After suffering a significant knee injury, Jimmy Butler is expected to miss the remainder of the 2025-26 NBA season. In many ways, it was a freak injury that no one could have predicted, but also one of the risks the Miami Heat weren't willing to take with Jimmy any longer.
In an instant, the Warriors quickly realized why the Heat were so willing to trade him and not sign him to a big-money contract extension.
By the end of Jimmy's tenure with the Heat, the situation elevated to much more than a money problem. However, there's reason to believe that if the Heat had been willing to give Jimmy the contract extension he was seeking, all of that could've been avoided.
The bottom line is that the Heat didn't want to make that investment, and Jimmy seemingly took it personally, and things kind of went off base from there. Ultimately, the Heat traded Jimmy to the Warriors, and both sides moved on.
The Warriors gave Jimmy Butler what the Heat didn't
The Warriors, who ended up giving him a two-year, $100-plus million extension, were hoping that Jimmy could be the final piece of their championship puzzle. Jimmy's injury now throws a huge wrench in that plan.
Now that Jimmy is out for the season, and possibly the start of next year, "nothing is off the table" for the Warriors heading into the NBA Trade Deadline, and beyond.
This brutal injury effectively changes almost everything for the Warriors moving forward. It's something that the Heat clearly didn't want to risk.
This is not to say that Miami saw this coming; no one ever does. However, they clearly didn't want to take that risk, considering Jimmy's age and his injury history.
Golden State made the aggressive move, and it didn't pay off.
Miami avoided the big risk, and they proved to be right.
This is not necessarily to give the Heat credit or say that they were right in how they operated with Jimmy, but this is kind of the way basketball works sometimes.
This is not the end for Jimmy Butler
As unfortunate as this injury is, it's not a death sentence for Jimmy's NBA career.
That's not who he is, nor is it the lasting image he wants to leave in the NBA. Even though he's not slated to return to the floor until he's 37, we haven't heard - or seen - the last of Jimmy. That's for sure.
Even though his future with the Warriors is certainly complicated, it would be pretty surprising if we didn't see him back on the basketball court at some point in the future. And perhaps with an even bigger chip on his shoulder than he's ever had before.