Takeaways from Jimmy Butler’s historic Finals performance, and how it helped save the Heat
Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 115-104 win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday in Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex. Miami cut Los Angeles’s series lead to 2-1 in the best-of-7 series:
With starting center Bam Adebayo and starting guard Goran Dragic out because of injuries, Jimmy Butler needed to step up for the Heat to avoid a 3-0 series deficit. What did Butler do? He put together one of the best performances in NBA Finals history.
After totaling 25 points, eight rebounds and a playoff career-high 13 assists in Friday’s Game 2 loss, Butler took it upon himself to generate even more offense Sunday.
Butler finished Game 3 with 40 points on 14-of-20 shooting from the field and 12-of-14 shooting from the foul line, 11 rebounds, 13 assists, two steals and two blocks to will the Heat to the victory. He became just the third player in NBA history to record a 40-point triple-double in the Finals, joining Jerry West (1969 Finals) and LeBron James (2015 Finals) on that list.
“How else do you say it other than Jimmy effing Butler,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “But this is what he wanted, this is what we wanted. It’s really hard to analyze or describe Jimmy until you actually feel him between the four lines. He’s a supreme, elite competitor and we needed it. Obviously this was a very desperate urgent game and he was doing it on both ends of the court, just put his imprint on every important part of the game. He’s in the top percentile of this entire association in terms of conditioning and you saw he just got stronger as the game went on.”
Butler joined James as the only two Heat players in franchise history to finish a Finals game with a triple-double.
Butler also became just the second player in NBA history to record at least 40 points, 11 rebounds and 13 assists in a playoff game. Luka Doncic became the first player to do it earlier this postseason, when he finished Game 4 of the Dallas Mavericks’ first-round series against the Los Angeles Clippers with 43 points, 17 rebounds and 13 assists.
How did Butler get his points Sunday? By relentlessly attacking the basket.
Butler scored a career-high 26-paint points on 13-of-16 shooting in Game 3. He joined James Worthy, Magic Johnson and Scottie Pippen as the only players to notch a triple-double in the Finals without attempting a three-pointer since the three-point shot was adopted by the NBA in 1979.
Butler played 45 of the 48 minutes in Game 2 and he again played 45 of the 48 minutes in Game 3.
“My trainer James Scott does a great job of making sure that I’m strong enough to play through contact and just be conditioned,” Butler said. “That’s what we do here with the Heat. We pride ourselves on that and I love it. I love the work and I tell coach all the time, I’m ready for this. Like the biggest stage, whatever you ask me to do I can do.”
Regardless of the series outcome, Butler’s performance in Game 3 will go down as one of the best in Heat history. According to Elias Sports, Butler scored or assisted on 73 points Sunday and that’s tied for the second-most in a Finals game in NBA history behind only Walt Frazier’s 74 points.
Butler’s Heat teammates combined to score 75 points on 45 percent shooting in Game 3. Tyler Herro and Kelly Olynyk each scored 17 points in the win, and Jae Crowder was important with 12 points, eight rebounds and solid defense.
Butler is averaging 22.1 points on 48.2 percent shooting, 5.9 rebounds and 5.5 assists in 37.3 minutes this postseason.
But the stats don’t matter to Butler. Just wins.
“Everybody remembers winning, that’s it,” Butler said. “They don’t care how many points you score, they only care if you won or lost. For us, we’re all about winning. We are. I say it all the time, but I mean it. The guys that we have, the group that coach Pat [Riley] and coach Spo put together, it’s always to win and nothing else. So I hope the next game I score zero and y’all talk all you want to talk and we win, so I come up here and say the same thing.”
The Heat again played without Adebayo and Dragic, but Sunday’s win buys more time for their return.
Adebayo (neck strain) and Dragic (torn plantar fascia in left foot) did not play for the second consecutive game Sunday after exiting Game 1 of the Finals early because of their injuries. Both players were listed as doubtful on the injury report, but were ruled out a few hours before the start of Game 3.
Adebayo and Dragic have been working and lobbying hard to return to the court before the end of the Finals, with Game 4 set for Tuesday (9 p.m., ABC). There has been more optimism around the team that Adebayo will be able to return during the championship series than Dragic.
“Both Goran and Bam are literally like family members and I can see the anguish literally in their eyes, both of them,” Spoelstra said. “And everybody in the locker room feels that when you’re in this elite percentile of being a competitor in this league and you get to this stage and you have these kind of unfortunate injuries. I know them and their soul, they both will do anything to get out there and it puts me in a different position.
“We also have to be responsible, and that’s out of love for them. They both are making progress. They’re not ready to play or compete in this game at this intensity level. But they really want to be there because they love their teammates and they have put their heart and soul into this. Their teammates really feel the same way. We’re all feeling it. This is the most responsible thing to do right now.”
Before Sunday’s game, Adebayo went through some on-court work with Heat coaches. Spoelstra said he does not have a timeline for Adebayo’s return, but noted “he is feeling better.”
“I know how much that this means to him and I know how much he wants to be out there,” Spoelstra said of Adebayo. “This is one of the most difficult decisions that I’ve had to make with the trainers and with Pat and everybody, but it’s the most responsible thing. And then we’ll just continue to re-evaluate him.”
