Dwyane Wade Says Jimmy Butler's Heat Exit for Warriors Left 'Stain' on Franchise

While Dwyane Wade won't pin the blame solely on either Jimmy Butler or the Miami Heat organization for the ugly divorce between the parties, he felt the entire ordeal was a bad look.

"Well, the one thing I've realized is don't go around planting blame on somebody when you really don't know what’s going on," he told Anthony Chiang of the Miami Herald. "I wasn't in the room where it happened, so I don't know and I'm not into pointing fingers necessarily. ... What I don't like more than anything is just the stain it puts on our franchise. We have one of the greatest franchises for the last 20, 30 years that's in professional sports. We don't want the conversation to be about that, we want it to be about the success that we've had and how we've created that success. So it was a very unfortunate time."

"You understand that relationships come to an end," he continued. "A six-year relationship is a long time for a lot of people. So it's OK that their relationship needed to come to an end. It's just sometimes it doesn't always have to be so nasty or ugly."

Nasty it was.

The exact moment the relationship splintered is unclear, but when team president Pat Riley publicly chastised Butler for suggesting that the Heat would have beaten the Boston Celtics or New York Knicks in last year's playoffs had he been healthy—"If you're not on the court playing against Boston, or on the court playing against the New York Knicks, you should keep your mouth shut," was Riley's pointed response—it certainly raised eyebrows.

And when the two sides didn't agree to an extension last summer, the fireworks began.

By January, Butler had requested a trade despite the Heat previously saying they wouldn't deal him. The Heat promptly suspended him three times—one seven-game suspension for "conduct detrimental to the team," once for two games for missing a team flight and an indefinite suspension for leaving a team practice after being told he was being removed from the starting lineup.

Ultimately, the Heat relented on their previous refusal to trade him, sending him to the Golden State Warriors for Andrew Wiggins, Dennis Schröder, Kyle Anderson and a protected first-round pick as part of a four-team deal. The Warriors promptly signed him to a two-year, $112 max contract extension, went 18-6 with him on the court down the stretch run of the regular season and will be the No. 7 seed in the NBA playoffs after beating the Memphis Grizzlies on Tuesday night in the Western Conference play-in tournament.

Meanwhile, the Heat finished the season 37-45 and will face the Chicago Bulls in the Eastern Conference play-in tournament on Wednesday. If they win, they'll face the Atlanta Hawks on Friday with the No. 8 seed on the line. If they lose, their season will be over.