Whole new ballgame
Jimmy’s 40 put Heat back in it
If anyone believed the Heat could come back from down 0-2 to the Lakers in the NBA Finals, it was Jimmy Butler. After Miami lost Game 2 by 10, an exasperated Butler took the podium.
Teams that trail 0-2 in the playoffs have a 27-398 record in their playoff series. To make matters worse, the Heat would play Game 3 without two of its best players: starting point guard Goran Dragic and Swiss Army knife big man Bam Adebayo.
The odds were stacked against Miami before it ever took the floor. What would stop the Heat from becoming loss No. 399?
“We’re never giving up. We’re gonna fight. We’re gonna ride into the sun until the wheels fall off,” he said.
“It’s not over. We’re just down 0-2. We’ve gotta do something special. We’re capable of it, and I wouldn’t want to be in the trenches with any other guys except the ones we have.”
The Heat All-Star guard was right about one thing: This series absolutely is not over.
Butler had a game for the ages. He put up a 40-point triple double with 13 assists, 11 rebounds, two steals and two blocks to lead the shorthanded Heat to a 115104 Game 3 victory on Sunday night.
That feat alone put Butler in legendary company: The only other players in NBA Finals history to record a 40-point triple double are LeBron James and Jerry West, “The Logo.”
Against a Lakers team with two of the five best players in the NBA, Miami’s star was sensational. His 40-point night included zero three-pointers attempted. Butler shot 14of-20 from the field.
He also had to get over a hump of his own making.
Butler is an AllStar for many reasons. He’s a two-way, inside-outside playmaker — a mold few players his size have replicated. But he’s also one of the league’s kings at getting to the foul line.
You can’t get to the foul line if you don’t attempt a shot at the rim.
But time and time again, Butler used his quickness and his wits to get by his defender, only to rise up for a layup before kicking the ball out to the three-point line in midair. Jump passes are a cardinal basketball sin: They’re easily readable, and it puts the ball handler in a terrible position.
Butler turned the ball over five times with several giveaways coming in jump-pass situations at the rim. On several of those occasions, he ostensibly had an easy layup attempt.
In the fourth quarter, Butler turned his aggression up a notch. It’s another reason why he’s one of the NBA’s more feared guards: He turns it up when the game is on the line.
Butler did not turn the ball over in the fourth quarter. He scored 10 of his 40 points in the final period to guide the Heat to its first Finals victory.
Butler’s performance was a reminder: The Bulls, 76ers and Timberwolves severely fumbled the bag. All three teams wish they still had Butler — hell, Philadelphia star Joel Embiid still cryptically tweets about how much he misses his former teammate.
Meanwhile, the Heat is still enjoying the fruits of Butler’s labor, and it’s his hard work that has landed him in this position. He’s the star of a Heat team attempting to defy the odds, the Looney Toons taking on the Monstarz. Butler is no Michael Jordan, and this is not Space Jam. But he’ll have to be that good if the Heat is going to beat the Lakers.
And even if it was only for one fleeting Game 3 moment, he was on Sunday.