NEW YORK — At long last, the Jimmy Butler saga is over. The Miami Heat will not have to suspend their former franchise player again because he now plays for the Golden State Warriors. The players that Miami acquired before Thursday’s trade deadline are not yet with the team, but are expected to practice on Sunday when the group is back from its road trip.
On Friday at Barclays Center, before the Heat’s game against the Brooklyn Nets, coach Erik Spoelstra sounded pleased to officially put the previous iteration of the team behind him and focus on what’s next. Integrating wing Andrew Wiggins, forward Kyle Anderson and guard Davion Mitchell will shake up the rotation, but Spoelstra welcomes that challenge.
“We’ll just get right to work and start to put this thing together,” Spoelstra said. “We have 30-plus games left, so we have some work to do. And we’re not where we want to be right now. We think this trade gives us a boost, a kick. And yeah, it will affect some things. But this group has been great with just buying into the team. There’s been a lot that everybody’s had to go through, the team has had to go through the last six weeks, and, all things considered, we’ve been able to steady the ship and we’re in a reasonable spot in the East. But yeah, we need something more, regardless of who it is. We need more all across the board.”
Miami entered Friday’s game at 25-24 and sixth in the Eastern Conference, two games behind the fifth-place Milwaukee Bucks and one game ahead of the seventh-place Detroit Pistons. On the season, it ranks 18th in offense and ninth in defense. Ideally, Wiggins will step into Butler’s vacated starting spot — he has already taken Butler’s jersey number, 22 — and help them on both ends. In 42 games for the Warriors this season, Wiggins has bounced back from a subpar 2023-24, making 40% of his catch-and-shoot 3s and defending at a high level.
“We just think he really fits,” Spoelstra said. “We’re thrilled to be able to acquire him. He’s a dynamic talent. Offensively, he fits what we need. He’s a guy — you can put the ball in his hands, he can make plays. You also can play him off the ball. And then defensively, I just think he’s elite. We need that. We need his versatility. I think you put him next to Bam [Adebayo] and Kel’el [Ware], there’s a lot of defensive impact and versatility there.”
Between Wiggins and Anderson, the Heat added a lot of length and defensive versatility, especially considering Butler has been out of the lineup for 19 of the 24 games they’ve played since Dec. 20. Mitchell, acquired from the Toronto Raptors, is one of the league’s premier point-of-attack defenders. In theory, Miami’s defense, which is pretty stingy already, should get even stingier.
“I’m just looking forward to getting this thing started with those guys,” Spoelstra said.
Mitchell is not the biggest name of the bunch, but Spoelstra said the team was specifically looking to improve its perimeter defense. Dru Smith was in the rotation before tearing his Achilles in late December, and Miami has missed him.
“Dru was really handling a lot of that point of attack for us,” Spoelstra said. “I love that because the average fan out there would have no idea about this, they’d only be looking at the stats. But I look at how a guy impacts winning and that’s where Dru is elite. And since then, yeah, we’ve missed an element of that.
“Now we’ve had times where we’re able to do it — we have the ninth best defense for reason. It’s just not consistent enough. So a position of need would be somebody like that. And then when that became available, when Andy [Elisburg] presented that, it was like, ‘Hey, let’s go, let’s do this.’ We’ve been fans of his for a while.”
Spoelstra has spent a lot of time with Golden State coach Steve Kerr through USA Basketball, and he said that the two texted after the Butler trade. They did not, however, discuss the players that had been swapped.
“I think we have enough respect for each other that we texted each other once the deal went through just to wish each other the best on it,” Spoelstra said. “And we also have that respect that you want each other to learn about the respective players without any kind of influence.”
The end of the Butler era was a tumultuous time for the Heat, to put it mildly. Spoelstra, however, said he didn’t think that trade rumors affected the players all that much.
“I’ve had it with different teams,” Spoelstra said. “I feel like it was less with this team, believe it or not. And that’s not taking away from anything that the group had to go through emotionally the last several weeks because I really commend the group for just, you know, staying the course and focusing on the present moment.
“But you do want to have empathy for guys when it gets close to the trade deadline because this isn’t just fantasy sports. These are human beings. Having to move and change franchises midseason, that can’t be easy. And then players not knowing leading up to the trade deadline, that is tough. But that’s the business we chose. It’s the part that people don’t think about on the outside. But it’s an amazing profession, it’s not always the best business. But I’m grateful to be a part of it.”
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