The Heat has outscored opponents by a total of 55 points in the playoffs with both Adebayo and Dragic on the court.
Adebayo has been one of the Heat’s best players in the playoffs, averaging 17.8 points on 55.7 percent shooting, 10.9 rebounds, 4.6 assists and 1.1 steals. Sunday marked just the third game Adebayo has missed since the start of his second NBA season.
Dragic, who will be an unrestricted free agent this offseason, has been one of the Heat’s most reliable and efficient offensive options this postseason. He entered the Finals averaging a team-high 20.9 points on 45.2 percent shooting, to go with 4.2 rebounds and 4.7 assists during the playoff run.
Adebayo and Dragic are tied with a team-best plus/minus of plus-77 this postseason. In the eight minutes Jimmy Butler, Adebayo and Dragic played together in Game 1 of the Finals, the Heat outscored the Lakers 29-12.
The Heat started Herro in Dragic’s place and center Meyers Leonard in Adebayo’s place Sunday for the second consecutive game.
“They asked me to go out there and win, like they did the previous two games and I couldn’t hold up my end of the bargain,” Butler said of Adebayo and Dragic. “Tonight I did that — we did that, I should say, and gave them an extra couple days to get those guys back.”
Despite Butler’s magnificent performance, the Lakers made a run to take a two-point lead with 8:56 to play. But the Heat did not blink.
Miami responded by outscoring Los Angeles 26-13 the rest of the way to earn the 11-point win.
“It’s a 48-minute game for a reason,” Spoelstra said. “You have to be able to compete at a high level and there’s a lot of ups and downs during the course of it. I liked it and I really wanted to see how we were going to respond. We have been in those moments in games 1 and 2, they were too fleeting and we didn’t respond that well enough. This is elite competition both ways and we responded to it better tonight.”
Butler, as expected, led the late-game push with 10 points, two rebounds and four assists during final 8:56. Herro also stepped up, contributing eight points on 3-of-4 shooting during this critical stretch.
“That was unbelievable,” Olynyk said of Butler’s play down the stretch Sunday. “His determination and his will to win were out of this world. We basically just gave him the ball and said, “Be great.” And he was. He was making the right decision every single time, attacking the basket and making the right plays. Guys were ready to shoot. Guys made some cuts. That’s what we needed to close out that game.”
For the Lakers, James struggled late in the game. He scored two points on 1-of-4 shooting and committed four turnovers during the final 8:56.
James finished the Lakers’ loss with 25 points on 9-of-16 shooting, 10 rebounds, eight assists and eight turnovers.
The Heat also found a way to slow down Lakers star forward Anthony Davis for the first time this season. Foul trouble helped.
Davis entered Game 3 averaging 31.3 points on 61.5 percent shooting, 10.3 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 2.3 blocks in four games against the Heat this season (two regular-season matchups and the first two games in the Finals).
But Davis was relatively quiet on Sunday, with 15 points on 6-of-9 shooting, five rebounds, three assists and five turnovers in 33 minutes.
He was limited to just 11 first-half minutes because of foul trouble, as he recorded just five points and one rebound in the first two quarters. Davis picked up his fourth foul with 10:22 remaining in the third quarter, but Lakers coach Frank Vogel allowed him to play through it and he didn’t pick up another foul for the rest of the game.
Still, the fact Davis had four fouls seemed to take away some of his aggressiveness on both ends of the court in the second half. He went scoreless on just one shot and grabbed only one rebound in Sunday’s fourth quarter.
“I think the foul trouble made him a little passive, because he wanted to be out on the floor but he couldn’t be his aggressive self offensively and defensively,” James said of Davis. “I think the fouls slowed him down a lot tonight.”
Davis, who was a plus-33 in the first two games of the Finals, was a minus-26 in Game 3.
“He got in foul trouble early, but we just tried to make things tough for him,” Olynyk said of defending Davis on Sunday. “Make the catches tough. Don’t give him anything easy. Keep him off the glass. He’s really good player and he’s going to get some stuff done. But just make it as tough as we can on him and limit his opportunities.”
The Heat is still facing an uphill climb — especially if Adebayo and/or Dragic can’t return during the series — but it just avoided a situation that no NBA team has ever overcome.
Miami already faced long odds after going down 2-0 in the Finals. James owns a perfect 23-0 all-time record in playoff series that his team has won the first two games in, and 19 of those 23 series ended in either four or five games.
But with Sunday’s win, the Heat avoided a 3-0 hole. No NBA team has ever overcome a 3-0 series deficit to advance in the playoffs.
The Heat has still only been swept in a best-of-7 series once in franchise history, and that was in the first round against the Chicago Bulls in the 2007 playoffs.
Entering Game 3 as a nine-point underdog, the Heat’s Sunday win is the second-largest Finals upset in the last 30 seasons, according to ESPN Stats & Info.
“We’re always confident,” Butler said. “We know that we can win any game if we rebound, if we don’t turn the ball over, if we get back, things like that. But we got a group that, like we’re, I don’t like the word “underdog” so — nobody’s picking us, there you go, nobody’s picking us. And we really don’t care. We’re going to go out there and compete. That’s what we have been doing all year long, all playoffs, the time that we have been here.”
This story was originally published October 5, 2020 at 12:37 AM.
