MIAMI — The Miami Heat are listing Jimmy Butler as doubtful for their game Thursday at Orlando, saying he needs time to recondition before returning to the lineup.
Butler did not fly with the team to Orlando on Wednesday night, and his intentions for future games seem a bit unclear as well.
Butler has not asked the Heat to be moved, but ESPN, citing sources it did not name, reported Wednesday that the six-time all-star wants a trade by the league’s Feb. 6 deadline and is open to joining teams such as Phoenix, Golden State, Houston and Dallas.
The primary colours of those teams’ uniforms include orange, yellow, red and blue. Butler’s hair, perhaps not coincidentally, has been tinged in those colours at times in recent weeks.
“I actually like it,” Butler said earlier this month when asked about being linked to trade talks and speculation. “It’s good to be talked about. I don’t think there’s such a thing as bad publicity — to a point.”
Miami, if it doesn’t trade Butler, would run the risk of potentially losing him for nothing as a free agent next summer.
It is the latest twist in a long-running saga involving Butler’s future with the Heat, one that began picking up steam in May when Heat president Pat Riley was non-committal about giving Butler an extension over the summer.
Butler is eligible for an extension that would guarantee him $113 million for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 seasons. But he is 35 and has missed, on average, about one out of every four games during his Heat tenure.
“That’s a big decision on our part to commit those kinds of resources unless you have somebody who’s going to be there and available every single night,” Riley said in May. “That’s the truth.”
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Riley also chided Butler after last season for saying that if he hadn’t gotten hurt during the play-in tournament, teams like Boston and New York would have lost to Miami.
“I thought, ‘Is that Jimmy trolling or is that Jimmy serious?’ If you’re not on the court playing against Boston or on the court playing against the New York Knicks, you should keep your mouth shut on the criticism of those teams,” Riley said last spring.
Butler twisted an ankle in Miami’s loss to Oklahoma City on Friday but missed the remainder of that game and the next two Heat games — at Orlando last Saturday and against Brooklyn on Monday — with an illness, not the ankle, cited as the reason.
Butler has helped Miami make the NBA Finals twice in his Heat tenure. He is averaging 18.5 points, 5.8 rebounds and 4.9 assists this season.