When Jimmy Butler met with Tom Thibodeau last Tuesday and formally requested a trade away from the Minnesota Timberwolves, the first round of reporting indicated that the four-time All-Star swingman had three preferred destinations: the Los Angeles Clippers, the Brooklyn Nets and the New York Knicks. Now, eight days later, with the Wolves opening up training camp without Butler — or, more accurately, with Butler still in the building but playing with a decidedly different crew — Butler has reportedly shifted his sights down to South Florida, according to Marc Stein of the New York Times:

It’s a stark difference from the attitude that Butler had back when he was a member of the Chicago Bulls …

… but a lot can change in five years. (Hell, in the NBA, a lot can change in six minutes.)

Stein’s report comes two days after ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski listed the Miami Heat as one of eight “organizations interested in talking further with Minnesota,” and noted that of all the many, many teams that had reached out to inquire about a deal, “Pat Riley and Miami have been as aggressive as any.” Evidently, Butler’s picking up what they’re putting down, too.

Would Jimmy Butler be a good match for the Miami Heat?

From a player/culture perspective, Butler seems like an absolutely perfect fit in Miami. Ever since Riley took the reins in South Beach all the way back in 1995, he’s looked to fashion the Heat into a team built on defense, aggression, physicality, conditioning and a hard-work-over-everything ethos. That’s precisely the sort of approach that’s helped Butler go from a junior college product to a four-time All-Star … and, from the sound of things, perhaps precisely what helped drive a wedge between the relentlessly hard-charging Butler and the Wolves’ young core tandem of Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins.

Years after Riley moved upstairs as the team’s president, coach Erik Spoelstra has continued to emphasize those first principles, fostering an environment that can turn fringe players willing to dig in and grind into real contributors, and that can elevate legitimate talents who’ve struggled in other settings to buy into the team concept or get into good enough shape to provide consistent maximum effort. That’s helped keep Miami competitive and respectable even after the demise of the Big Three era, with the Heat finishing .500 or better in three of the last four seasons, with playoff appearances in 2016 and 2018.

But “competitive and respectable” isn’t what Pat Riley wakes up in the morning thinking about. A couple of years of somewhat curious summertime decisions — maxing out Hassan Whiteside, matching Brooklyn’s $50 million offer sheet for Tyler Johnson, signing Kelly Olynyk, Dion Waiters and James Johnson to long-term deals — have left Miami in the kind of middle ground that can be the death knell for NBA franchises with big dreams: good enough to contend for a playoff spot, but not good enough to make any serious noise, even in the league’s lesser conference.

Riley wants stars, and the Heat need them. But despite the draw of Miami as a market, Florida’s status as a state without income tax and the Heat’s bona fides as a championship-caliber organization, he hasn’t been able to lure a real difference-maker over the last few years, missing out on Kevin Durant in 2016 and Gordon Hayward in 2017, and having no cap space with which to pursue one this past summer after re-upping the likes of the Johnsons, Olynyk and Waiters. Butler’s absolutely a real difference-maker — one of only 11 NBA players to average at least 20 points, five rebounds and four assists per game last season, and one of only two (Victor Oladipo) who also made an All-Defensive team — and this time, Riley might not have to contend with a bunch of other markets with max cap space looking to make the player a better sales pitch.

Do the Heat have what it takes to get a Butler deal done?

Provided, of course, Riley can make a compelling one to Wolves president of basketball operations Tom Thibodeau, or general manager Scott Layden, or owner Glen Taylor, or whoever’s actually handling the Butler trade talks at any given time. And that, of course, is the rub: Woj reports that Minnesota is “asking for stars, starters, draft picks and salary-cap relief for the chance to acquire Butler.” It seems unlikely they’d be able to get all of that from Miami.

The closest thing the current iteration of the Heat have to a star is eventual 2018 All-Star Goran Dragic, who led the team in scoring and assists last season. It’s not entirely clear, though, whether the Wolves would have much interest in a 32-year-old point guard owed $37.3 million over the next two seasons when they’ve already got Jeff Teague in line to make $38 million in that same span — or, for that matter, whether the Heat would be interested in dangling their top offensive initiator, even for an All-Star talent like Butler.

