Carmelo Anthony worried something ‘deeper’ is going on with joyless Jimmy Butler after failed stops with every team

Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler’s words following the team’s loss to the Indiana Pacers on Jan. 2 were telling. In a press conference, he claimed that he had lost his joy for basketball. When Butler was asked whether or not he could rediscover his fondness for the sport in a Heat uniform, he responded succinctly with “probably not.”

If Butler’s tenure with the Heat comes to an end soon, it won’t mark the only one of his stints with an NBA team that’s ended in failure. The Chicago Bulls traded Butler years ago after the team was eliminated by the Boston Celtics in the first round of the 2017 NBA Playoffs. He requested a trade from the Minnesota Timberwolves not long after he arrived there and left the Philadelphia 76ers following the team’s second-round exit in the 2019 NBA Playoffs.

Carmelo Anthony expressed concern that something “deeper” is going on with Butler now that he has a history of ugly exits from teams.

“So this is why I’m saying you gon’ f— yourself up for the next situation because it’s like now we can’t really trust you,” Anthony said of Butler’s messy trade drama with the Heat. “We don’t know if you gon’ blackout. We don’t know if you gon’ say you’re not happy here. We don’t know if you gonna not play. Not saying that all your situations that you’ve been in was your fault, but when you start stringing s— along it’s like, ‘Oh s—.’ Chicago, Minnesota, Philly, Miami — everywhere you go? Not saying that that’s what’s happening, but I like to look at this s— a little bit deeper.

“It’s something going on with J.B. I hope he’s good, but when you start talking about I’m not happy and my joy is gone, you start losing your confidence. You start losing your love for the game, and I see that Jimmy has lost his love for the game. And this is unlike Jimmy. Jimmy is a workaholic. Jimmy works extremely hard — four, five times a day, five in the morning. He’s very disciplined. I’ve seen him. I’ve been around him. This ain’t the Jimmy that I know. Something is going on with Jimmy, and people need to get in front of that.”

In the past, Butler vowed to help the Heat win a title. But with all of the rumors and speculation circulating at this juncture about Butler’s future, he might fail to live up to that promise.

However, Butler has come close to adding to Miami’s championship total on more than one occasion during his tenure with the team. In his inaugural season with the team, the Heat reached the 2020 NBA Finals, though they lost to the Los Angeles Lakers and LeBron James in the championship series.

More recently, Butler led the Heat on a historic run to the NBA Finals in the year 2023. Miami became just the second No. 8 seed in the history of the NBA to represent its conference on the league’s biggest stage, and they joined the 1999 New York Knicks.

But the Heat were very outmatched against the Denver Nuggets with the 2023 NBA title on the line and lost the best-of-seven series in five games. Miami’s only win of the series came in Game 2 on the road, and three of the team’s four losses came by 11 points or more. Butler also didn’t play at the top of his game in that NBA Finals series, to put it mildly.