Former Heat star Jimmy Butler's return to Miami met with cheers, boos
Some fans cheered him. Some booed him.
Jimmy Butler waved to them all as his return game in Miami was getting underway.
The Heat paid tribute to Butler's 5½ seasons with the team with a pregame video on Tuesday night, shown in the arena as part of the introduction of the Golden State Warriors' starting lineup for the game.
Butler appeared to watch the roughly 40-second video, as he said he would, though added that it didn't matter to him whether the Heat did one or not. He got the full-throated introduction from Heat public-address announcer Michael Baiamonte — "Jim ... my ... Butlerrrrr" — just as he did when he played for Miami and waved to acknowledge the sounds from the stands.
He's insisting that there's no hard feelings now, a month and a half after he was traded to the Warriors following a contentious breakup that saw him suspended by Miami three times in his final weeks with the team.
The video included a slew of Butler's highlights from the Heat era, including the iconic image of him, exhausted, slumped over a courtside barrier during a game in the NBA bubble in 2020.
"There's a lot of change in the NBA," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said before the game. "But I think we're pretty far removed now from that kind of emotion."
Butler wasn't happy with the Heat over not getting an extension and had issues with his role in the final weeks of his time there. The Heat weren't happy with how he missed about 25% of their games during his tenure with the club and how he took his complaints public in the final months.
Butler got his extension — two years, $111 million — from the Warriors, and Golden State was 16-3 in his first 19 appearances with the team entering Tuesday.
"I'm always painted as the bad guy," Butler said. "Everywhere I've been, I've always been a problem. We'll take it. I don't got nothing to say. I'm not mad at being a bad guy. It's all the way everything's portrayed. Some people talk to the media, some people don't. I've never been one to tell my side of the story to almost anybody. Let everybody think that this is what happened. We'll ride with it."
Fans, as they tend to be when a top player leaves their team, have not been shy about hiding their anger with Butler on social media. Butler knows things didn't end well in his Miami tenure, though notes that he believes there's more than enough blame to go around for the messy breakup.
"I wonder if they look at the Heat the same way," Butler said. "It ain't like I was the one who was doing everything. It's got to be 50-50, maybe 51-49 — 49 towards them, 51 towards me. But there's no way that I was the cause of all of this."
Butler wound up being suspended for a total of 14 Heat games before the trade. But the Heat have a tradition of welcoming back players who were All-Stars or champions with the team; Butler was an All-Star in Miami who led the team to three Eastern Conference finals berths and two trips to the NBA Finals.
He was booed when he touched the ball after the game started, though there were some cheers when he scored Golden State's first basket of the contest.
