South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Butler vows to ‘ride with these guys ‘til wheels fall off ’
If there was a lesson learned from consecutive Fridays of abject failure it was that you don’t put out fires by pouring on fuel.
So this time, after Friday night’s costly road loss to the injury-decimated Atlanta Hawks, Jimmy Butler made it clear that the Miami Heat sink or swim as a team.
“I’m telling you,” Butler said, “I’ll ride with these guys ‘til wheels fall off.”
A week ago Friday, it was a road to ruin in a road loss to Minnesota Timberwolves, who at the time had the league’s worst record. This time, on Friday night, it was winding up as roadkill, outscored 23-14 in the fourth quarter of the 118-103 loss to the Hawks at State Farm Arena that gave Atlanta the headto-head season playoff tiebreaker.
After the loss in Minnesota, Butler did not mince words, saying, “I don’t know what team is going to show up on any given night.”
This time, after his previous comments raised chemistry questions that quickly were debunked by center Bam Adebayo, there was nothing close to passive aggressiveness.
Just truth to the Heat’s reality of consistent inconsistency.
“I think we just get caught up
in our own agendas at times,” Butler said, as the Heat turned their attention to Saturday night’s game against the Chicago Bulls at AmericanAirlines Arena, at the start of a threegame homestand. “It’s not bad. It just happens. It’s the human condition.
“But that’s not who we are, not who we’re supposed to be, and it’s damn not sure not what is going to win us games.”
This time Butler, even after closing with 19 points, seven assists and three steals against the Hawks, made clear to include himself in the search for solution.
“We’ve got to be in this thing together, which we are,” he said. “We’ve had lapses where I could do more. I got to show that I could do more.”
Butler said if there are cases of teammates going off on their own, instead of sticking with team concepts on both ends, it does not necessarily come from a selfish place.
“And I respect it, because everybody wants to be that guy,” he said. “I’m OK with it.
“But at the end of the day, we’ve just got to do everything on both sides of the floor together.”
What Butler said has to stop are the comparisons to last season’s Heat team that advanced to the NBA Finals and came within two victories against the Los Angeles Lakers of a title. Gone from that roster are Jae Crowder, Derrick Jones Jr., Kelly Olynyk and Meyers Leonard, among others.
“I don’t like talking about last year,” he said. “We have a different team, different roles, different mindsets. Like you got to stop comparing who we are now to who we were, because that’s not good in any form of the game.”