known, is how little it has to do with Jimmy Butler and how much it has to do, instead, with Stephen Curry. And, in the bigger picture, how much it reflects wasted opportunity on both sides. Yeah, it’s a big name in the trade and two glamour markets; it’s also two floundering .500 teams exchanging problems, and it didn’t have to be this way.
Let’s start in Golden State. The Warriors effectively chose to push their chips in, hoping to add a spark to the dying embers of the Curry-Draymond Green era, and bravo to that. They sent out a first-round pick and Andrew Wiggins to put another star next to Curry, then doubled down on the bet by extending Butler’s contract through 2027. His deal now runs concurrent with that of Curry and Green; when it ends, he and Green will be 37, and Curry will be 39.
In doing so, the Warriors affirmed another truth everyone already knew: You can’t do two timelines. When you have a generational talent like Curry, likely the best player the franchise will have this entire century, you have one timeline. That timeline is to try to win every year he graces your roster.
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You don’t clutch your pearls over James Wiseman or Jonathan Kuminga or future picks if it stops you from making the other moves to keep the machine rolling. The only big-picture decision point with a player like Curry is whether to keep going or whether to trade him for a raft of assets and start the whole thing over, Oklahoma City-style. (The Los Angeles Lakers, interestingly enough, made the same belated choice last weekend.)
The Warriors themselves saw evidence of this. The win-now moves the Warriors made when Kevin Durant left (sending a lightly protected pick to the Memphis Grizzlies to move Andre Iguodala, signing D’Angelo Russell into cap room, trading for Wiggins and the pick that became Kuminga) were what positioned them to grab one more ring, minus Durant, in 2022.
The Warriors, belatedly, are pivoting back to that, having already wasted the last two years of the tail end of Curry’s prime. He’s likely no longer at a level where he can be the leading man on a champion, but it’s worth trying. Moreover, this move did not come with a future-wrecking cost — only what is, most likely, a pick in the mid-to-late teens in the 2025 draft.
For those of you not perennially online, here’s the nitty-gritty of the trade, which will end up as either a four- or five-team deal. The trade sends Butler to Golden State, Wiggins and Golden State’s top-10 protected 2025 first-round pick to Miami, Dennis Schröder to Utah, P.J. Tucker to the Heat, Lindy Waters II and Josh Richardson to Detroit and Kyle Anderson to a destination to be named later. (More on that in a minute.)
However, only two of the protagonists truly matter to fans of the Heat and Warriors: Butler and Wiggins.
Miami has its tale of missed opportunity here. The Heat waited too long to deal Butler after he had been sideways with the organization for at least 18 months and landed a fairly limited return as a result. This was one where perhaps they should have pursued a Nico Harrison-style, keep-it-on-the-down-low swap at last year’s deadline, even if it limited the suitors because it became such a circus once Butler’s name got out.
A defensible counterargument is that Butler also led Miami to the 2023 finals, so the Heat may have been hoping for Playoff Jimmy to rise again. In the end, his age, injuries and petulance drove down his value, so all they got out of it was cleaning up their books a bit and turning their sights (most likely) to the 2026 free-agent market. Wiggins is a solid player who helps them avoid bottoming out and helps them stay relevant around the Bam Adebayo-Tyler Herro core, but for now, Miami is stuck in the middle.
As for Golden State, in the NBA, you’re either in or you’re out. (Or you’re accidentally neither, like the Heat right now, but trying to make that a temporary situation.) You can’t go halfway when you have a generational talent. Yes, you preserve draft picks and other assets to utilize them for maximal benefit, but — especially with an older team — at some point, those cards have to be played. That doesn’t mean you tilt so far the other way that you become the Phoenix Suns, flinging every future draft pick out the window for any shiny object. But for a team with a player of Curry’s caliber, Golden State has sat out too many hands.
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It took half a decade, but the Warriors finally admitted this truth Wednesday by giving up a first and most of their future cap flexibility to acquire Butler. It was likely too little, too late, given the ages of the Warriors’ three key players and the fact that nobody else on the roster is threatening to crack the All-Star team, but it was better than frittering away the last days of the Curry era.
And fritter they were. On a night when they drop-kicked a double-digit lead in the final three minutes against the lowly Utah Jazz, the Warriors’ current talent shortages around Curry could hardly have been more apparent.
Butler isn’t a perfect fit — a non-shooter on a team that still needs more shooting and a brittle player on a team that can’t afford many absences the rest of the way. However, even in his 25 games with the Heat this season, a couple of which were spent openly goofing off as the trade drama heightened, Butler’s numbers stand out. His PER (22.8) and true shooting percentage (63.8) would be the best figures on the Warriors.
So, Golden State can dare to dream. The Warriors are 25-25, a half-game out of eighth place in the Western Conference and three games out of sixth. If they can get to the postseason with the peak versions of Butler and Curry and on the opposite side of the bracket from the mighty Thunder, there’s a least a scintilla of a chance.
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The Warriors didn’t have to mortgage their entire future to do it, and they can deal with 2027 when it gets here. You just wish they had pushed more chips in sooner after 2022.
Finally, a deal this complex will always have some added wrinkles, so let’s talk about a few:
- Miami has to find a home for Anderson, or for another equal-sized contract, to get below the tax line. That appeared to be a secondary motivation for the Heat in making this deal, given that they’re mired in sixth in the East at 25-24 and executing a roster downgrade so they can fight another day.
- The Heat originally thought they had a deal for Anderson to go to Toronto, but that went out the window when the Raptors and Pelicans got close on a Brandon Ingram trade. Executing both the Ingram deal and taking in Anderson would have potentially put Toronto into the luxury tax, pending Ingram’s trade bonus and any other deals the Raptors had in play. Stay tuned.
- Schröder will be bought out by the Jazz and is likely to be the top player on the buyout market, especially for teams looking for guard help. Because he does not make more than the nontaxpayer midlevel exception on his current deal, he can sign anywhere except Golden State. Fun fact: Miami effectively traded Schröder for Tucker to save $1 million and get under the luxury tax (pending an Anderson salary dump), but because the Heat never technically had him on their roster, he’d be eligible to sign there.
- Tucker has been chilling at home the entire season but now goes to Miami as part of this deal. He’s 39 and was a total zero on offense the last two seasons but played a key role on Miami’s conference finalist team in 2022.
- The Warriors created four open roster spots in this trade. By rule, they must get up to 12 immediately and likely will do so by converting the contract of two-way center Quinten Post. Beyond that, the Warriors are far enough below the first apron to be a player in the buyout market for anyone except Schröder. Golden State could also move the contracts of Kevon Looney and/or Gary Payton II to get out of the luxury tax entirely.
- Golden State is likely to be a tax team in 2025-26, now that Butler is on the books at $54 million, but the trade does not preclude the Warriors from re-signing Kuminga, especially in a free-agent market where few other teams would have cap space. Given how talks about an extension went before the season, one wonders if this trade could presage a restricted free agency staredown this summer.
- Detroit will need to waive or trade two players to complete the trade.
(Photo of Steph Curry and Jimmy Butler: Noah Graham / NBAE via Getty Images)
