A Miami Heat great isn’t so sure that Jimmy Butler is long for South Beach.
After a tumultuous 2023 season and ensuing comments by team president Pat Riley, Tim Hardaway Sr., who spent five and a half seasons with the Heat, said that Riley is tired of Butler.
“I told some people, I said, ‘Pat gonna talk this year,’” Hardaway said on the “All the Smoke Podcast.” “He’s tired of a lot of things that’s going on with the team. He’s tired of Jimmy Butler.”
After the season, Riley told Butler to “keep your mouth shut” after Butler claimed the eventual champion Celtics and the Knicks would have been eliminated were he healthy.
The Celtics defeated the Heat in their first-round playoff series, which Butler missed due to a sprained MCL.
“For him to say that, I thought, ‘Is that Jimmy trolling or is that Jimmy [being] serious?’” Riley said.
“If you’re not on the court, playing against Boston, or you’re not on the court playing against the New York Knicks, you should keep your mouth shut in your criticism of those teams.”
During Hardaway’s interview, podcast co-host Stephen Jackson added that perhaps Riley is also tired of Tyler Herro, who has sporadically missed time due to injury while the Heat have been “babying” him.
Hardaway replied: “He’s probably talking about both of them, but I think he’s really talking directly to his star.”
The former Heat star has a good relationship with Riley and the Heat as he was Riley’s first major acquisition as team president when he traded for the star guard at the 1995 trade deadline.
Hardaway previously said he “loved to play for” Riley during his career, and the Heat retired his No. 10 jersey despite playing for the team for a relatively short amount of time.
Butler played in 64 games in 2023 but just one Play-In Tournament game before missing the second and the eventual five-game series loss to the Celtics due to the MCL injury.