No matter how badly the Phoenix Suns may want Jimmy Butler, there just doesn’t seem to be a viable way for them to get him. Nobody wants the Bradley Beal contract. Even if someone did, Beal himself doesn’t seem eager to drop his no-trade clause to help the Suns dump him. His contract has, thus far, proven to be an insurmountable obstacle. The stars just aren’t aligning for the Suns.
But they may be aligning for someone else. According to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, the Heat have lowered their asking price on Butler in an apparent effort to hasten his departure following Monday’s indefinite suspension. According to Yahoo’s Kevin O’Connor, this has enticed the Golden State Warriors back into the bidding. The fit is obvious. Golden State badly needs a secondary scorer to pair with Stephen Curry. In a seemingly open Western Conference, the trio of Curry, Butler and Draymond Green would be a threat to almost anyone in a seven-game series with or without home-court advantage.
The Warriors don’t have a Beal-sized contract holding them back like the Suns do. If anything, they have the opposite problem. They don’t have a single, large cap figure to send the Heat for Butler. That means they need to send out a handful of players to match his money. This causes our first roadblock, as Golden State’s biggest tradable salary belongs to Andrew Wiggins. His $26 million salary would almost certainly be in the deal, but his contract extends into the 2026-27 season. The Heat, by all accounts, want to maintain their cap space for the summer of 2026’s strong free-agent class, so they only want short-term deals.
Even if the Heat don’t want Wiggins, plenty of other teams would. Wings are generally in short supply around the NBA, and after two down years, Wiggins has mostly returned to form this season. He may be owed two more years of money, but his salary is reasonable and he’s a fit on most rosters. Finding a new home for him won’t be hard. We just have to find a team that could potentially be interested in Wiggins and have something the Heat want.
And this is where we approach trade serendipity, because right now, there is a team that is A) quite familiar with Wiggins, B) employing a player the Heat are seemingly interested in and C) while perhaps not openly trying to dump that player, would certainly be open to it given how poorly that player has fit onto their roster this season. And so, let’s introduce the third major player in our proposed Butler blockbuster: Julius Randle. According to SNY’s Ian Begley, the Heat were not only interested in him during the summer, but have kept him on their radar during the Butler saga.
NBA trade rumors: Latest news on Jimmy Butler, De’Aaron Fox and Bradley Beal as deadline approaches
Sam Quinn
Why Randle would appeal to the Heat
Randle doesn’t appear to be drawing much interest from the majority of the NBA at the moment, and, well, that’s justified. His fit in Minnesota has been clunky. He doesn’t really defend. He’s a power forward that needs the ball quite a bit and is an inconsistent jump-shooter, making him an iffy partner for both high-usage ball-handlers and traditional centers. Any notion that Randle could be a long-term replacement for Karl-Anthony Towns has likely been dispelled during Minnesota’s 25-21 start. The Timberwolves would probably prefer it if Randle were to opt out of his contract this summer, freeing up cash to try to re-sign Naz Reid and Nickeil Alexander-Walker. The only problem is that right now, there’s no obvious team for him to sign with in free agency. Without a trade partner, the Timberwolves might be stuck with him.
But Randle appeals to the Heat, specifically, for two reasons. The first, obvious explanation is that his contract ends before 2026 free agency. The second and more immediate concern is Miami’s desperate lack of shot-creation beyond Tyler Herro. When he is off of the floor, they score a pathetic 103.2 points per 100 possessions. The Heat badly need someone else who can dribble and score. Randle excels in that position. While his skill set does not lend itself to a championship-caliber roster, his time in New York proved that he is a great floor-raiser. If you just need him to come in and soak up possessions on a 45-win team, he’s perfect.
And that’s what the Heat need right now, not because winning 45 games is their long-term goal, but because it is extremely important that the Heat remain competitive this season, specifically. Why? Because they owe a lottery-protected pick to the Oklahoma City Thunder. If that pick does not convey this season, it becomes unprotected next season, and if it becomes unprotected next season, the lottery-protected 2027 pick they owe the Hornets from the Terry Rozier trade becomes unprotected in 2028. Essentially, they need to make the playoffs this season to avoid risking two unprotected picks. Randle is a path toward the first-round appearance they need.
What would Wolves get out of this?
