Predicting when every member of the Heat’s starting 5 might leave

Jimmy Butler

Contract: Two years remaining at $48.8 million next season and a player option for $52.4 million in 2025-26.

Age: 34

Everything starts and ends with Jimmy Butler’s potential contract extension this summer. Butler is eligible to sign a two-year, $113 million extension that would make him one of the league’s highest-paid players and keep him in Miami through 2027.

But Riley made it clear during his end-of-season news conference that he isn’t in a rush to make that long-term commitment after Butler played in just 60 games and was injured for Miami’s short playoff run.

Butler, meanwhile, has made it clear that he wants all the money, and he wants it now.

Negotiations can’t occur until the day after the end of the NBA Finals, but these two sides could not be farther apart. 

This is why teams like the Philadelphia 76ers and perhaps the Golden State Warriors are monitoring the situation in Miami and whether Butler could be made available for trade.

It’s hard to imagine Butler leaving the Heat this way, but Heat fans remember when money came between the organization and Dwyane Wade, leading to his surprising departure in 2016. 

The Heat have been in the play-in tournament for two straight seasons and it’s clear Butler, who will be 35 in September, can no longer lead the offense in the regular season. Finding a way to pair Butler with a star scorer would be the best-case scenario (Butler is still an elite two-way player), but that gets complicated by Miami’s lack of tradable assets and a payroll that would make filling out the rest of the roster difficult.

If the Heat aren’t willing to give Butler the maximum extension, he can get it elsewhere. Maybe that’s where this ends up.

Prediction for when Butler leaves: Summer of 2023