Why Butler doesn’t like term ‘underdog,’ and the long odds Heat has overcome to reach Finals
The Miami Heat enters the 2020 NBA Finals in a familiar, yet very unfamiliar position.
The Heat has played the role of underdog all season. The Finals will be no different, as the LeBron James and Anthony Davis-led Los Angeles Lakers enter the best-of-7 series as the favorites to win the NBA championship and are five-point favorites in Game 1 on Wednesday (9 p.m., ABC) at Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex in Lake Buena Vista.
But with Miami making its sixth Finals appearance in franchise history, this is the first time it has entered the championship series as the clear “underdog” — a term Heat All-Star Jimmy Butler doesn’t like to hear.
“A really good team,” Butler said when asked what he would like the Heat to be referred to. “That’s it. A really good team. Not going to say that we’re any better than anybody else, but I just don’t think that we’re underdogs. I don’t. So what that nobody picked us to be here. That’s OK. Pretty sure nobody is picking us to win, either. That’s OK.”
Miami’s first Finals appearance came in 2006, but that one wasn’t a total surprise considering the Heat was led by the All-Star duo of Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O’Neal and entered the playoffs as the Eastern Conference’s No. 2 seed.
Miami’s next four Final appearances came in four consecutive seasons from 2010-14 during the Big 3 era. A trip to the Finals became the expectation during this stretch, with superstars Chris Bosh, James and Wade on the roster.
But there weren’t many who projected the fifth-seeded Heat, led by All-Stars Bam Adebayo and Butler, to win the East this season. The Heat missed the playoffs in three of the previous five seasons, including last year.
While the Heat wasn’t among the teams widely projected to reach the NBA Finals, the Lakers were and finished with the Western Conference’s top record at 52-19.
“There can’t be a second on the floor where they’re playing harder than us,” Adebayo said of facing the talented Lakers. “I feel like that’s where our chance is.”
This improbable run by Miami marks the first time a team seeded fifth or lower has made it to the NBA Finals since 1999, when the eighth-seeded New York Knicks represented the East in the championship series during a lockout-shortened season. Those Knicks lost that Finals series 4-1 to the top-seeded San Antonio Spurs.
In addition, the Heat’s .603 win percentage in the regular season is the fourth-worst win percentage by a team to reach the Finals since the playoffs expanded to its present 16-team format in 1984, according to ESPN Stats & Info. Miami closed the regular season with a 44-29 record.
There has only been one NBA team seeded fifth or lower that has won a championship since 1984: the sixth-seeded Houston Rockets in 1995.
This unexpected run is also new for the Heat. The previous six times in franchise history that Miami entered the playoffs as a team seeded fifth or lower, it never advanced past the first round.
But this season’s Heat roster is used to overcoming long odds.
“We embrace that, because at the end of the day, we truly don’t care,” Butler said. “We’re just going to go out here and compete, play together like we always have, and I’m going to see where we end up. But at the end of the day, we’re going to do this our way, the Miami Heat way. That way has worked for us all year long.”
Miami entered the season with the seventh-best odds to win the East at 20-to-1 behind the Milwaukee Bucks (8-to-5), Philadelphia 76ers (2-to-1), Boston Celtics (7-to-1), Brooklyn Nets (10-to-1), Toronto Raptors (10-to-1) and Indiana Pacers (16-to-1), according to BetOnline. The Heat was also tied with the 15th-best odds to win the NBA championship at 66-to-1 then.
That trend continues in the Finals, with the Heat facing relatively long 3-to-1 odds to win the series. Miami was also the underdog entering the second round against Milwaukee and conference finals against Boston.
The Lakers feature two of the league’s best players in James and Davis. The Heat features a roster that includes just one top-10 draft pick in Andre Iguodala.
“Teams like this are unique and special, a group that really competes,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of his players. “A bunch of guys that have been overlooked in a lot of ways. A lot of guys in our locker room have been told that they are less than; they are the anti-AAU or new-age analytics where you’re trying to figure out what a player can do statistically. These guys just want to compete. They just want to roll the ball out and play and compete and fight for it.”
There are plenty of story lines surrounding the matchup.
▪ James vs. a Heat franchise he won two championships with before leaving in 2014 as a free agent.
▪ Heat president Pat Riley vs. a Lakers franchise he coached to NBA championships in 1982, 1985, 1987 and 1988.
▪ Butler flipping the narrative from bad teammate to winner in one season with the Heat.
▪ The rise of the Heat’s young duo of Adebayo and Tyler Herro.
▪ Dion Waiters, who started the season with the Heat, facing his former team in the Finals as a member of the Lakers.
But in the end, those story lines won’t matter when the games begin. The fact that the Lakers are heavy favorites won’t matter either. It will come down to who’s the better team over the next seven to 14 days.
“At the end of the day, when I’ve lost in the Finals, the better team won because they played well, they were more prepared and they did what they needed to do to win those four games,” said James, who enters the championship series with a 3-6 career record in the Finals.
“When I’ve won, the same thing. I’m not here to talk about the talent we all have, the team that we have. The game is won in between the four lines, 94 feet. The team that is prepared and the team that executes, the team that is not careless throughout 48 minutes will give themselves a chance to win each and every game.”
This story was originally published September 29, 2020 at 4:37 PM.