So we understand Golden State’s interest in Butler and Miami’s in Randle. Where does Minnesota fit into this, aside from getting off of Randle. In theory, taking on another year of money in Wiggins is dangerous. To an extent it would be. Hypothetically, though, it shouldn’t be that hard to move Wiggins for someone cheaper if need be, though, because of that league-wide wing shortage. Would they be able to get optimal value? Maybe not, but suboptimal value is better than another year of the Randle experience.
As it stands right now, The Timberwolves are in line for a $91 million luxury-tax bill. Wiggins earns around $7 million less than Randle this season, so if the swap was one-for-one, Minnesota would wind up saving a small fortune. Even if the Timberwolves needed to take on some salary to make a three-team structure work, the $3 million difference between Randle and Wiggins next season could prove significant as the Timberwolves attempt to re-sign Reid and Alexander-Walker. That gap isn’t huge, but every dollar is going to count.
No matter how you slice it, though, the Wiggins contract would give Minnesota the flexibility that was seemingly a motivator for the Towns trade. Let’s say they decide they need to trade for a veteran point guard to replace the aging Mike Conley. Well, Wiggins, as a wing, is probably an easier contract to use in that search than Randle would have been. Let’s say Wiggins just steps onto the team and immediately fits. Could that open the door for a Jaden McDaniels trade that nets something valuable? Heck, even if a follow-up Wiggins move was as simple as turning him into a slightly less expensive player in the short-term, that freed up salary could be the difference between keeping and losing Reid or Alexander-Walker.
Would Wiggins be a better fit in Minnesota the second time around than he was the first? It’s hard to imagine he wouldn’t be. Having spent time on a winner, Wiggins has rounded out his game nicely. He’s a more reliable 3-point shooter than ever, which is quite important for a Timberwolves team that needs to space the floor for Anthony Edwards. His defense isn’t where it was during Golden State’s 2022 championship run, but there is at least proof of concept now. Wiggins has been a stellar defender in the past.
The big question about a possible Randle-for-Wiggins swap would be Minnesota’s starting lineup. Moving Reid into Randle’s slot makes the most sense. Minnesota’s lineups featuring him at power forward have fared quite well. Would Wiggins be willing to come off the bench at this point in his career? Or would Minnesota give him the Conley slot, as they did Donte DiVincenzo before his recent injury? While that alignment would cost the Timberwolves playmaking, the thought of Edwards, Wiggins and McDaniels together in the starting five as long, rangy wings is pretty tantalizing defensively.
Of the three parties involved here, Minnesota likely opens these conversations with the most skepticism. If the Timberwolves don’t see Wiggins as a fit, perhaps they’d loop in a fourth team to take him. But the notion of getting off of Randle now, before he can pick up that player option, carries meaningful value to them. From that perspective, the basic framework of a deal exists here. The question is how we round out the entire trade.
Details of a potential blockbuster
For starters, Golden State needs to shed more money. Dennis Schroder going to Miami would be a somewhat obvious step in that direction. The Heat could use another guard, and his expiring salary won’t bother them. The Heat are going to need to be compensated for Butler as well. Golden State’s first-round pick this season, with a top-four protection, seems appropriate. The Warriors are a lottery team as of this writing, so the Heat would be getting a potentially interesting pick in a strong draft, but their hope would be that Butler’s addition would at least carry them into the playoffs. The Heat have a stellar track record with mid-first-round picks, so that Warriors pick could be quite valuable to them. By giving up only this year’s pick, the Warriors could avoid the Stepien Rule issues that come with owing out picks in future seasons.
It wouldn’t be a Butler deal without looping in the Pistons as a cap facilitator. Detroit has $14 million or so in cap space, but it also has the cap room mid-level exception at just under $8 million to work with. Some combination of Warriors mid-tier salaries like Gary Payton II, Buddy Hield, Kyle Anderson and Kevon Looney would need to go to make this work, and with the Warriors so close to a hard cap at the first apron, they don’t have room to take in more money than they send out here. The Pistons would probably need a first-round pick to participate. Maybe the compromise on Golden State’s end would be a protected one in 2027 or 2028. That’s still two outgoing first-round picks in a Butler trade, but it would allow them to keep Jonathan Kuminga and Brandin Podziemski for whatever comes after the Curry-Butler-Green era.
Figuring out a trade of this magnitude is never easy, but unlike the Phoenix scenarios, there’s a sensible outline here. All three parties would have clear and reasonable motives for seeking this sort of a deal. That guarantees nothing this time of a year, but it’s a great starting point.
