Jimmy Butler‘s push to get himself to Miami in a sign-and-trade caught the NBA off guard.
The basketball cultural fit made sense — the Heat’s focus on hard work and conditioning as a foundation for winning are very Butler — but with the Sixers, Lakers, Clippers, Rockets and other teams interested in him Butler could chase a ring next season. The Heat were a year or two and a couple of big moves away from that level. Yet Butler chose Miami after meeting with the Heat staff and canceled other meetings. Soon enough, the deal got done and Butler was a member of the Heat.
How did butler come to that moment? It started when he played dominoes in Little Havana. Anthony Chaing at the Miami Herald put together a fantastic look at how Butler — with some help from Dwyane Wade — came to love Miami.
As for Butler’s fit with the city of Miami, he started exploring that in April with a tour through Little Havana. With the 76ers in town to take on the Heat in the final home game of Wade’s career on April 9, Butler used the first part of that day to learn about the area.
Butler was determined to experience “the real Miami” and settled on Little Havana as the neighborhood to tour…
On April 9 during a tour of Little Havana, Butler was looking forward to proving he was a better dominoes player than those at Domino Park that day. Not aware that double-nine dominoes were used at the park, Butler was thrown off because he grew up playing with a double-six set…
The group ended up playing double-six dominoes. And of course, Butler won.
Butler spent the first part of that end-of-the-season day trying to get a feel for Miami, its people, their love of basketball, and if he would be happy there. He ultimately decided yes, he would. Wade had planted the seed with Butler that the Heat organization and Miami would be a good fit for him, but Butler had to explore and figure it out for himself.
Butler started that months before he met with teams, but by the time he walked out of the room where Pat Riley, Erik Spoelstra, and the rest of the Heat brain trust had been to pitch him on June 30, Butler knew where he wanted to play. He left it to the Heat and 76ers to figure out the sign-and-trade (which sent Josh Richardson among others to the Sixers, a move that cleared out enough cap space for Philly to sign Al Horford).
Now it’s on that Heat brain trust to add a lot more talent to the roster.
NEW YORK (AP) — Immanuel Quickley scored 22 points, Jalen Brunson had 21 and the New York Knicks rolled to their eighth straight victory, beating the depleted Golden State Warriors 132-94 on Tuesday night.
Quentin Grimes added 19 points and RJ Barrett had 18 as New York extended the longest current winning streak in the NBA.
“No one has talked about the streak at all,” Brunson said. “Obviously, we tell each other to keep it rolling. But, we’re just trying to be the best team we can be and just focus on one day at a time.”
Julius Randle finished with 15 points and 12 rebounds, Mitchell Robinson had nine points and 11 rebounds and Miles McBride added 10 points.
“We have a lot of players on this team who are capable of having monster games,” Brunson said. “It’s not surprising when someone like `Quick’ plays that way or `Q’ having that type of game or even Deuce (McBride) getting double figures. When they do it, it’s definitely a plus.”
Jordan Poole scored 26 points for the Warriors, who are without Stephen Curry, Andrew Wiggins and other key players. Jonathan Kuminga had 13, while Draymond Green, Klay Thompson and Ty Jerome each had 11.
The Knicks scored the first eight points of the game and never trailed. They led 33-25 at the end of the first quarter.
The Warriors pulled within 35-33, but a 3-pointer by Grimes with 4:17 left in the second quarter gave the Knicks a 60-45 lead. New York led 69-56 at halftime.
JP steal ➡️ JK slam pic.twitter.com/2UXBszhPg6
— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) December 21, 2022
“Winning naturally gains confidence,” Randle said. “But, I’m not going to put much into a winning streak or whatever. It’s still December.”
Robinson’s free throws put the Knicks up 88-67 with 5:37 remaining in the third quarter. They again went up by 21 on Quickley’s free throws with five seconds left in the quarter.
Quickley shot 6 for 10 after going 3 for 20 in the previous two games.
The Knicks led 100-81 heading into the fourth, and the Warriors never got any closer.
Svi Mykailiuk’s free throws with 58 seconds remaining gave New York its biggest lead of the night and were the final points of the contest.
