NBA Season Preview 2019-20: Every team’s biggest question

Miami Heat: Can Jimmy Butler provide stable leadership?

To say the past four years have been a rollercoaster for Jimmy Butler would be a bit of an understatement. From a fractured locker room in his final season in Chicago to an infamous scrimmage in Minnesota to being on the receiving end of a legendary buzzer-beater in Philadelphia, he’s seemingly always finding new ways to pop back into the public spotlight for the wrong reasons. Now, after a sign-and-trade from Philadelphia, Butler joins Pat Riley and the Miami Heat on a four-year deal. It will be his fourth team in as many years.

The pairing makes sense for both player and franchise. Butler has been vocal about his desire to be a team’s unquestioned No. 1 option since his exit from Chicago, and though his brief tenure in Philadelphia was generally less tumultuous than his other stops, that’s not quite what the Sixers were able to provide. To the contrary, the Heat are Butler’s team through and through; he has the opportunity to helm a roster that should compete in the East. On the team’s side of things, Butler brings bona fide star power that the capped-out Heat likely could not have acquired elsewhere.

We know all about Butler’s value on the court, but it’s time to see growth from the 30-year-old off of it. Now that he’s seemingly put down roots in Miami for the foreseeable future, Butler needs to step up as a leader in a way he wasn’t able to in Chicago or Minnesota, and wasn’t asked to in Philadelphia. The Heat are Jimmy Butler’s team now, and it’s up to him to lead them into the next era of Miami basketball.