A Jimmy Butler Trade Isn’t New. This Growing NBA Problem Behind It Is.
It was more than a press conference.
“I want to see me get my joy back from playing basketball,” says the Miami Heat’s Jimmy Butler in his postgame interview on January 2, 2025 after a loss to the Indiana Pacers.
“Can you get your joy back here on the court?” a reporter asks.
He responds matter-of-factly. “Probably not.”
For these comments, the Miami Heat gave Butler a seven-game suspension with no pay and opened up the conversation for trade offers.
Naturally, this circulated discourse on where Butler could go. Dallas, San Antonio, Memphis, Phoenix…but that’s not the most interesting part of the story to me.
As a Wolves fan, I’ve seen this before. Butler has never been one to go quietly into the night. He left Minnesota in a similarly dramatic fashion. A keystone moment in Butler leaving Minnesota traces back to a famous practice session in which frustrations mounted against both players and higher-ups that his former Wolves teammate Jeff Teague regaled on his podcast, Club 520.
Butler’s never been one to hold back his feelings about a team situation that he doesn’t feel right in, which has given him a reputation of being toxic to work with. I’m not going to put any opinions on that matter: I’ve never been in a locker room with him. However, with Butler demanding a trade from the Heat, Miami joins the ranks of Chicago, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia. It wouldn’t surprise me if the next place he may end up going to joins these ranks someday as well.
I have nothing against a player moving on from a team that they don’t fit well in anymore. I don’t want players on my team that don’t want to be there, representing the city. Not everyone’s going to be a Dirk Nowitzki.
But there’s something about this Jimmy Butler trade statement that feels different to me.
Is There A Growing Passion Problem in the NBA?
The Miami Heat is the only team that Jimmy Butler outright called out his want to leave during a postgame interview. He’s spoken to the press about his feelings regarding the other teams he left, but expressing the want to quit in such a brazen, unprofessional way seems bigger than Jimmy Butler’s relationship with the Heat.
What I am seeing at an inconsistent rate is heart and effort from the larger scope of players in the NBA. To bring it down to scale, Butler only scored 9 points during his Pacers game preceding the infamous press conference interview. Players have off-nights — but Butler didn’t act mad or disappointed in his performance. In fact, he almost defended it by stating that his bottom line is to “compete to win, whether it’s by 9 points or 29 points.”
It feels like I’m seeing less fight from players, less love for the game. Of course, there’s the debate on how much of this is based on optics.
Three-time MVP Nikola Jokiċ is known for expressing little emotion towards playing basketball, earning personal awards, and winning titles. Fans joke that he looks like he treats his basketball career as a side hustle. See Jokiċ on the court, however, and you see that he very much plays like he cares: heavy push on team effort, a PPG of 31.5, an average of 9.7 assists per game, a 55.3% field goal percentage (all as of writing)…he cares.
However, what exacerbates the perception of there being less passion from the players are the diving NBA ratings and the drove of pundits who come in trying to understand why that is. One of those reasons being thrown around: players do not care as much about basketball.
Patrick Beverley weighed in on that take. Granted, he’s arguing that the players he’s worked with who seem to care less about basketball are actually some of the better players, but again, we’re talking about love for the game here.
Passion versus skill. I think this is an incredibly important distinction to notice. A player can do well on the court: he can shoot 3s in his sleep, he guards players like he’s the Great Wall of China, etc. But will that same player dive for a ball like it’s his newborn baby tumbling towards a violent river? Will he hold the players around him to a high standard in the name of the game? Will he shake off a loss, or will he let a loss drive him to perform better next time?
More importantly: will he fight for a win every game, or only some games?
I think that does affect perception of the NBA. Keep in mind, the kind of exposure players have is different these days than it was pre-social media, pre-24/7 sports commentary. This is also a different NBA era in which analytics are king above all else.
Did you fight for your team to your highest ability? Did you play creatively to entertain the crowd and strategically dupe the opposition? You didn’t? Well, that’s okay. You hit some cool basketball numbers! See your 26 points, 9 rebounds, 13 assists, 49.5% field goal rate...
Now go home and enjoy your Ferraris, champagne, shoe deals, and girls.
I’m not loving that. I don’t want to see stories of superstars half-assing it on the court night after night. I don’t want players blatantly disrespecting their team, even if they do want to leave. Moreover, I don’t want these things to happen in the league and then go by without accountability on the players.
There’s a well-known story about the former Chicago Bulls’ small forward Scottie Pippen. During the last 1.8 seconds of Game 3 of the 1994 Eastern Conference Finals (sans Michael Jordan), the Bulls were down to the Knicks by a field goal. Controversially, when asked by head coach Phil Jackson during a time out to pass the ball to Toni Kukoč instead of take the shot himself, Pippen decided to sit out.
Kukoč luckily made the shot and gave the Bulls the win, but the atmosphere in the locker room was bitter because of Pippen’s uncharacteristic decision. His teammates didn’t celebrate Kukoč’s buzzer-beater. The Bulls, instead, expressed their feelings of disappointment and anger towards Pippen for sitting out. Pippen apologized.
The Bulls of ’94 had high standards for each other because of Michael Jordan, whose influence prevailed even during his brief basketball absence. It is for this reason that Pippen’s teammates called him out on a moment when he seemed to put his own ego over the interests of the team.
Players need to show they care about basketball. They show it with respect for the sport, for each other, and for themselves. One could argue that Butler leaving Miami is an expression of passion, because he’s not going to settle for a bum contract and a middling win-lose record. He holds himself to a high standard and won’t settle.
That’s not my argument, however. The fact is, passion goes beyond the self. Superstars seek to not just put themselves in the record books — they want to elevate the game entirely.
Champagne? Cars? Girls? Money? Brand deals? Player stats? The fans don’t stick around for that. Viewers and players have engaged in the NBA for decades prior and will do so for decades more for one reason:
For the love of the game.
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