Philadelphia 76ers: Jimmy Butler professes love, appreciation for Joel Embiid

The Philadelphia 76ers lost a vital contributor and, frankly, a good teammate.

It’s oddly fitting that the Philadelphia 76ers find themselves at a crossroads, unsure of what is next. Meanwhile, the Miami Heat — led by Jimmy Butler, who the Sixers let walk out the door in free agency — are up 1-0 on the Milwaukee Bucks, in large part due to Butler’s performance.

No matter how the rest of the series goes for Miami, it’s clear Butler is a championship-caliber player. He’s the kind of talent who could have pushed Philadelphia over the top, especially with Kawhi Leonard no longer looming large over the Eastern Conference.

We don’t know the specifics of why Butler left, but we have enough second-hand detail to assume it was some mixture of Brett Brown, Ben Simmons, and general incompetence in the Sixers front office. The emphasis, of course, belongs on the latter.

Despite whatever factors pushed Butler out the door, he still maintains a strong friendship with one former teammate: Joel Embiid.

In the final minutes of Miami’s victory over Milwaukee on Monday, Embiid tweeted out his rumination on life with Butler and what could have been.

He then tweeted out his endorsement of Butler.

Embiid’s analysis is correct. Jimmy Butler is #TooGood. Too good to let walk in free agency on some arbitrary stipulation of undeserved loyalty. But we can get into that some other time.

What’s more important is Butler’s response to Embiid’s tweets, which he did not see initially, but was later told about. In a sit-down with The Athletic’s Sam Amick, Butler professed his admiration for Embiid, and stated that he “still wanted to be teammates with him.” He went on to say Embiid made him a better player and a better leader.

A bold statement.

This does not, however, come as a surprise. For all the problems in Philly, the relationship between Embiid and Butler was never one of them. They got along, spurred in large part by their like-minded competitiveness. There’s a conversation to be had about Butler’s relationship with others in the organization — mainly Ben Simmons — but at the end of the day, Philadelphia could regret losing a superstar who so clearly made Embiid happy.

Butler has fit snuggly into a rock-solid Miami culture, and it’s clear his teammates like him. The narrative around Jimmy has always been one of collective disillusionment, as if no one could get along with him. That’s clearly false. He holds himself and his contemporaries to a high standard, and frankly, it appears more and more likely that Philadelphia simply failed to meet that standard.

We will see how future events unfold, but again… maybe Jimmy made the right choice.