“The Knicks are in a good groove right now. They totally outplayed us,” said Warriors coach Steve Kerr. “We sank tonight. We’re trying to hang in there and we will. Another game tomorrow.”
When Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan share the court this season, the Bulls have a -3.6 net rating — that’s two points per 100 worse than the team average as a whole (stats via Cleaning the Glass). As a duo, they tend to play next to each other taking turns rather than with and off each other, and the result has not been pretty.
Some of that spilled over during a halftime argument during the Bulls’ ugly loss to the Timberwolves over the weekend where they gave up 150 points to Minnesota, which shot 65.5%. K.C. Johnson of NBC Sports Chicago had the details.
Two sources familiar with the incident said some of the frustration was directed at Zach LaVine, if not directly by name than at least by defensive breakdowns involving him. A team source indicated the strong words were more collectively focused in nature — as in, “we need to be better.”
Chicago’s coaching staff and management recognize there’s a problem, but meetings and conversations with LaVine and DeRozan — who get along well, this isn’t personal — aren’t working. Shams Charania and Darnell Mayberry wrote about it at The Athletic.
The Bulls have held multiple team meetings to try to work out their issues, and that has included one-on-one, face-to-face sitdowns between DeRozan and LaVine, according to team and league sources who were granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly on team dynamics. DeRozan and LaVine have always had a strong mutual respect for each other… But their meetings have not led to in-game results so far, with a level of on-court, stylistic tension simply festering throughout the season and being magnified due to the win-loss record (11-18)…
Even more, multiple league sources and sources close to the organization say LaVine and the Bulls are not seeing eye-to-eye. Over the past few weeks, there’s been a palpable feeling across various parts of the franchise of a disconnect over LaVine’s situation in Chicago. All of this has been happening while LaVine is in the first season of a five-year, $215 million maximum deal that was signed this summer.
A few quick thoughts on this “news” (the chemistry issues aren’t a surprise to anyone who has watched a Bulls game — both guys want and need the ball in their hands):
• If one were cynical, one might say the Athletic story feels a lot like a story generated by LaVine’s camp to spin his position out there (he is represented by Klutch Sports).
• The report also discusses “skepticism within the locker room about the head coach” Billy Donovan. Complain all you want there, Donovan got a contract extension this past summer (one the Bulls kept quiet at the time, for whatever reason). Knowing how Bulls ownership works, they will not want to pay multiple coaches for multiple years, so Donvan isn’t going anywhere in the short term.
• Not having Lonzo Ball as a facilitator and floor general doesn’t help (he remains out indefinitely following a second knee surgery, and buzz is growing he may not play this season). It also doesn’t explain everything.
• There are a lot of teams watching the Bulls to see what they do at the trade deadline, if they decide to make changes to this struggling roster, and if so how deep the cuts will be. The sense around the league is that Nikola Vucevic will be available at the right price, but it’s unlikely DeRozan will be available and almost out of the question LaVine will be. Was this leak an attempt to start to change the thinking on DeRozan?
• The Bulls have lost four in a row and 7-of-9, and they now sit outside even the play-in as the 11th seed in the East.
NBA players will quietly say they hear offensive, racist comments from fans — on and off the court — in basically every city, but there are a few places where it is more common than others. Boston is one.
Utah is always near the top of that shameful list. Dwane Wade had issues there, Russell Westbrook has had run-ins with fans there, and more recently Ja Morant‘s family heard lewd and racist remarks from some fans there. It’s certainly not everyone, but players feel those moments are more common in Utah.
Donovan Mitchell said the racial issues in Salt Lake City and the state were draining for him. During a wide-ranging interview with Marc Spears of ESPN’s Andscape, Mitchell was honest about the situation and said repeated situations in Utah wore him down.
It’s no secret there’s a lot of stuff that I dealt with being in Utah off the floor. If I’m being honest with you, I never really said this, but it was draining. It was just draining on my energy just because you can’t sit in your room and cheer for me and then do all these different things. I’m not saying specifically every fan, but I just feel like it was a lot of things. A [Utah] state senator [Stuart Adams] saying I need to get educated on my own Black history. Seeing Black kids getting bullied because of their skin color. Seeing a little girl [Isabella Tichenor] hang herself because she’s being bullied.
