‘That one goes down in history’: Butler, Adebayo give Heat winning blueprint in comeback
Where was there to start? The Miami Heat’s wild, come-from-behind win against the Phoenix Suns on Monday -- easily its best win of the season so far -- took about a half a dozen different things to go exactly right in the final seven-plus minutes at FTX Arena.
There were clutch jump shots from role players, a mistake-free quarter from Kyle Lowry and, of course, a last-minute defensive stand, ending with a Jimmy Butler block, which Bam Adebayo on Monday said “goes down in history” for the Heat.
Above all else, there was Butler and there was Adebayo, and the way one star’s play on one end of the floor fueled the other’s on the other.
“They’re the epitome of being two-way basketball players,” coach Erik Spoelstra said Monday. “Those two guys are really the foundational heartbeat, the pieces to our team. We follow their warrior spirits.”
Miami finished its 113-112 win on a 24-10 run — all occurring after Butler checked back into the game with 7:44 left. Adebayo scored 12 of those final points — eight of them off turnovers and in transition — and the Heat held the Suns to 5-of-16 shooting across the last eight minutes in Miami.
It was the blueprint for exactly how the Heat (7-7) wants to win games this year and Butler celebrated it by going to hug Spoelstra after he stuffed superstar wing Devin Booker with 6.2 seconds left to seal the win.
“Bam got hella aggressive, got to the line; me and Kyle made sure everybody was comfortable; and then we got some stops,” Butler said Monday. “I love the fact that we won this game on the defensive end. That’s all that was. We can win any way, shape or form. This is a good win.”
In a modern NBA defined by individual offensive excellence and volumetric three-point shooting, Miami — perhaps stubbornly — is an outlier. No matter the personnel, the Heat wants to win with defense, and Butler and Adebayo — no matter who is on the court around them — make it possible.
From the opening tip, Butler accepted the assignment of guarding Booker and the All-Star undershot his season average with 25 points, shooting just 2 of 5 with a turnover and three fouls in the last 7:44. In the last 10 seconds, he missed two jumpers with a chance to win the game.
“Jimmy’s not ever shying away from guarding the other team’s best player and that’s the definition of a true two-way competitor,” Spoelstra said. “Veteran players, after a certain period of time — sometimes they want to rest. Jimmy’s not wired like that. He comes alive against the best challenges in the league. That’s just who he is. He’s a total throwback.
“If you’re a basketball aficionado, you probably enjoyed seeing this kind of matchup.”
Butler finished with 16 points, 13 rebounds, seven assists, a steal and a block.
His defense, in turn, helped fuel exactly the sort of performance he’s always looking for from Adebayo in the fourth quarter.
Off a Butler steal, Adebayo ran a fast break himself, unleashed a devastating spin move to get around Booker and finished an and-one to cut Phoenix’s lead to 102-94 with 6:47 left. Off a steal by forward Caleb Martin, Adebayo got another and-one, this time making a floater off an assist by Butler to trim the Suns’ lead to 102-99 with 5:18 remaining. The star post player then got a steal of his own, again brought the ball up himself and flushed home a dunk off a give-and-go with wing Max Strus to get Phoenix’s lead down to 102-101 with 4:48 remaining.
Butler always harps on Adebayo’s need to be more aggressive and the tempo, made possible by all the stops and steals on defense, let Adebayo play the way Butler wants.
“He’s just such a key player,” Spoelstra said. “He’s an absolute winner. He can morph into so many different roles for us, where he makes it look so much easier to the average fan. Everybody just wants him to score 40. That’s not necessarily the whole deal, but him understanding how to read defenses and what’s necessary for this team, and when to be assertive, when to create for others, when to set screens for guys. Look: I’ve never coached really somebody where there’s been so many different responsibilities and then so many opinions about what he needs to do, and basically it’s all about that final line in the box score. That doesn’t tell the true tale of how he’s able to impact winning.”
Adebayo finished with 30 points to lead all scorers.
In the last minute, Adebayo finished the game on offense by scoring the final four points — all as the result of pick and rolls with Lowry — and Butler finished it on defense with his last-second stand.
It pushed the Heat up to .500 for the first time in the 2022-23 NBA season and gives Miami a building block as it begins a four-game road trip Wednesday against the Toronto Raptors (8-7) at 7:30 p.m. at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto.
For the first time this year, the Heat looked like the team it expects to, even if it was only for a few minutes. It was enough to knock off a championship contender — albeit without All-Star point guard Chris Paul — and it proved this team can still has a road map to get back to contending.
“It’ll look a little bit different with different personnel each year, but that’s what we pride ourselves on. We’re slowly getting there,” Spoelstra said. “We’re not where we want to be defensively, but we understand, at least, what our identity has to be.”
