Jimmy Butler on Heat’s defensive slippage: ‘We’re not being who we are.’
As Jimmy Butler sat in front of his locker at FedExForum following Monday’s loss in Memphis, he looked to be formulating his answers for his postgame media session.
After spending a few minutes to get dressed and gather his stuff for the team’s flight to Philadelphia, Butler gave reporters the go-ahead to start asking questions. Naturally, the first question was about the Heat’s lack of defense in Monday’s 118-111 loss to the Grizzles.
“We just didn’t guard nobody, man, from the beginning of the game,” Butler answered. “I think that’s the direction that we’re trending in right now. I feel like we got to take it personal. That doesn’t mean enough to us right now, to man up and take the challenge. That’s what happens. We deserved it.”
The Heat (19-8) posted its worst single-game defensive rating of the season in Memphis, allowing 120.4 points per 100 possessions in the loss. Most of Miami’s struggles came in the first half, with Memphis scoring 73 points on 65.9% shooting from the field and 11 of 16 shooting on threes (tied for the ninth-most first-half points allowed in Heat history).
“It was kind of all across the board in the first half,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “It was staggering to see that they scored over 70 against us. It was in the paint, they had 54 for the game. It was second-chance, it was threes, it was basically everything. And we fouled way too much. I don’t know if I could list more things. You get the point.”
Butler is correct, the Heat’s defense has been trending in the wrong direction recently. During the past seven games, the Heat has posted a defensive rating of 111.9, which is ranked 22nd in the NBA during that two-week stretch.
The Heat’s defense will need to be better when it closes its three-game trip Wednesday against the talented 76ers (20-8). Philadelphia scored 113 points on 50.6% shooting in a 27-point win over Miami on Nov. 23 — the teams’ first meeting of the season.
“We haven’t done that in the last couple of games,” Butler said of hustle plays and defense. “Sometimes, we outscore our opponent. We can’t rely on that every night. We have to rely on our effort plays. We don’t have a team full of superstars. We got a team full of supposed dogs that play incredibly hard, and I don’t feel like we’re doing that right now. We’re not being who we are.”
The Heat entered the season with the goal of finishing with a top-five defense, and it was in and out of the top five for the first month of the season. But entering Tuesday, Miami’s recent struggles had dropped it to 11th in that category at 105.5 points per 100 possessions.
The Heat’s offense has actually been slightly better than its defense this season. Miami entered Tuesday with the league’s 10th-best offensive rating.
Does it take a wake-up call like Monday’s loss in Memphis to get things moving in the right direction?
“It shouldn’t,” Butler said. “I like to learn from wins. We talk about it all the time. I think that’s the thing with our group. We say how great we want to be. We talk about what we need to do and then we go out there and we lay an egg. I’m pissed off if I’m [Erik Spoelstra or Pat Riley] because we should play harder. They put us in a great position to go out there and do what we get to do for a living and we’re [expletive] around with the game, man. We deserve it. We definitely do.”
With three of the Heat’s past five games going into overtime and the team dealing with injuries to multiple rotation players, fatigue could be part of the reason for the defensive slippage. Miami has mainly used an eight-man rotation in its past two games, with Butler averaging 41 minutes, Bam Adebayo averaging 40.1 minutes, and Kendrick Nunn averaging 37.3 minutes per game during the past five contests.
But Butler dismisses that as an excuse.
“Everybody has that. It’s not just the Miami Heat that have that on their schedule,” Butler said. “We haven’t been guarding anybody for the past I don’t know how many games. We just snuck away with a couple. We got to lock in and we got to be better, man, and realize what it’s really going to take to do something special in this league.”
One area that the Heat has struggled with is rim protection, with opponents shooting 65.5% from within six feet of the basket. Only the Cavaliers have allowed opponents to shoot a higher percentage from within that range this season.
But Miami is limiting rim opportunities, with opponents taking just 28.5 shots per game from within six feet of the basket. That’s the third-fewest allowed in the league.
For Butler, it’s not about the numbers, though. It’s about effort.
“You have to play with a lot of effort,” Butler said. “And whenever you don’t, this is what happens; part of the league, yeah, whatever. But if we want to get to where we said we want ... to get to, we got to figure it out and we got to guard somebody.”
▪ The Heat listed Goran Dragic (strained right groin), James Johnson (personal reasons), Dion Waiters (team suspension) and Justise Winslow (strained lower back) as out for Wednesday’s matchup against the 76ers. In addition, guard Daryl Macon rejoined the G League’s Sioux Falls Skyforce on Tuesday as part of his two-way contract.
This story was originally published December 17, 2019 at 12:24 PM.
