Miami Heat: Sign-and-trade packages for Jimmy Butler

Per report, Jimmy Butler will be happy to meet with the Miami Heat once free agency begins. However, the Heat don’t have the cap space to sign him, so a sign-and-trade would be necessary.

According to a report, Jimmy Butler is more than willing to meet with the Miami Heat once free agency begins. It’s a nice notion, but the Heat look to begin free agency with about $141 million on the books, massively above the $109 million salary cap, and offering him a max contract would require cutting more than $60 million off the books.

Needless to say, that’s quite unlikely, so if anything is to come of this, another way must be found.

Enter the sign-and-trade, a mechanism which would allow the Philadelphia 76ers to re-sign Butler for the express purpose of trading him to another team of his choosing. Under the sign-and-trade, the Sixers could sign him to the maximum allowed for another team (in this case, $32.7 million for the first season and $140 million over four years) and conduct a legal trade.

There would be a catch for the Miami Heat: They would need to finish the trade with a total team salary of no more than $138 million, which is the luxury tax apron, and also the threshold at which a team receiving a sign-and-trade becomes hard-capped. The Heat could cut that salary before the trade, or they can send out sufficient salary in conducting the trade in order to get below that mark, but they must shed that salary by the end of this trade in order to conduct it.

With the basic outline of how the sign-and-trade works and the restrictions surrounding it, let’s take a look at a couple of possible packages that might entice both the Sixers and Jimmy Butler himself.