The Miami Heat do not want to extend Jimmy Butler.

Jimmy Butler believes he is worth an extension or trade from the Miami Heat.

And besides, the wounds from Pat Riley to Jimmy Butler still haven’t healed, and it’s all come to a head in the last few days.

Sounds easy enough, right?

Sources told Yahoo Sports that Butler has told the Heat that he wants a change of scenery. His first choice in all of this was to stay with the Heat with a contract extension, but Riley has given no indication he’s willing to do that.

The fact that Riley called Butler out after the end of last season and basically told him to “shut up and play” didn’t sit well with Butler — along with Heat officials’ suggestion that Butler wouldn’t play on Wednesday against New Orleans I played well in my first game after an illness.

“I want to get back to enjoying playing basketball,” Butler told reporters after Thursday night’s game against Indiana, in which he left with 1:54 left in the third and did not return.

“Wherever that is, we’ll find out here soon. I’m happy here off the court, but I want to be somewhat dominant again, I want to play basketball and help this team win, and right now I’m not doing that.”

Does this mean the Heat will ditch Butler and try to move him? Or sit him down to show him who’s boss in Riley’s world? Anyway, this is getting a little ugly and it doesn’t have to be that way.

Butler averaged 17.6 points, 5.5 rebounds and 4.7 assists in 22 games this season, shooting a career-high 55.2 percent from the field on just 10.5 attempts per game.

His six-year stay with Miami is his longest since his first six seasons as a Chicago Bull, and he had stints in Minnesota and Philadelphia in between.

Neither party is good with the warm and fuzzy feelings, but this is a relationship thing – and Butler has led short-handed teams to two trips to the NBA Finals and came within a whisker of a third-place finish in 2022.

In his last two playoff runs, a sample of 39 games, Butler averaged 27.1 points, 6.8 rebounds, 5.3 assists and 1.9 steals on 48-35-82 splits. Of course, he’s a headache and is the ultimate reflection of what your organization is or isn’t, but the numbers say that if he’s healthy, it’s worth returning.

From Butler’s perspective, especially in today’s secondary world, he would feel much better in his late 30s (he turned 35 in September) and not have to deal with the treacherous world of unrestricted free agency, since there aren’t many teams with it Cash will be available from July.

The teams that have money or could even move money aren’t close enough to the competition to make it worth it for Butler – at least not right now.

Miami doesn’t want to spend a lot of money in the same restrictive tax world on a player who has had availability issues in recent years. And Riley had no problem letting Dwyane Wade into free agency, not giving LeBron James carte blanche in their time, and trading Shaquille O’Neal when the big man was at the end of his career.

But what would the Heat be without Butler? The franchise is highly regarded and head coach Erik Spoelstra is considered one of the two best coaches in basketball, regularly doing more with less.

His main cog in this was Butler, and the Heat have tried to make a Big Three out of Butler, Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro. They’re talented, but the conference has gotten significantly tougher at the top in recent years as the Celtics and Knicks have gotten stronger while the Cavaliers have grown internally.

The Heat didn’t acquire Damian Lillard when he wanted to leave Portland, or Donovan Mitchell when Utah had him on the trading block, or Bradley Beal — and to be fair, not every team was willing to seriously talk to Miami. The Heat have kept their powder dry, preferring to focus on their own development, but that has kept them at a point where they have had to overperform.

Doing just enough isn’t enough anymore, and if Butler were to see Paul George reach his full potential – a player he’s comparable to and who has achieved even more in the playoffs – you can see how he wants to show a new employer that he is worth the market value he demands.

Butler is due $52 million next season, but it sounds like he’ll certainly forgo a longer contract with more guaranteed money, if not a lower annual salary. Over the summer, Philadelphia attempted to sign Miami to a Butler deal before agreeing to terms with George – Joel Embiid wanted a reunion with Butler and was pushing for it, according to sources who spoke to Yahoo Sports over the summer and recently.

It is easy to see that the maximum space occupied by George may well have been that of Butler.

Butler hasn’t given the Heat a list of preferred teams, at least not yet, but one would think that Phoenix, Dallas, Houston and Golden State would be at or near the top of the list. If you think Butler is a handful in some respects, he’s pretty docile on the floor. He’s a plug-and-play star who can fit in just about anywhere, even with the 3-point-happy Warriors if they want to try to give Stephen Curry a real running mate in his golden years.

It could be difficult to make a deal work and be worthwhile for the Heat, as the franchise has never truly embraced rebuilding and sits in sixth place in the East at 17-15.

Riley’s demand for the loud butler to be quiet was probably the first sign that this relationship was headed for divorce, but it was time to clear the air and move forward for the sake of this season.

So far this has not been the case and the noise seems to be getting louder in South Florida.

Crazier things have happened. Butler and Riley could live together in the meantime – to be honest, Riley doesn’t have to do anything while Butler turns up the heat.

It’s also not unpleasant to be uncomfortable, meaning this could lead to a long standoff or something that mercifully ends very quickly if Butler has his way.

Whatever the case, it appears that this relationship has had its day, a sign of the NBA’s new economic reality and perhaps an inescapable conclusion from the marriage of the immovable force with the unstoppable object.