On this week’s edition of The Audacy NBA Show—Ryan McDonough and Jimmy Butler’s agent Bernie Lee had a discussion on Butler's departure from Philadelphia in the summer of 2019.
"As I look back on it, I see his need and desire to have meetings maybe made Philadelphia a little bit uncomfortable," Lee said. "Like the people that know and run that team, they're hedge fund guys, they deal on certainties. And being able to have this guy—during the course of the playoffs with Philly, obviously he had shown himself to be the best player on that team, right? And the high level winning they wanted to do was going to be centered around him. So having him be like that unknown variable in that formula I think made them kind of uncomfortable in some ways. And they hadn't been through that situation before because they haven't had guys with unrestricted free-agency, where they weren't in control of the situation.
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"I remember going back to them and saying to them, 'We can all kind of see what this team can build and be, and obviously there is comfort level, but he's earned this right to take meetings and hear what people have to say and he is going to do that. And they didn't necessarily love it and I think they, in their own way, built contingency plans because they weren't going to leave something up to chance, so to speak. And to their credit they ended up protecting themselves against what ultimately ending up happening. Jimmy sat down and had a meeting with Miami and you could just see it.
"It's where he was always meant to play. You see it every single day, every day and every way. And it hasn't deviated for a second."
Last season, Butler's first in Miami, was an excellent one for the 31-year-old vet as he was named to his fifth career All-Star game and helped lead the Heat to an NBA Finals appearance in the bubble.
This season, Butler's numbers have actually improved, as he's averaging 21.2 points, 7.5 rebounds, and 7.2 assists, shooting 48.5 FG%. However, as a team, Miami is just 26-24, currently in 5th place in the eastern conference, but just 1.5 games ahead of the 8th seeded New York Knicks.
As for the Sixers, we all know the story. The team signed Tobias Harris to a 5-year, $180 million contract extension during the summer Butler left. One year later they named Daryl Morey as the president of basketball operations and replaced Brett Brown with Doc Rivers as the new head coach. Morey brought in Seth Curry, Danny Green, and Dwight Howard, drafted Tyrese Maxey and got rid of Josh Richardson and Al Horford. And Harris is playing the best ball of his career.
All of that, plus the MVP play of Joel Embiid and a myriad of other factors, has the Sixers at 34-16, 0.5 game behind the Brooklyn Nets for the No. 1 seed in the East, a spot that Philadelphia has held for most of the season.