Dave Hyde: No need to overanalyze or whine -- Heat suffering from Butler's sabotage

Dave Hyde, South Florida Sun Sentinel on Mar 18, 2025

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Quit whining.

Stop complaining.

Take a cleansing breath, Miami Heat fans, and take on this dreadful stretch with a stiff-cultural-lip that you don’t need too often.

The Heat lost their eighth straight game Monday in New York, getting outscored 41-15 in a third quarter too representative of this ugliness. Their best players can’t rise to the moment with games on the line, much less rise the level of consistency of franchise players.

The stink bomb Jimmy Butler left by quitting on them and ignoring the final two years of his contract is running its natural course. There’s no need to overanalyze this. NBA teams don’t recover from losing their best player. See: Dallas since trading Luka Doncic. See: Philadelphia without Joel Embiid.

See the Heat, too, drop in the standings as Butler plays hard with a new contract and resuscitates Golden State. The script is following form on both sides. It’s also the nauseating part of watching this, Jimmy getting rewarded while Heat stumble forward like the three other teams Butler left.

Should the Heat have extended Butler for two years and $111 million like Golden State? Does anyone believe he’d be playing hard in February and March for the Heat like he is for his new team? Wouldn’t he be watching tennis at Hard Rock Stadium for eight hours any day this week and then call in sick to a game, like last year?

Throw in the problems that made him a constant pain inside the team, the three suspensions for acting unprofessionally this year, and the Heat did with their problem child what the Dolphins did not with Tyreek Hill. They said enough. They wanted to reset their culture.

They’re suffering some short-term pain from it, too. Just listen to coach Erik Spoelstra after the loss in New York, saying, “This has been one of the biggest challenges of a regular season that I’ve been a part of.”

He had never lost eight straight games in 17 seasons as coach, until now. That statistic better frames the outside pain and suffering of fans. The Heat’s walk in this wilderness right now isn’t the Dolphins’ nomadic existence it’s taken fans on for a quarter-century.

The Heat was 46-36 last year. Twenty months ago, they were in the NBA Finals. They went to two NBA Finals and another conference championship across the five previous seasons.

Do we really need to say all this? Stretch the timeline to two decades, and the Heat have won three titles, made seven NBA finals and two more conference championships.

So, when fans talk of weathering ups and downs, it’s mostly been ups with the Heat. This is a down. Maybe it lasts just this season if the Heat find a creative way to fix it, as they’ve done before. Trade for Shaquille O’Neal like in 2004? Sign the Big Three like in 2010? Trade for Butler like in 2019, when he was considered a problem more than a champion?

The Heat allowed Jimmy to define himself as a star, and Playoff Jimmy sure did. That’s the shame of all this. Butler delivered as much as any Heat star for five years. But managing a career is a talent that Butler has struggled with, as his goodbyes show.

The Heat’s plan was for Butler to be their two-way star, Bam Adebayo anchor the defense and Tyler Hero become the All-Star offensive player he has. Butler had other ideas. He wanted a contract two years out. The middle fell out of the Heat season.

So, the cycle of sports turns now, with the Heat closing a winning chapter and suffering while organizing their next plan. Maybe they get to that this summer. Maybe it goes on into the next year, considering they’re not flush with salary-cap money or draft picks.

It’s easy to say the Heat should fall into the draft lottery, hope they land a top pick and rebuild on the fly. Be careful. If they get in the lottery this year, their first-round picks already belonging to Oklahoma (2026) and Charlotte (2028) would be unprotected against the lottery. So, they’re a serious injury from real franchise calamity.

If the Heat are guilty of anything this season, it’s believing they’d find a way even without Butler. They’ve earned such arrogance, though. They’ve usually found a way, even in their down years.

But enough with the gloom.

Too much of the woe-is-us despair.

The Heat had a run of five strong seasons. Butler sabotaged this year. When he comes to town next week, he’ll smile amid the ruins he left, just as he has across a full career. There’s no news there. The news is what the Heat do next.

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