Miami Heat President Pat Riley has openly discussed the difficulty he faces when trading players away on Udonis Haslem’s podcast, ‘The OGs Show,’ where Riley frankly discussed his dislike for trading players away and how he’s filled with pride that many of his former players are now full-time Heat employees.
“I couldn’t guarantee you reliability because it’s a business. Trading players is hard for me. It’s part of the business. Free agents go to other places, that’s the world we live in. But you’ve got to have the first two – you gotta be sincere, you gotta be confident, and be as reliable as you can. One of the proudest things that I feel about is that there’s at least 8-10 players who work for the Heat who used to play for us.”
Riley has been criticized by Heat fans for years for his inability to execute major trades, often due to differing values of their targets. They heavily pursued Donovan Mitchell and Kevin Durant in 2022 before pursuing Damian Lillard in 2023, failing in every single trade pursuit with two of those players landing on rival East teams.
It seems Riley’s experience as a player and coach has created greater sympathy towards the plight of players who get traded from the franchise, especially when they’ve bought in and are doing all the right things in helping the franchise play better basketball. The Heat have a culture that every player buys into, so discarding those players isn’t easy.
The Heat have multiple holdovers from their 2020 Finals squad five years ago still on their roster, The core trio of Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, and Tyler Herro are still leading the franchise, with shooter Duncan Robinson also still being with the franchise. In terms of trades, the team has only made one major trade in the last few years – the acquisition of Terry Rozier from the Charlotte Hornets last season.
The Heat are 9-10 this season and seem to be stuck in the middle of the East for the last three seasons. While their core led to a surprise Finals appearance in 2023, this season should be incontrovertible proof that this team isn’t built for championship contention and might have already peaked, with Butler’s production crashing down the charts.
Trading Butler away might be a conversation Riley has to face this season, as the 25-year-old Herro and 28-year-old Adebayo can still build towards a championship core with different players unlike Butler, who’s best might be behind him at 35 years old. He’s a free agent next summer and Riley has already shown he doesn’t want to extend Butler to a blanket sum.
He’s averaging 18.9 points, 5.1 rebounds, and 4.8 assists this season, which isn’t the max-level production Butler needs to convince the Heat to extend him this season.
Instead of waiting for the axe to drop next summer and being mostly powerless in Butler’s decision, as he can leave for nothing, it might be time for Riley to overcome his greatest issue as an executive and make some bold trades to secure the future of the Miami Heat franchise.
