How the Heat (well, mostly Jimmy Butler) manufactured an offense without Bam, Dragic
Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat didn’t make it a secret about what their offensive game plan might look like in Game 2 of the 2020 NBA Finals. Bam Adebayo and Goran Dragic were both out with injuries, and the Heat’s best chance to keep pace with the Los Angeles Lakers was to ask Butler to do as much as possible on the offensive end.
“I’ve got to be able to do more,” Butler told ESPN before Game 2 on Friday. “I’ve got to impact the game more than I ever have before.”
It ran so far counter to the identity Miami established this season — and, particularly, in the 2020 NBA playoffs — when Butler could often cede control of the offense to Dragic or Adebayo, or even Kendrick Nunn or Tyler Herro. Butler, the Heat’s supposed star player, could control the game in a way most NBA stars don’t.
On Friday, he had to take a more traditional best-player approach. Miami ran nearly every offensive set through the All-Star wing and he managed to manufacture an elite offense for the Heat by himself. Miami still lost 124-114 to fall into a 2-0 series hole, but the Heat at least has found an offensive game plan to survive if two of its three best players remain out or compromised in Lake Buena Vista.
Butler played 45 minutes, including all but 43 seconds in the second half, and said he’s ready to play all 48 if need be in Game 3 on Sunday at Walt Disney World’s ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex. He posted a usage rate of 28.3 percent — his highest since Game 3 against the Milwaukee Bucks in the Eastern Conference semifinals and almost 4 percent higher than his postseason average. He assisted on a staggering 46.4 percent of Miami’s field goals when he was on the floor and 22.7 percent of its points when he was in the game. When he was in, Butler was contributing to about 70 percent of the Heat’s scoring plays, playing in every style from isolation scorer or pick-and-roll ballhandler to screen-setter, both as the roll man or to set up hand-offs to three-point shooters.
Butler finished with a team-high 25 points, dished out a postseason career-best 13 assists and his 12 free-throw attempts were his most since he shot 19 in Game 3 against the Bucks. Miami averaged 127.9 points per 100 possession when he was in the game.
In the regular season, no team averaged even 116 points per 100 possessions and only one team in the NBA playoffs has hit the 120-point threshold.
“We were pretty much trying to get Jimmy the ball on every possession possible,” Herro said Friday. “We know how good he is and what he does for us. Jimmy was Jimmy tonight. He created everything for us.”
The Heat also played at its second slowest pace of the playoffs and slower than it did in all but three regular-season games.
It was a game plan reminiscent of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ in the 2015 NBA Finals, when the Cavaliers’ second and third best players went down, forcing Cleveland to slow the pace and LeBron James to dictate virtually everything on offense.
While Adebayo and Dragic are both optimistic they’ll return at some point in the series, Butler is still more important to Miami’s offense than he has been at any point this season and he proved in Game 2 he can handle this sort of burden.
Adebayo’s outlook seems slightly better and he told Yahoo Sports he expects to play in Game 3 after missing Game 2 because of a neck strain. The torn plantar fascia in Dragic’s left foot remains more concerning because even if he can return he will almost certainly be at less than full strength. The guard, who led the team in usage rate in the playoffs and regular season, likely won’t have the same burst and quickness he used to become the Heat’s leading scorer throughout the East playoffs.
Even if they both are still out Sunday, Miami has found at least one strategy it knows can work on offense. The defense, of course, remains the bigger issue, but Butler has the ability to command an offense in a way seldom seen in his first season in South Florida.
“You can’t define him by any analytic or typical viewpoint of how to play the game of basketball because he’s going to compete and he’s going to find different ways to compete to put yourself — your team — in a position to win,” coach Erik Spoelstra said Friday. “It was 45 minutes of everything he had and career high in assists, and he’s going to have to get to another level. That’s the deal and he loves that type of challenge.”
This story was originally published October 3, 2020 at 9:00 AM.
