The report wasn’t wrong, the teams had it wrong. A report that Goran Dragic was traded from the Miami Heat to the Dallas Mavericks… well, just read this.
A wise man once said (I think it was Brian Windhorst, and I’d hate to erroneously aggregate him), a three-team trade is the same thing as a no-team trade. Wise men are rarely wrong for a reason, and right now the three-team trade involving Jimmy Butler between the Miami Heat, Philadelphia 76ers and Dallas Mavericks is currently a no-team trade.
To recap, the Sixers sign-and-traded Jimmy Butler to the Heat in exchange for Josh Richardson, with Goran Dragic going to the Mavericks. It quickly came out that in fact Dragic was NOT going to the Mavs, instead it was going to be Kelly Olynyk and Derrick Jones Jr.
HOWEVER, it turns out the Mavs didn’t want Dragic, they preferred to maintain their own salary flexibility, but the Heat refuse to part with Jones. So, the whole thing has basically fallen apart as things stand now.
It might be a stretch to call it “dead”, but The Athletic’s Jared Weiss has a good explanation of the scenario in the following tweets:
There is a “glitch” in the Butler-Richardson trade according to sources, as the Heat do not want to give up Derrick Jones and Dallas is telling people the deal is off. Expectation is that the deal is too far down the road to fall apart and will get ironed out.
— Jared Weiss (@JaredWeissNBA) July 1, 2019
Philadelphia and Miami have already reached their agreement to trade Jimmy Butler for Josh Richardson, but Miami and Dallas couldn’t close a Dragic deal and are figuring out how to fit all the pieces together around Olynyk to make the salary matching work.
— Jared Weiss (@JaredWeissNBA) July 1, 2019
Yahoo’s Keith Smith elaborates further:
Hearing the same thing as several others that the Dallas/Miami/Philadelphia trade that involves Jimmy Butler is dead as it was structured. Dallas may be out entirely, leaving Miami and Philadelphia to find a new 3rd team.
— Keith Smith (@KeithSmithNBA) July 1, 2019
So the deal in the configuration of Jimmy Butler in, Kelly Olynyk and Derrick Jones Jr. out is no longer viable, and not only will the Heat have to find a new combination of players to send out but they will most likely need to find a new team to partner up with as the third angle to the deal.
The clock is ticking as teams are quickly blowing through their available cap space.
Keith Smith describes the situation:
It's not impossible, but Miami is going to have a hard time finding a third team to bring in on this deal. Only the Clippers and Lakers have the cap space left at the moment and they're both waiting on Kawhi.
— Keith Smith (@KeithSmithNBA) July 1, 2019
It’s not likely that the Clippers and Lakers will be eager to help out the Miami Heat at the expense of their own pursuits, obviously, so if the Heat can’t find a suitable partner quickly they may have to wait until Kawhi Leonard makes his choice, and then try to cajole the Los Angeles team that misses out on Leonard into helping them complete this deal.
In what has been by far the wildest, most entertaining offseason night in the history of the NBA, the Miami Heat have suddenly found themselves in the most ridiculous ongoing chapter of the entire story. Not only does this deal hang in the balance, but it’s also possible that the Sixers’ own signing of Al Horford hinges upon the resolution of this open-ended matter.
Now, as Weiss states above, the deal has probably gone too far in order to fall through now. Reputations and more are on the line for both Elton Brand with the Sixers and Pat Riley with the Heat, but it’s going to be fascinating to see just how on earth this situation gets resolved in a way that satisfies each party.