Jimmy Butler has a list of two NBA teams he would be willing to sign with this summer.
The New York Knicks are one of them.
Ahem:
According to sources Jimmy Butler has two teams in mind this summer and one of them is the New York #Knicks..
— Anthony Donahue (@AnthonyMSG) February 27, 2015
Because he’s already on the Chicago Bulls, we’re going to assume they’re the second team on his wish list.
And because we’re also smart people who aren’t easily engulfed by pipe dreams, we’ll also now pause for a moment so that all of us can ingest our grains of salt.
[Snorts pepper by mistake.]
Okay, so, here’s the thing: Butler isn’t going to the Knicks. He’s a restricted free agent, which means the Bulls have the right to match any offer sheet he receives. The Knicks can certainly throw Butler a max contract and hope the Bulls don’t match, but that’s the other thing: They’re going to match. The Bulls have made it clear they intend to keep Butler at any cost, and Derrick Rose’s latest foray onto the injured list renders the All-Star shooting guard indispensable. He is now, for all intents and purposes, their primary franchise cornerstone. Players like him don’t get away in restricted free agency.
What Butler is likely doing here, assuming he’s interested in New York at all, is playing the game all free agents play. Mentioning the Knicks and the Los Angeles Lakers is traditionally a way of drumming up your price tag, hence why either team is linked to every noteworthy free agent ever, even when they don’t have cap space. So, in a way, Butler’s purported interest is ritualistic of any offseason.
In this particular case, it’s merely insurance, and that might even be a stretch. Butler is going to get a max contract; he doesn’t need the threat of New York to help him. The Bulls may not sign him to one right away and instead let the market dictate his value, but the market will value him as a max-contract guy. And when it does, the Bulls will swoop in and match. That’s how this thing is going to end.
Ergo, don’t get your hopes up, Knicks fans. Butler will not be in orange and blue next season.
