Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Butler finishes strong as Heat put away Pacers
Well, that’s why they got him. Right? That’s all you can say after the Miami Heat’s 113-101 win over Indiana in the first game of their playoff series.
That’s why they got Jimmy Butler, for moments like this, when they were dancing with disaster, the game seemed to be drifting just enough to give the Pacers hope and someone had to step up and save the day.
Butler, who made 24 percent of his 3-point shots this season, hit two of them in the final four minutes to give some breathing room. He made a couple of defensive plays to turn the tide. And he also, well, had an offensive foul and a shot
blocked off the backboard.
It wasn’t perfect. Nothing was this game that also demanded 34 good minutes from Goran Dragic. Nothing ever is in any playoff series.
“It was about will,” Butler said. “We weren’t going to lose.”
The winner gets to say what it was about. But if you were sitting at home with a remote it looked to be more about something else, something less intangible and more medical.
If this was a fight — and in past playoffs it was one with these teams — it would have been called late in the first quarter. That’s when Indiana’s Victor Oladipo left the game late after getting his eye inadvertently scratched by the Heat’s Jae Crowder.
If you didn’t hear funeral music for Indiana’s season, you at least heard the theme to Hoosiers. It was down to a script from Jimmy Chitwood.
Indiana, a mediocre team, was without two All-Star talents. Domantas Sabonis can’t play with a foot injury. Now Oladipo was out for the rest of the day — and, who knows, for more?
Indiana coach Nate McMillan said after the game that Oladipo was at the hospital. So this might not just be a loss for the Pacers. It could be their season, no matter the unwholesome muck this first game descended into at times.
Great teams would have stepped on the Pacers throat from the moment Oladipo went off the court. But of all the things to call the Heat — fun, deep, balanced, futureoriented — no one’s called them a great team. Not yet at least.
What happened next said why. They didn’t crush Indiana right then. They built a double-digit lead, but Indiana whittled it down to a one-point game at the end of the third quarter. That’s about when TNT put up the graphic of how the Heat have blown more double-digit leads this year (16) than any other team.
“It’s going to be a scrap and a grind for 48 minutes,” McMillan said on TNT before the fourth quarter.
Scrap. Grind. Claw. Fight. Those are the verbs the Heat must use, too. Here’s another: Mix and match. It always seems to be searching for the right formula to win games.
That’s part of the charm of coach Erik Spoelstra. It’s also part of why you’d swap some of these Heat pieces for a legitimate star rather than the nightly one the Heat is always looking for.
The Heat has such a deep bench it might have a second five at this point better than the Pacers’ starting five. But depth is overrated in the playoffs. You need eight players. You need two or three with star power.
It found enough again this game. Dragic finished the game strong with 24 points, as he often does. Tyler Herro, with 15 points and 34 minutes, did, too.
But Butler was that guy for the Heat this first game. He entered giving this series an emotional edge its story line needs. Remember Lance Stephenson blowing in LeBron James’ era? Udonis Haslem, dripping blood, taking out Tyler Hansbrough? Fun stuff, right?
Butler and Indiana’s T.J. Warren still could become that spectacle from their regular-season barkings. More likely Warren gets worn down by the defenders the Heat throw at him if he’s the last good Pacer standing.
Butler finished this first game with 28 points. His play at both ends, with an assist from Dragic’s offense, swung the day. It wasn’t perfect. It didn’t have to be this day. It said why the Heat signed Butler last summer.