One thing the Miami Heat are lacking with the offseason looming is star power. Miami traded maybe its biggest star in a long time — forward Jimmy Butler — to the Golden State Warriors before the February trade deadline. Butler is a six-time All-Star.
Currently, the Heat don’t employ anyone with more than three All-Star nods to his name. Big man Bam Adebayo has more selections than any member of Miami, but he wasn’t even named an All-Star earlier this year.
Heat insider Barry Jackson has suggested on X that if the Heat can’t make a trade for Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, they should look to make a Butler-like deal and trade several solid players and a first-round pick for a proven All-Star.
What they need, if they can't trade kitchen sink for Giannis, is to find exactly what Golden State did with Heat – trade 3 decent players who aren't close to being all stars and one first rounder for an all star like Butler
— Barry Jackson (@flasportsbuzz) May 11, 2025
This should be goal this summer if no Giannis. https://t.co/J2nHogGC24
— Barry Jackson (@flasportsbuzz) May 11, 2025
For perspective, the Heat received forward Andrew Wiggins, guard Davion Mitchell, forward Kyle Anderson and a protected first-round pick for Butler, who’s one of the better players in franchise history. He helped Miami reach the NBA Finals twice during his tenure.
Only one of the three players the Heat acquired for Butler made a significant positive impact in their series versus the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round of the 2025 NBA Playoffs. Mitchell averaged 15.0 points and 6.3 assists per game in four games played (three starts). He shot 61.0 percent from the field and 50.0 percent from 3-point range in the best-of-seven series.
On the other hand, Anderson hardly saw the floor against the East’s No. 1 seed, and Wiggins was plagued by inefficient scoring.
While the Heat have long been eliminated from the playoffs after they got swept by the Cavaliers, Butler has been playing at a high level lately in these playoffs, and he lived up to his “Playoff Jimmy” persona with his performance in Saturday’s Game 3 against the Minnesota Timberwolves. He scored 33 points in a losing effort for the Warriors.
It would be great for Miami if it could parlay several of its quality players into one star player, but there may not be a whole lot of teams that would take Miami up on that offer.
It’s important to remember the context behind the Warriors-Heat trade and that Butler had made it clear leading up to him getting moved that he wanted out of Miami.