Man, it was just one thing after another. And I will say, it’s not the only place it happens. But for me, I’m continuing to be an advocate for [racial equality] and to receive the amount of pushback I got over the years, it was a lot.
Mitchell added this story to emphasize his point.
But as far as Utah, it became a lot to have to deal with on a nightly basis. I got pulled over once. I got an attitude from a cop until I gave him my ID. And that forever made me wonder what happens to the young Black kid in Utah that doesn’t have that power to just be like, ‘This is who I am.’ And that was one of the things for me that I took to heart.
Mitchell has spoken highly of individuals and experiences he had in Utah, but the sense that a lot of people didn’t understand what he was experiencing, that they didn’t relate (or wouldn’t) eventually became an issue. Mitchell said the experience in Cleveland — a much more racially diverse city — has been different.
Mitchell has been playing the best basketball of his career in Cleveland, including scoring 23 on Monday night to lead his current team to a comfortable win over his old one, 120-99. This season the Cavs have put Mitchell in a better situation for him on the court, and his scoring and shot creation have sparked the Cavaliers to a 21-11 start to the season. His feeling comfortable likely has something to do with his level of play as well.
Mat Ishbia already has a championship ring — an NCAA basketball title one he earned as a reserve guard for the Michigan State Spartans under Tom Izzo in 2000.
Now he’s going to chase an NBA ring as the new owner of the Phoenix Suns and the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury. Ishbia has agreed to buy the Suns from Robert Sarver for a reported $4 billion, a story broken by Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN and since confirmed by Ishiba himself.
“I am extremely excited to be the next Governor of the Phoenix Suns and Mercury,” Ishbia said in a statement Tuesday night. “Both teams have an incredibly dynamic fan base and I have loved experiencing the energy of the Valley over the last few months.
“Basketball is at the core of my life, from my high school days as a player to the honor of playing for Coach Izzo and winning a national title at Michigan State University. I’ve spent the last two decades building my mortgage business, United Wholesale Mortgage, into the number one mortgage lender in America and I’m confident that we can bring that same level of success to these great organizations on and off the floor.”
That sale price would blow away the old record paid for an NBA team of $3.3 billion (what Joe Tsai paid for the Brooklyn Nets and the Barclays Center where they play).
After being a walk-on at Michigan State, Ishbia made billions as the chairman and CEO of the nation’s largest mortgage lender, United Wholesale Mortgage, formally called UWM Holdings. Mat’s father Jeff founded the business in 1986 and it has grown to be one of the largest mortgage lenders in the United States, worth a reported $7 billion. Ishbia is worth a reported $5.1 billion.
Mat is bringing in his brother Justin — also a billionaire and part-owner of UWM — as a co-owner and alternate governor for the team, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic.
Sarver agreed to sell the team after an investigation into his running of the Suns’ franchise had led to a hostile work environment and sexual harassment claims. NBA commissioner Adam Silver fined Sarver $10 million (the max he could do) and suspended Sarver for a year — which was a slap on the wrist — but as pressure from sponsors and other NBA owners mounted, Sarver chose to step away.
And take the cash — Sarver purchased the Suns in 2004 for a then-record $401 million. Sarver had other investors in the team, but under the contract, he had sole control over the team’s sale (and the other owners had to abide by his decision).
There is no timeline for the sale and it has to be approved by the other owners, but this likely will move quickly. Ishbia has been one of the people in line looking at NBA franchises when they went up for sale (the same is true of the NFL).
One side note here (as Bill Simmons mentioned on Twitter): This sale now sets the price for potential expansion teams later this decade (likely in Seattle and Las Vegas). Silver and others with the league have said expansion is not formally on the table right now, but the expectation is that once the new Collective Bargaining Agreement and a new national television/streaming deal are locked down, the league will turn to expansion. That price just got a lot more expensive.