Jimmy Butler just entered Heat lore, now Miami has new life vs. Lakers in NBA Finals | Opinion
Jimmy Butler stepped into Miami Heat legend and lore Sunday night, nothing less.
Are you kidding me?
If you aren’t from the half of Los Angeles actually rooting for the Lakers, either because you were born that way and have no choice or maybe because Magic or Shaq or Kobe raised you as such, you had better have been a Miami Heat fan on Sunday night.
You had an underdog story too good to miss here, one that bloomed so improbably in the Orlando bubble. You had a Heat team (a long shot to begin with) decimated by major injuries at the worst possible time. A Heat team given up for dead in these NBA Finals entering this so-crucial Game 3.
Miami was a double-digit underdog supposed to fall behind 3-0 in the best-of-7 series, a death knell. No team has ever come back from three games down to win in the NBA Finals. Ever. Ev-er.
Instead Miami is now within 2-1 after Sunday’s 115-104 victory — a second consecutive game in which the Heat was missing stars Bam Adebayo and Goran Dragic to injuries.
Well, the deceased just sat bolt-upright in the casket., rumors of the demise ill-founded, or at least premature.
Butler said before Game 3 Sunday night: “We get one tonight, we might be up to something.”
Maybe they are, after all.
And it is because Butler went nuts. Took it upon himself to lift a franchise and a city. Entered this night into Heat legend and lore. He basically saw two of his major teammates missing and said, “I got this.”
Butler scored 40 points on 14-for-20 shooting, had 13 assists and 11 rebounds. A triple-double. It was an epic performance in an all-star career, an opus performance when the pressure and stakes were boiling on the stove.
Wasn’t the whole basketball world rooting for that? (Well, outside of Los Angeles, that is. No, make that half of L.A.).
Game 4 is Tuesday night back in the Orlando bubble. And it feels like a series now.
Miami might have come out of Sunday night looking to avoid the ignominy of being swept.
Now Miami is looking ahead thinking of tying the series, and shifting the pressure squarely onto LeBron James and Anthony Davis.
Before Sunday, given Miami’s injuries (admit it), this was feeling like a 4-0 series. And who likes an NBA Finals sweep, anyway? Do the winning fans, even? Really?
Don’t we all envision and wish for a six- or seven-game series? A thriller? Especially now? Don’t we all want the payday of a classic Finals to cap this most bizarre of all NBA seasons and sports years? One enmeshed in a global pandemic with no fans in stands except the virtual kind?
Don’t we all sort of bleeping deserve that?
We do.
And we have a chance for that now. Not a guarantee. Just a fighting chance.
What we would have been staring at had the Heat lost Sunday — there have been only eight Finals sweeps since 1970. They are rare, those duds. The most recent two have found LeBron on the wrong end, with Cleveland in 2018 and before that as a third-year pro in 2007.
He knows how that feels.
And he entered Sunday eager to make the Heat, his former team, feel that now.
That’s when Jimmy Butler stepped up and said nope.
This story was originally published October 4, 2020 at 10:24 PM.
