SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ The Miami Heat continued to operate Monday under the belief that free-agent guard Jimmy Butler would be theirs. They also were operating under the reality that work remained.
In what has turned into the case of a half-completed trade, the Heat continue to search for an answer to Part B of the equation.
The givens at the moment are:
_ Jimmy Butler has agreed to a four-year, $142 million free-agent contract with the Heat, after a Sunday meeting with Pat Riley, Erik Spoelstra and members of the team's front office at AmericanAirlines Arena.
_ The Heat agreed to send forward Josh Richardson to the Philadelphia 76ers as compensation in the sign-and-trade transaction that was required with the Heat lacking salary-cap space for an outright signing.
_ The 76ers have moved on from their portion of the agreement, signing Al Horford and Tobias Harris to maximum contracts and opening extension negotiations with Ben Simmons.
The unknown at the moment is:
_ How the Heat offload enough salary to balance the trade under the salary cap, with the 76ers not willing, or in position, to take on additional pieces.
And that's where it comes to the sticking point, which is:
_ The Heat had been operating under the notion that the deal would be completed with the Dallas Mavericks taking on the final season on the contract of point guard Goran Dragic.
_ The Mavericks had been operating under the notion that instead of Dragic, they would be receiving Kelly Olynyk and Derrick Jones Jr. to balance the trade.
Among the issues at play there was that even with offloading Olynyk and Jones, the Heat would have needed to offload additional salary in order to make the deal work under the salary cap and luxury cap, an element that is unchanged with the trade of center Hassan Whiteside to the Portland Trail Blazers.
The Heat continued to work both into Sunday night and Monday to complete the deal, with moving Dragic apparently the primary goal, according to reports by ESPN and The New York Times.
According to The Athletic, the Mavericks no longer are a partner to a deal that continues to require a third partner.
All the while there remains an urgency on several fronts:
_ Cap space for Butler to sign elsewhere has all but dried up.
_ Cap space for the Heat to trade Dragic into is dwindling around the league.
_ Flexibility to accommodate Butler elsewhere is just about gone for the 76ers, who believe their portion of the deal is complete.
And then there is the NBA's unique timetable that does not allow transactions to be completed between July 1 and July 6, affording the Heat and the rest of the league time to tinker and tweak trades and signings until that deadline.
The Heat have not commented on the trade, and cannot, under league rule, until Saturday's end of the annual personnel moratorium.
