Jimmy Butler's Heat tenure was always going to end this way, in hindsight

The Jimmy Butler-Miami Heat saga has dominated NBA headlines for the better part of the season; after all, it's not every day that a superstar of Butler's caliber decides he's pretty much done with his current team. And it's even less frequent that that team who has that superstar publicly digs in its heels and chastises that star player publicly, going so far as to suspend him.

Most recently, ESPN's Ramona Shelburne detailed just how things have fallen apart for the Heat and Butler, breaking down the ways in which the relationship strained to the breaking point between a player and team who have seemed like such a good fit for the better part of six seasons.

Shelburne shows that this didn't happen overnight; Miami set themselves up for problems by allowing Butler unprecedented leeway in their vaunted culture, and making concessions to him that they hadn't made to anyone else during Pat Riley's tenure with the team. Those concessions stood in sharp contrast to the team's decision not to give Butler a two-year, $113 million extension last season, and Riley's very public rebuke of Butler as justification for the decision.

At that point, the stress points in the relationship became cracks, and the cracks became canyons, and the splintering was unavoidable. From there, things spiraled to where they are now.

And, ultimately, we should have seen all of it coming. People have compared Butler's personality to Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, especially that very unique strain of competitiveness that runs hand-in-hand with assholishness that both Jordan and Bryant share.

But that comparison doesn't quite fit; it's true that both Jordan and Bryant shared Butler's manic obsession with winning and competing, but both of them were the kind of singular force in the league that allowed them the leeway to bend and shape clubs to their will. When things were bad in Los Angeles during the post-Pau Gasol era, or even during the post-Shaq, pre-Pau era, Bryant's clear frustration never equated to him actively undermining the team in an effort to get out of Los Angeles. He never tried to burn it down.

Butler, on the other hand, has taken a far more mercenary approach to his career. He has yet to have a tenure with any team end on good terms. He left Chicago, Minnesota and Philadelphia under less than ideal circumstances in each instance, and in the case of Minnesota, he was willing to try and burn it all to the ground on his way out the door.

He's talented, and willing to sacrifice at times in the short term, but it comes from a place of knowing he's the top dog on the roster, the leader. When the rubber hits the road, Butler has an unshakeable knowledge that he is THE guy, and any effort to take that away from him is going to result in friction.

When he's not happy with how things are going, he's willing to walk, and doesn't particularly care if you're happy about how he goes about it or not. Bryant and Jordan voiced their displeasure in an effort to compel the team to make changes, Butler voices his when he's ready to move on.

And ultimately, his career arc has shown us that that end is always going to come. Unlike Jordan or Bryant, Butler isn't the kind of singular talent that makes whole organizations bend to his will, and eventually, the bumps in the road come. Eventually, someone is going to stop acquiescing to his demands or change his role in a permanent way that he won't like. Someone won't work as hard as he wants, or won't be willing to give him the money he wants, or just won't fit with his personality anymore, and then it's curtains.

If you want a proper comparison for Butler, you have to look globally, specifically to world football. The best comp for Butler's skills, competitiveness, and ultimately his knack for pouring gasoline onto a situation and flicking a match to get out the door is manager José Mourinho.

Mourinho has quite the reputation in the football world; he's outspoken, brash, competitive, and has a supremely high opinion of himself which has been well-deserved for a significant portion of his career. In the prime of his career, Mourinho did nothing but win, at every stop he made. He won at Porto, won at Chelsea, won at Inter Milan and Real Madrid and at Chelsea again.

His aggressively defensive style produced immediate results at virtually every stop he's made in his career. But, look at his career and you'll see that despite winning at virtually every stop he's made (at least relative to the club's previous standing), he has yet to stay in a job for more than three seasons.

Why?

Mourinho is an abrasive personality; outspoken about what he sees as best practices and proper financial backing for the club. He alienates players with his insistence on specific styles of play, and once you're in his doghouse, you're not getting out. He produces results in the short term, but it comes at a cost and a risk. You know that sooner or later, he's going to wear out his welcome, and that the inevitable breakup is going to be messy.

For some clubs, like Chelsea, Real Madrid and Inter Milan, the reward was worth the cost. For others, like Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur, it's not.

Sound familiar? Substitute Miami with Chelsea, Madrid, and Inter, replace United and Spurs with Minnesota and Philly, and you have Jimmy Butler.

And when viewed through that lens, this ending was inevitable. Butler was always going to find a way to clash with Pat Riley and Erik Spoelstra, was always going to want out, and meet any resistance to that desire with drama and public complaining.

It was always going to end badly, because it always ends badly. When one person, no matter how brilliant, is so convinced of their own brilliance that any pushback against that brilliance is seen as a hostile act, their tenure in an organization can only last so long.

Now, the Heat are seeing what we should have seen from the beginning: Butler, like Mourinho, is probably best in smaller doses, and with wide open eyes for what's to come.

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Jimmy Butler's Miami Heat tenure was always going to end this way, in hindsight

By Sam Westmoreland | 4:14 PM EST