Jimmy Butler doesn't want to play for the Milwaukee Bucks.
That's the word that Butler's agent Bernie Lee has leaked out through the media: Butler wants out of Miami, but doesn't want to end up with the Bucks (or Memphis Grizzlies, for that matter). A potential trade construction where the Bucks move off of Pat Connaughton or another medium contract to dip below the second luxury tax apron and then send Khris Middleton to Miami was always unlikely to begin with, but now it seems to be that much more impossible without Butler's blessing.
That may be best for the Bucks, who need a change but perhaps were wrong to pursue that one. The Bucks are 20-17 as of Tuesday morning, clinging to sixth place in the Eastern Conference and just a half-game out of eighth. Their net rating of +1.2 is 13th in the NBA; that is hardly the stuff of contention.
Yet Butler wants to be on a team with the financial means to overpay him this summer and the ability to compete with him - but he doesn't want to play second fiddle. Play with another star? Sure. Be the quiet support player on another star's team? That seems like a no for Butler. Giannis Antetokounmpo is not a particularly brash superstar, but Milwaukee is his city, the Bucks are his team, and that partnership (before you even get to Butler's age or their on-court spacing difficulties) seemed doomed from the start.
The Bucks could still join a Jimmy Butler trade
All of that being true, it doesn't mean that the Bucks are completely out of a Jimmy Butler trade. Any team trading for Butler is likely to need a third team involved; the Miami Heat don't want to take back long-term salary, and that's all that most Butler trade suitors have to offer.
Butler's top destination appears to be the Phoenix Suns; Kevin Durant is another "true hooper" and can reasonably expect to contend for a title with Butler, while Suns owner Matt Ishbia is rich and crazy enough to pay Butler this summer. At the same time, Phoenix is mired in its own difficulties and would love to bring in Butler.
The problem, of course, is Bradley Beal - and less so the player and more so the contract. Beal is a solid player but is wildly overpaid on his current deal, a five-year $251 million pact that includes a no-trade clause. Beal will make an average of $53.7 million this year and the next two.
The Suns are above the second tax apron, so they cannot aggregate (or combine) salaries in a deal. If they are going to make a significant swing they can only send out one player at a time. To add Butler, that means trading Bradley Beal, whose $50.2 million salary for this season ranks fifth in the league (sandwiched between Durant in fourth and Devin Booker in sixth) and is about $1.4 million more than Butler is making.
The Miami Heat don't want to take back good salary for multiple seasons; they certainly don't want bad salary. Beal is still a good player, but he is redundant with Tyler Herro on the Heat and won't move the needle for a Miami team without a No. 1 star.
Bringing things full-circle, however, there is another team with a No. 1 star already in place that could use some offensive juice and perimeter shot creation and is just desperate enough to consider making a massive change: enter the Milwaukee Bucks.
The Milwaukee Bucks could trade for Bradley Beal
It's clear that things are not working out with Khris Middleton this season; whether due to age, injuries or some combination of the two he is not playing at an elite level this season. Damian Lillard has been fine, Giannis Antetokounmpo has been amazing, but without Middleton as the third leg their championship hopes are collapsing. Could Bradley Beal be the answer?
He's certainly not an ideal answer in a vacuum, but the Bucks are expensive and have limited assets to trade; they aren't shopping in the glamour-star department. They did that when they traded for Damian Lillard, a deal that certainly hasn't worked out thus far. To make a change now, while Lillard is still in the tail end of his prime and Antetokounmpo is still committed to playing in Cream CIty, the Bucks can't be too picky.
Kevin O'Connor of The Ringer recently floated this idea when discussing the Jimmy Butler trade saga on his podcast. He unpacked how Beal's skillset could actually be the boost that the Bucks need, and building a multi-team trade to bring Beal to Milwaukee and Butler to Phoenix could work for all sides.
Now, on the surface we need to acknowledge that there are a lot of particulars that need to happen to make this work financially; we are discussing more of the broad strokes here, but the Bucks are still over the second luxury tax apron and therefore are in the same boat as the Suns. Beal makes more than Middleton, so to add contracts together the Bucks are going to need to offload salary to another team.
Let's lay this out as a general framework:
Bucks Receive: Bradley Beal, 2031 second-round pick (PHX)
Suns Receive: Jimmy Butler
Heat Receive: Khris Middleton, Tim Hardaway Jr., MarJon Beauchamp, 2031 first-round pick (PHX)
Pistons Receive: Bobby Portis, Pat Connaughton, Alec Burks, 2031 first-round pick (MIL)
The Pistons have to take back extra salary in this deal, including money for both Portis and Connaughton next season, so they get the Bucks' 2031 pick as a sweetener. The Suns get Jimmy Butler, giving up Beal and their first and second-round picks in 2031.
The Heat do take back Khris Middleton, but he has a player option for next season and could be persuaded to decline it and sign for less money annually over multiple years. The Heat won't bottom out and tank, so having Middleton around makes some sense. The rest of the money they take back is expiring, and they get the Suns' high-upside 2031 first in exchange.
So what about the Bucks? They send out a lot of players in this deal, moving on not only from Khris Middleton but Bobby Portis, Pat Connaughton and MarJon Beauchamp; Beauchamp and Connaughton do not factor significantly this year, but Portis is a key rotation player and Middleton has been a multi-time All-Star with this team.
Add on top of that their first-round pick in 2031, and this is a massive swing for the fences...for a palyer in Beal who is not playing at an All-Star level and is owed an incredibly large amount of money over the next two seasons. Even if Beal waives his no-trade clause to come to Milwaukee, he likely isn't writing it out of his contract, so the Bucks could easily find themselves in the same position as the Suns in a year.
The Bucks have to move mountains to make a significant move due to their tax apron contraints, and this is an expensive mountain for a player like Beal. Perhaps a player with higher upside - not Butler, most likely, but someone who could realistically play like a Top-20 player in the playoffs or clearly maximizes the Bucks' stars - would be worth this outlay of their remaining assets.
As it is, this is the final bullet the Bucks have to fire, and it's hard to think Beal is the player worth firing it for.
Grade: C-