Butler puts Miami in control
Heat bring 2-0 lead over Celtics home to Miami
MIAMI — Jimmy Butler is Miami’s leader this postseason in points, minutes, assists and steals per game. He’s the sommelier at team dinners. He’s the barista when it’s time for coffee.
If all that wasn’t enough, he’s also the DJ.
When music blares in the Heat locker room, Butler is almost always in charge. Could be gospel, could be Whitney Houston, could be Nickelback and — as it was after Miami’s 111-105 win in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference finals — it could be Morgan Wallen, whose song “Somebody’s Problem” has become a Heat anthem.
Wallen’s song is not
about basketball, though that’s completely irrelevant to the Heat. These days, Butler is Somebody’s Problem. In fact, he’s Everybody’s Problem. And the Boston Celtics are running out of time to find a solution.
Game 3 of the East finals is Sunday night, with the eighth-seeded Heat leading
2-0 after stunning almost everyone but themselves by going into Boston and winning the first two games of the series — putting themselves in position to reclaim a conference title that the Celtics defeated them for last season.
“I’ve said it all year long,” said Butler, who is averaging 31.1 points in the
postseason. “We are going to ride with one another until the wheels fall off.”
The wheels are fine right now. The Heat have won 10 out of 13 games to open the playoffs, after never winning 10 out of 13 during any stretch of the regular season. They toppled topseeded Milwaukee in Round 1, ousted fifth-seeded New York in Round 2 and now have secondseeded Boston in serious trouble. And they’ve successfully rallied from more 12-point-or-more deficits in these playoffs — six, after doing it again on Friday night — than the rest of the NBA has combined (five) entering Saturday.