From ‘weird’ to ‘disappointing,’ Heat players react to latest twist in the Jimmy Butler situation

While Jimmy Butler may never play another game in a Miami Heat uniform, the rest of the Heat’s roster needs to find a way to move forward after a wild few days.

After Butler made clear that he’s no longer happy playing for the Heat and insinuated that he’s open to a trade elsewhere during his postgame media session following Thursday’s home loss to the Indiana Pacers, the Heat suspended Butler for seven games “for multiple instances of conduct detrimental to the team over the course of the season and particularly the last several weeks” and announced that it will listen to trade offers for Butler.

“It’s disappointing when you see the organization and a player going head to head like that,” Heat captain and three-time NBA All-Star Bam Adebayo said following Saturday’s morning shootaround session. “But the rest of us got to figure out how to win games. So for me as captain, it’s worrying about the other guys and getting them locked in and ready to go to try to compete and win a game.”

Heat suspends Jimmy Butler for ‘conduct detrimental to the team’ and will listen to trade offers

Butler will serve the first game of his suspension on Saturday night against the Jazz at Kaseya Center, with the suspension running through the Heat’s upcoming six-game West Coast trip. Butler will be eligible to come back when the Heat returns to Miami to host the Denver Nuggets on Jan. 17, but it appears unlikely that Butler will ever play for the Heat again even if he’s still on the roster at that point.

“Have everybody understand that this is the NBA, this is a part of your career,” Adebayo said of his message to the team. “You got to go through ups and downs, you got to figure stuff out and you got to do that while being locked in and competing at a high level. That’s what I’m trying to get everybody focused on. There’s a lot of noise going around. The biggest thing for us is just keep competing and focus on on-the-court stuff.”

Heat guard Terry Rozier echoed Adebayo’s message.

“Just to keep our spirits high,” Rozier said when asked how the team moves forward. “Obviously, we still have a great opportunity, a good basketball team. So we don’t want to get caught up in all the news that’s been going around. But we have a great locker room. We got guys like [Kevin Love], a vet who’s always keeping guys on their toes and making guys laugh. We got a lot of great guys in there. So we move on and we’ll find out what’s best.”

For the Heat’s younger players, going through this situation has been a learning experience.

“It’s just weird,” 21-year-old Heat forward Nikola Jovic said. “Of course, it’s the business of basketball. He’s trying to find his joy back, we’re trying to find our rhythm back. Like I said, it’s hard to not see him around. But I hope everything is going to settle down and we’ll see what’s going to happen. I think there are a lot of things that are possible. But I feel like everybody from the locker room is kind of standing with him and we believe that at the end of the day everything will be good on both ends.”

Butler’s suspension comes after he also questioned his role within the Heat’s offense during Thursday’s eye-opening press conference. He totaled just 18 points on 11 field-goal attempts over his last two games before the suspension after missing the previous five games due to an illness.

“I feel like he came to work, he tried to perform and it just didn’t go his way,” Adebayo said of Butler’s performance in those two games. “I feel like he didn’t want to be in a corner. But like I said, we develop a system where we play around everybody and we just have to figure out how to incorporate him. But after what happened yesterday, we’re focused on who’s with us now.”

One Butler shot during this two-game stretch that generated social media buzz was his one-legged corner three-pointer during Wednesday’s win over the New Orleans Pelicans. After Butler missed that shot, Adebayo said something to him as they ran back to play defense.

“I just said, ‘That was wild,’” Adebayo recalled Saturday. “He was like, ‘I usually make it.’ Then the next game, he showed me that he can usually make it. So I was like, ‘Alright, make it then.’”

Despite the adversity, Rozier is confident the Heat will be able to survive this noisy time in part because Butler’s suspension represents a temporary resolution.

“I’m not trying to say it was a distraction, but there’s nothing we have to think about,” Rozier said. “We can go out there and just go play. We don’t have to worry about what’s coming next. We obviously know what’s going on right now. So I think that’s going to be super helpful, it’s going to give us a lot of clarity and I think we’ll be fine.”

But that doesn’t mean this situation has been easy to deal with.

“It’s tough because that’s one of your locker room guys, that’s one of your teammates,” Rozier added. “So it sucks to see that he won’t be around. But our main focus is to try to win games and control what we can control. Obviously, that’s out of our control with the guys in the locker room. But we got a lot of love for him and we wish him the best. We’re just trying to win games now.”

Butler, 35, has helped the Heat win a lot of games during his five-plus seasons with the franchise, helping lead the team to three Eastern Conference finals appearances and two NBA Finals appearances since joining the team in the 2019 offseason.

Adebayo said he hasn’t spoken to Butler since the Heat issued the seven-game suspension.

“You live with what happens,” Adebayo emphasized when asked about a potential Butler trade. “We’re worried about what we can control and we can’t control that. Like I said, that’s up to management and him. That is their decision, that’s them communicating with him. For us, we still got to go out and play games. So we’re going to worry about that.”