NBA Rumors: Exploring a few paths the Miami Heat can take to retool on the fly while also trading Jimmy Butler.
Between now and the NBA Trade Deadline, there's a good chance that the biggest storyline that is going to linger will revolve around whether the Miami Heat will trade Jimmy Butler. Over the last few days, the smoke surrounding this possibility has certainly increased. And at this point, if he does get traded, it's looking more and more like the most likely destination is going to be the Golden State Warriors.
From the Heat's perspective, if they do end up trading Jimmy, it has to make sense for them. Miami is not a team that is going to trade Jimmy to enter a rebuild. In fact, knowing this front office, I'd be shocked if the Heat didn't trade Jimmy with the intent to retool their roster at the same time. With that understanding, we're going to explore four realistic paths the Heat could have to trade Jimmy while also managing to retool the roster on the fly.
A direct trade between the Heat and Warriors
If the Miami Heat don't want to complicate things with a third or fourth team, there's a natural path to agreeing to a trade with the Golden State Warriors that would still put them in a position to compete in the Eastern Conference this season. In this first deal to help the Heat remain respectable, they would send Jimmy, Haywood Highsmith, and Nikola Jovic to the Warriors in exchange for Andrew Wiggins, Jonathan Kuminga, Gary Payton II, and De'Anthony Melton.
Wiggins and Kuminga would give the team a natural boost in the frontcourt with the former filling the production lost in Jimmy and the latter emerging as a possible long-term answer next to Bam Adebayo. Payton could be a guard that does contribute some but both he and Melton are essentially expiring contracts to help the trade work financially. This is one of those deals that would see the Heat try to make the best of the situation and the only real concern with this swap for Miami is the fact that they'd have to prepare for grueling contract negotiations with Kuminga. I'm not sure how excited the front office would be about that.