No. 22? Wake up and smell the coffee, Jimmy

Jimmy Butler’s No. 22 hanging from the rafters at Kaseya Center someday? Fat chance! At least while Pat Riley, Erik Spoelstra, and the Arison family are still calling the shots in South Beach. Don’t get me wrong. Jimmy Buckets gave Miami Heat fans some of the most memorable playoff moments since the Big Three era. He dragged the Heat to two NBA Finals and three Eastern Conference finals and authored postseason performances that will live forever in Heat lore. There was the franchise-record 56-point explosion against Milwaukee in 2023, the 47-point elimination-game masterpiece against Boston in 2022, and that unforgettable 40-point triple-double against LeBron James and the Lakers in the 2020 NBA Finals. Playoff Jimmy was real. Retired-number Jimmy? Me thinks that’s another story. The problem isn’t what Butler accomplished in Miami. It’s how everything ended. The contract extension never came, Miami increasingly treated Bam Adebayo as its franchise cornerstone, and Butler eventually announced that he had lost his “joy” playing basketball in Miami. Then came the suspensions, public sniping, and finally the trade. That wasn’t exactly Dwyane Wade riding into the sunset. And if you…