Jimmy Butler is headed to Miami and Josh Richardson will join the Sixers. We can now say that sentence with a little more confidence than we could in the early hours of Monday morning.
It's a bizarre story, perhaps even weirder than the December 2018 trade that reportedly fell apart because of confusion regarding whether Dillon Brooks or MarShon Brooks was involved.
According to the New York Times' Marc Stein, the Mavericks originally thought they were receiving Derrick Jones Jr. and Kelly Olynyk from Miami in a three-team sign-and-trade, with the Sixers getting Richardson and the Heat adding Butler. Sounds simple enough.
However, Stein reports the Heat were not willing to give up Jones and said they needed to include Goran Dragic in the deal for salary-matching purposes. Dragic and Jones are much more difficult names to confuse than Brooks and Brooks.
Miami finally completed the deal late Monday afternoon, a team source confirmed. ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski and Zach Lowe first reported the new deal, which includes the Clippers and Trail Blazers. Wojnarowski and Lowe report Portland's Maurice Harkless is headed to the Clippers, Miami's Hassan Whiteside is moving to Portland, while Miami is sending a future first-round pick to the Blazers.
The only change of note for the Sixers is that the team is sending 2017 second-round pick Mathias Lessort to Los Angeles, a team source confirmed. The Inquirer's Keith Pompey first reported Lessort's inclusion in the revised deal. A French big man, the 23-year-old Lessort averaged 8.8 points and 5.4 rebounds last season for Unicaja Málaga in Spain's Liga ACB. The prospects of him ever playing for the Sixers seemed very slim.
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