The Miami Heat heard a story about themselves, and they really liked it. The story began to grow, gradually and then epically, during their run to the 2020 NBA Finals. In Jimmy Butler’s first season with the team, they accomplished this improbable thing. Next to him was perennial All-Defense stalwart Bam Adebayo, but the rest of the crew was put together as a mix of developmental miracles, overlooked role players and veterans, and guys who Just Wanted It More.
Much was said about Miami’s “Culture,” as a result. This story was, importantly, true. No other team does as much with undrafted players, or those who look to the rest of the league like they’ve played past their useful days. Ex-Heat players regularly confirm and add to the tales about team president Pat Riley’s obsessive protocols, involving unusual deference to the bigger picture and draconian fitness standards. The organization’s militant reputation has become a hilarious contrast to broader perceptions of Miami as a destination for relaxation and mirth.
Again, because the story was true, and indeed a key reason for both the 2020 Finals appearance and the Heat’s reappearance in the championship round as a No. 8 seed in 2023, it wasn’t bad for the team to be spoken of this way. It was perhaps questionable, though, when they started to speak of themselves so much this way. They adopted CULTURE jerseys, and a CULTURE court. If you visit the arena, you are presented with many more proud mini-manifestos about the team’s—you guessed it—CULTURE.
There is a direct relationship between the decision to lean into this bit of mythology, as a branding exercise, and the team’s current relationship with Butler. As he did with his three previous teams, Butler is now bringing his brightest possible flashlight to the inherent conflict between the organization’s best interest and his own. At 35, he wants another big contract, and his team doesn’t want to give it to him. Master of the egoistic transactional mess of the modern NBA, his resulting show of discontent has destabilized the Heat, who are in freefall. Losers of three in a row, their current slide includes a 36-point loss to the bottom-dwelling Utah Jazz.
Butler’s trade demands and corresponding hair color decisions are, most likely, just the tip of an iceberg. In the Heat’s press release—CULTURE-coded, to say the least—there is vague reference to “conduct detrimental to the team,” smoke emanating from as-of-yet unspecified fire. You don’t need deep reporting to see the issue, though: Butler has lollygagged through games, taking lazy practice shots and acting, on defense, like limp screens from the opposition are impossible obstacles.
As a result, the team has been quite bad with Butler on the floor. But here’s the hard part, for them: they’re also lousy when he’s off it. Riley and Co. can forge as many platitudes about CULTURE as they want to; many of them are correct, and earned. But they’re still dependent, like everyone else in the league, on the transcendent performance of special individuals, who do things that break through the baseline you set in your front office, locker room, and training camp. At the end of the day, the NBA is a world of superheroes, not militaries or managers.
As far as superheroes go, Butler is a dubious one. Really, he verges on anti-hero status. Like many anti-heroes before him, his is a less traditional path to glory, which isn’t always even glory. His own goals visibly supersede everyone else’s at times, and he becomes a man you need for wartime rather than the one you go into battle with comfortably; a powerful mercenary. For a moment, it seemed like the Butler/Heat pairing was so copacetic that it spelled an end to his sequence of team-breaking power plays.
Obviously, this was not so. He has once again pushed the incentive structures of his profession to their logical endpoint, reminding everyone that the singular rides he takes them on do not come for free, or even at a reasonable price. The resulting chaos is attributed to him, and fairly enough; but it was always there, not far at all from the surface, ready to bubble out of the pot. This is not just true in Butler’s case, but across the league. The people who own and run teams can pretend all they want that their processes, and their product, revolve around anything else. But when they state this thesis too loudly, Butler and his ilk don’t have to do much to remind them who’s really at the center of things.