Hardaway Sr. torches ‘crybaby’ Butler for unruly Heat ending

[ad_1]

Hardaway Sr. torches ‘crybaby’ Butler for unruly Heat ending originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

It’s no secret that Jimmy Butler’s tenure with the Miami Heat ended on a sour note.

Before he was shipped off to the Warriors in a blockbuster deal before the NBA’s Feb. 6 trade deadline, Butler was serving an indefinite suspension, his third ban in a month, for a “continued pattern of disregard of team rules.”

Former Heat and Warriors guard Tim Hardaway Sr. joined SiriusXM’s NBA Radio from All-Star Weekend in San Francisco and criticized Butler for how he handled his 2024-25 season with the Heat, which reportedly consisted of the star forward missing team practices and flights after requesting a trade.

“I’ve been telling folks this, especially for the last week, especially here. I didn’t agree with what he was doing,” Hardaway said. “You’re under contract. You a baby. You’re a crybaby, because they said ‘No’ to you. We used to get ‘No’ said to us all the time and we used to know how to take it. It is what it is, it’s a question, you get a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No.’ You might not like the question, but you can’t deviate and mess up the team, alright?”

Butler, throughout his first five seasons with the Heat from 2019-20 through 2023-24, averaged 22 missed games per season, likely due to injuries, rest or other reasons.

Hardaway criticizes Butler for missing so many games and explained why his absence might have played a role in Miami landing in the NBA Play-In Tournament in each of the past two seasons.

“They said, ‘No, we want to see you play more games. We don’t want to be in the play-in games.’ If he played more games, they would have never been in the play-in games both years,” Hardaway explained. “Even though they went to the championship, they never would have been in the play-in games. That takes a lot out of you.

“They want to say ‘Look, we want a week off, we want a week to prepare and we need that week because we play hard each and every game and we need to rest.’ So he wasn’t willing to do that, and I fault them for letting him get away with a…

[ad_2]
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/hardaway-sr-torches-crybaby-butler-103643433.html

Author : NBC Sports BayArea

Publish date : 2025-02-18 10:36:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.