However, the Heat chose not to meet Butler\u2019s contract demands<\/a>, ultimately trading him to Golden State.<\/p>\n His absence showed dramatically last season when the Heat suffered a first-round sweep against the Cleveland Cavaliers.<\/p>\n Second, they attempted to acquire Kevin Durant<\/a> from Phoenix with an underwhelming trade package.<\/p>\n Miami offered Phoenix an unattractive package<\/a> including Andrew Wiggins, Terry Rozier, Jaime Jaquez, Nikola Jovic, Haywood Highsmith, and the 20th overall pick.<\/p>\n The Suns rejected the proposal, leaving the Heat empty-handed.<\/p>\n NBA insider Tim Bontemps defends Heat\u2019s approach, thinks it\u2019s the right path<\/p>\n Many criticized Miami\u2019s handling of both situations, but NBA insider Tim Bontemps believes the organization made correct long-term decisions.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the last few years, the Heat kept making these runs with Butler to the conference finals and kept finishing in the bottom half of the playoff picture in the Eastern Conference<\/a>. It was a very hard thing to square on both sides to figure out just how good the Heat were,\u201d Bontemps explained.<\/p>\n \u201cI would say, especially with the Butler trade, the Heat had a choice. I would say the Heat had a chance to get Durant and give up draft picks to do so, or the Heat had a chance to get a draft pick and get Andrew Wiggins<\/a> and add to their asset base, and vote to go younger and take a longer view.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey chose that [Wiggins] path which I think was the correct path because I don\u2019t think they were good enough with this group.\u201d<\/p>\n The Heat now have assets for future trade<\/p>\n Bontemps argues that even adding Durant wouldn\u2019t have provided sufficient roster strength for championship contention.<\/p>\n Instead, Miami prioritized asset accumulation and youth development for future flexibility.<\/p>\n Until 2031, the Heat at least have five first-rounders as well as a bunch of second rounders.<\/p>\n They also have several young players, such as Kasparas Jakucionis<\/a>, the potential center Kal\u2019el Ware<\/a>, and Nikola Jovic, who could be trade assets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Miami Heat confronted two major roster scenarios this spring and summer. Both decisions would significantly impact the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[20446,64,63,7902,7216,7223,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-81368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-andrew-wiggins","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-jimmy-butler","12":"tag-kevin-durant","13":"tag-miami-heat","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Jimmy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2184220523-941x627.jpg\")
Photo by Chris Coduto\/Getty Images<\/p>\n