Miami’s draft-pick coffers aren’t quite as stocked as some other teams that might want to get into the Butler hunt; they owe a 2021 first-rounder that they sent to Phoenix in the deal that imported Dragic (and that Phoenix rerouted to Philadelphia back at June’s draft to land Villanova’s Mikal Bridges), and don’t have a second-round pick in five of the next six drafts. But they can offer the Wolves their first-round choices in 2019 and/or 2023, as well as a 2022 second-rounder, and could conceivably land more draft capital by involving another team in the proceedings … although the only one with significant cap space available for rent, the Sacramento Kings, is reportedly also looking for future assets in one form or another, which might not make a perfect match in this context.

Miami’s got three other here-and-now assets that would probably pique Thibodeau’s interest: versatile 6-foot-6 wing Josh Richardson, who’s quietly become one of the game’s best young two-way players under Spoelstra’s watchful eye and is just about to start a super affordable four-year, $42 million extension that’ll carry him through his prime; former first-round pick Justise Winslow, who’s yet to break through into the realm of young stars, but who can defend four positions, took a step forward as a 3-point shooter last season, and seems like precisely the sort of defense-first developmental project Thibodeau would fall in love with; and rising sophomore center Bam Adebayo, an extremely athletic big man who can defend in space, run the floor, act as a vertical-space-providing havoc wreaker in the pick-and-roll lob game, and who’s just starting to scratch the surface of his potential as a modern big man at age 21.

ESPN’s Zach Lowe suggested last week that Minnesota would probably ask for all three. Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald reports that the Heat would prefer to keep all of them, as well as stretch big man Olynyk, and that Miami has been specifically “reluctant to include” Richardson, arguably their best all-around player at times last season and one whom Riley and Spoelstra would ideally like to pair with Butler on the perimeter.

But you have to give something up to get something, even if it looks like your trade partner’s over a barrel by virtue of its most decorated player requesting a trade a week before the start of training camp. Thibodeau has made it abundantly clear that he’s not interested in any deal that doesn’t make the Wolves better — which, considering how much better Minnesota was with Butler on the floor than off it last season, seems like a mighty big ask — and is at least representing a willingness to extend this drama into the season, if need be, rather than just accepting the short end of the stick. And, as we noted when Butler first made his request — and as Thibodeau reminded everyone during Monday’s media day session with reporters — it’s not as if the Wolves are honor-bound to send Butler where he wants to go. Indiana didn’t do it with Paul George, San Antonio didn’t do it with Kawhi Leonard, and if they believe they can get a better return elsewhere, the Wolves won’t do it with Butler.

In the NBA of 2018, stars steer their own ships

That said: in this era of player empowerment in the NBA, when stars want to make their way to a specific destination, they tend to do it. If Butler, who can enter unrestricted free agency next summer, wants to sign in Miami for the long-term, and the Heat are comfortable with the idea of giving him the full-freight max deal he’ll certainly seek — five years, $190 million — to lock in a top-10 or top-15-caliber wing (albeit one with credible injury and mileage concerns, who’ll be making more than $40 million as he nears his mid-30s on the back end of the deal), then it wouldn’t be surprising to see Riley, general manager Andy Elisburg and the Heat front office do whatever they have to now to get him in the door now, and make whatever after-the-fact adjustments they have to in order to make the salary structure work out beyond next summer, much like the Houston Rockets did when Chris Paul made it clear he wanted to link up with James Harden in the summer of 2017.

If Miami’s on-board for that kind of commitment to Butler, and wants to take a shot at inserting itself in the top half of the Eastern Conference playoff bracket this year rather than spending another season scuffling near its bottom rungs, then we might see some actual movement toward getting this deal done sooner rather than later. But if Riley and company balk at putting their most interesting chips on the table, and if Thibodeau remains unwilling to move Butler for anything less than a windfall, then the Heat talk might cool off before too long, no matter what Jimmy Butler and his agent want most.

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Dan Devine is a writer and editor for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoosports.com or follow him on Twitter!

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