Dave Hyde: Heat's Pat Riley holds financial line on Jimmy Butler in manner Dolphins need to learn

Dave Hyde, South Florida Sun-Sentinel on Jan 4, 2025

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The Miami Heat have a midseason mess, because after two trips to the NBA Finals and another to the Eastern Conference final in Jimmy Butler’s five years they refused to give the aging forward a golden parachute near his career’s end.

The Miami Dolphins have another end-of-season mess while winning nothing for years that offers the other way to do business. They pay everyone with age or injury questions — Tua Tagovailoa, Jalen Ramsey, Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle just last summer — top-dollar contracts even when it’s unnecessary.

Do you see the difference between the best-run franchise for the past three decades in South Florida and a troubled one? How a strong leader like Heat president Pat Riley takes the hard course for his franchise’s future while the Dolphins’ wobbly leadership too often does what’s easiest rather than best for the organization?

Riley could have done it the Dolphins way. He could have extended Butler’s contract that pays $48.8 million this season and everything would be fine today. That’s all this is about.

We’re in an age when everything is measured by the size of a contract, and Riley could have kicked the can of a 35-year-old Butler down the road in the way that would handcuff the Heat’s future for winning. Navigating an aging star is the hardest thing in sports for a front office. Riley has been through it before with Shaquille O’Neal and Dwyane Wade.

Now it’s with Butler. Riley suspended Butler after a string of the veteran’s childish antics rather than cede the team to him. He now has to trade Butler. How that plays out will tell if the Heat contend for anything important any time soon.

As tough as the Heat have it, the Dolphins (8-8) have it tougher if the idea is winning anything of consequence. They don’t have a culture of winning or even shown any idea on how to build one. They just keep investing deeper into players they don’t need to invest more into.

That hasn’t moved the needle on winning. But, boy, the locker room is content even entering a probable season finale Sunday at the New York Jets (4-12). This late stretch is the time of year your best players have to be their best, so look at the Dolphins’ five-highest paid players, in order:

— Hill. He remains a talent, if not the talent of the past two years for whatever reason. He’s approaching 31, but the Dolphins were nice enough to extend his deal last summer for three years at $90 million ($59 million guaranteed).

— Tackle Terron Armstead. He’ll probably miss another game Sunday with injury. At 33, it might be the end of a good career. He’s great when he plays. He also had missed 30% of his career games when the Dolphins signed him to a five-year, $75 million deal in 2022. The health issues have continued as he’s played eight, 10 and now 13 games for the Dolphins the past few years.

— Tagovailoa. He will miss a second straight, must-win game with a hip injury. He’ll have played 11 of the 17 games this season. Questions of his health go hand-in-hand with those of performance through a fifth season. The Dolphins knew these questions and signed him last summer to a four-year, $212 million contract extension that starts next season.

— Waddle. He’s expected to play Sunday after missing last week’s game. He plays most games, even if something’s not physically right. He’s also the NFL’s seventh highest-paid receiver this season while on the career arc of a team’s No. 2 receiver.

— Ramsey. A high-end player and good “chess piece,” as defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver said. He got a big deal when the Dolphins traded for him in 2023. That evidently wasn’t enough. Despite having two years left on it, the deal was re-done last summer to five-years, $72 million ($24M guaranteed) to make Ramsey, at 30, the league’s highest-paid cornerback.

So, here’s Butler’s real problem: The Dolphins management team isn’t running the Heat. Butler would have got his big money then. It wouldn’t necessarily be good for winning or the best for the organization. But Butler would be happy.,

As things stand, Riley has a problem to clean up. The Heat have done it before in winning three titles and going to four more NBA Finals in the past two decades. Now we see if they can do this hard work again.

The Dolphins, meanwhile, have few internal problems. They just don’t win anything. They only get the final playoff spot Sunday by beating the Jets and having a Kansas City team sitting its best players beat Denver.

So, it looks like the Dolphins’ 24th consecutive season without a playoff win. There are lots of reasons why that’s happened. One is playing out before us. Look how a top franchise works across town when faced with a tough crossroad with a veteran name. Then look at the easy way out the Dolphins keep taking.