ORLANDO, Fla. — The silence has been broken, amid Miami Heat hopes that silence now can follow.

In the wake of increasing conjecture of Jimmy Butler pushing for a trade and the team considering a deal, Miami Heat President Pat Riley on Thursday issued a terse and pointed statement on the matter.

“We usually don’t comment on rumors, but all this speculation has become a distraction to the team and is not fair to the players and coaches,” Riley said. “Therefore, we will make it clear — we are not trading Jimmy Butler.”

In addition, a person intimately familiar with the machinations of recent days said that at no point has Butler requested a trade.

Earlier, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra also said Thursday that the desire of the team is to move forward with Butler, while also pausing to address reports of his star forward preferring to be elsewhere.

“That’s just the deal,” Spoelstra said of Christmas Day turning into conflicting reports of Butler privately expressing a desire to move elsewhere and the Sun Sentinel confirming from both sides of the equation that there had been no trade demand put forward. “You have to compartmentalize in this business. We want Jimmy here. There’s no ifs, ands or buts about it. And it’s just unfortunate that you have to control or deal with a lot of the noise on the outside.”

Thursday was the first opportunity for the Heat to address the speculation, with the team idle for Christmas, traveling to Orlando on Wednesday evening. Spoelstra spoke after the morning shootaround, ahead of Thursday night’s game against the Orlando Magic at Kia Center.

“In terms of this morning, this was a pretty focused group coming off of the last game that we came here,” Spoelstra said, with the Heat blowing a 22-point lead at the start of the fourth quarter in Saturday night’s 121-114 loss in Orlando. “The guys understand the task at hand and looking forward to getting out there on the wood and trying to redeem what happened the last time we were here.”

It is a process that instead came in the wake of the ESPN discussion about Butler’s reported desires, with Butler having been away from the team the past week with what has been listed as a stomach ailment.

Asked whether Butler had within the team expressed a desire to move on, Spoelstra said, “That’s all I’m going to talk about. The more any of us talk about it, the more fuel it gets. It’s just really unfortunate that it just continues to build momentum outside of our building.”

Riley’s statement followed, amid the hopes of ending the fuel on that fire.

As team captain, center Bam Adebayo said what matters with Butler is what happens on the court and within the building.

“You go out there and you win games,” Adebayo said. “That’s how you keep the distractions out. You go out there and win games, do it together. Like I said, they’ll handle everything behind closed doors.

“Obviously, you have the business side of it. So at the end of the day, we’re all a family, we’re all in a brotherhood. So we’ll worry about the basketball games that we have to play.”

So, no, Adebayo said, the conjecture did not sour his Christmas.

“It’s a holiday. We’re with our families, so we’re going to worry about our families and worry about everything else later,” Adebayo said.

Guard Tyler Herro, who has dealt with his share of trade speculation, said Wednesday’s televised conjecture was just part of the NBA process.

“I didn’t really have a reaction, honestly,” he said of the reporting on Christmas morning. “My focus is on my daughter and my son, and I haven’t really picked up my phone or worried about basketball until this morning. So, I don’t know.”

Herro said the concern was getting a teammate back to health and back on the court.

“Yeah. I mean, Jimmy is sick, I believe,” Herro said. “So he had to take a couple days off. If I was sick, I might need a couple days one day, too. So we’ll see what happens.”

Butler, 35, is eligible to reach free agency this summer should he opt out of the final year of his contract, a 2025-26 player option for $52.4 million. He also is eligible for an immediate Heat extension.

By NBA rule, players are not allowed to publicly demand trades while under contract. Former Heat forward P.J. Tucker was fined $75,000 by the NBA in February for public statements regarding a desire at that time to be relocated from the Los Angeles Clippers. Similarly, in August 2023, James Harden, then with the Philadelphia 76ers, was fined $100,000 by the league for publicly expressing a trade desire.

Butler, at least initially, played along with the conjecture, including changing the color of his braids to bright orange, a color prominently featured by the Phoenix Suns, one of his reported preferred landing spots.

“I actually like it,” Butler said following a Dec. 11 Heat practice at Kaseya Center of the conjecture. “It’s good to be talked about. I don’t think there’s such a thing as bad publicity to a point. But if somebody is talking about me getting traded, that’s a lot.”

Now there again is talk.

“It’s fine with me,” Butler said two weeks ago of speculation that likely will continue until either a move is made or the passing of the NBA’s Feb. 6 trading deadline. “It doesn’t bother me, not one bit, and I do appreciate it.”

Asked as a follow up to that answer about where he stands in terms of a potential long-term future with the Heat, he responded, “Who knows?”

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