Heat needed Jimmy Butler to be special to win the NBA finals and he fell short
Jimmy Butler and Jamal Murray averaged the same number of points in the NBA Finals, and that is why the Miami Heat lost.
It’s difficult to look at an NBA Finals series as lopsided as Denver’s 4-1 gentlemen’s sweep of the Heat in a vacuum. Miami was overmatched, shorthanded, and competing against the player who should have won his third straight league Most Valuable Player of the Year this season.
The Nuggets had the deeper team one through five, a transcendent point center in Nikola Jokic and had the healthiest starting five of any team in the playoffs.
With the deck stacked, the
Heat had just one viable route to emerge from this series as NBA champions.
Jimmy Butler had to be special. And not just special, because special is what got the Heat to the NBA Finals in the first place. Special is how Butler powered the Heat past the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round, courtesy of 37 points per game against the NBA’S top-ranked regular-season defense. Special is how Butler bullied the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals, winning Game 7 at the TD Garden to punch Miami’s ticket to the big dance.
The Heat needed Butler to be more than special. They needed him to elevate to the undeniable level of superstardom that has evaded him all of his career.
That level continued to elude him in the NBA Finals against the Nuggets: The Heat star finished Game 5 with just 21 points on 5-of-18 shooting from the field. He averaged
21.6 points, 6.4 assists and 4.6 rebounds through all five NBA Finals games.
Meanwhile, Murray joined Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson as the last three guards to post 100 points and 50 assists in an NBA Finals series while shooting at least 45% from the field.
Getting outplayed by the opponent’s second-best player? Hardly special.
In fact, Butler wasn’t even the third-best player of the series: Jokic became the first center to win Finals MVP since Shaquille O’neale in 2002; Murray flirted with a triple-double all series long, and Bam Adebayo — not Butler — led the Heat in scoring and played far more impactful
rotation, is still standing and will soon have a ring on his finger that signifies his perseverance.
“(Denver) gave me a chance as a 15-year guy,” Green, 36, said. “To be able to help win the first championship in franchise history is amazing.”
Green always respected Smith and Jordan, who he called his best friends. He played with Jordan, 34, in Brooklyn during the 2020-21 season, while he and Smith share similar journeys criss-crossing the league. Green has played for 11 organizations, including two seasons in Denver. Smith has played for 13 teams during a 13-year career, getting traded seven times and waived six. Since 2018, Jordan has played on six different teams after a 10year career with the Los Angeles Clippers.
Despite the countless hours in the gym and constant moving, Green was the only one to appear in the Finals before this season, so they had every reason to drink as much champagne and Michelob Ultras as they could handle.
“Man, it’s gratifying to know what we put into this league,” Green said. “So for us, it’s about enjoying this together and making sure that everybody appreciates the moment because it doesn’t come too often. (We are) taking in every second of it.”
On an evening that will be talked about for years to come, Denver’s “old heads” showed good things can happen to those who wait.
“It feels good to be a champion,” Smith said.