Jimmy Butler of the Miami Heat walks off the court after the team defeated the San Antonio Spurs at Kaseya Center in Miami on Jan. 19, 2025.
Megan Briggs/Getty Images
The Warriors may have gotten their long-sought-after trade target in Jimmy Butler, but they have come out of this blockbuster deal looking more “desperate” than ever.
As reporters dropped their analysis by way of podcast, the prevailing sentiment was that the Dubs must have felt forced to do something, and it got to the point where the team’s executive suite just dove headfirst into this move.
Article continues below this ad
“The front office was always more interested than the people in the locker room and the coaching staff,” reporter Anthony Slater said of this trade on the “Warriors Plus Minus” podcast. “It has come to the point that they’re all moving forward with it. But I always, even back to the beginning, sense more level of intrigue from the front office.”
Slater noted that while there was probably some “green lighting” from star Steph Curry and head coach Steve Kerr, this was a decision that mostly came from owner Joe Lacob and general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. Case in point: Curry and Kerr reportedly expressed reservations about bringing Butler to the team earlier this season.
Co-host Marcus Thompson II furthered this point as he pondered the journey the team took mentally to go from thinking the trade was a risk to pulling the trigger with a move that included Wiggins, described as “one of the people nobody ever wanted to give up.”
“How many times have we heard them say, ‘We don’t want to trade just for trade’s sake? ’” Thompson said on the podcast. “This felt desperate, like, ‘Let’s just do it. Let’s just do it and see what happens.’ That’s what it felt like. They hyped themselves up, and they were like, ‘Let’s just do it.’”
Article continues below this ad
Thompson’s take suggested more recklessness than what Slater believed, who countered that the team realized there was little risk since “they’re not ruining a team that was heading anywhere.”
Local reporters weren’t the only ones to think the Warriors were forced into a deal of this kind. ESPN’s Brian Windhorst did so as well — “They got tired of waiting,” he said on his “Hoop Collective” podcast — but he suggested more outside forces were at play, namely the fact that the possibility of a Kevin Durant trade fell through. He speculated that the front office must have considered the possibility that Durant would end up in Miami, Butler would end up in Phoenix and they’d end up with jack squat. ESPN’s Tim MacMahon, also on the podcast, gave the Dubs a bit more credit.
“I think they desperately chased a star,” MacMahon said. “I don’t think they paid a desperate price, and I guess if you accuse them of paying a desperate price, it would be in the money paid to Jimmy Butler. But in terms of Steph’s whole thing, and what Draymond had talked about and Steve Kerr had talked about, about not doing something that mortgages your future — they didn’t trade any of their young guys, … it’s not like they coughed up a bunch of future first-round picks.”
Article continues below this ad
Yet still, it’s seemingly impossible to even spin this move as a positive without using that omnipresent word: “desperate.”
