No. 8 Miami Heat bounces Bucks from NBA playoffs. Is this the start of something big? | Opinion
Miami Heat vs. Milwaukee Bucks always felt like more than just a first-round NBA playoff series, right? Maybe it was Giannis Antetokounmpo’s dramatic return from injury. Maybe it was Jimmy Butler dropping 56 points the other night.
This couldn’t end in the anticlimax of a lopsided 4-1 series, could it?
Well, yeah. It could.
Miami won Game 5 on Wednesday night on the road, 128-126, in overtime — Butler scoring 42 points — to become only the sixth No. 8 seed in NBA history to oust a No. 1 seed. It hadn’t happened since 2012.
Butler averaged 37.6 points in the five games and scored 98 in the last two.
“He’s desperate and urgent and maniacal and sometimes psychotic about the will to try to win,” coach Erik Spoelstra said of his star. “He’ll make everybody in the building feel it. That’s why he is us and we are him. That’s the way we operate as well.”
Top seed to lowest or not, you couldn’t slide a sheet of notebook paper in the difference between these teams.
The Heat again showed a flair for the dramatic. They made Spoelstra’s 100th career playoff coaching victory memorable, indeed.
They trailed by 16 entering the fourth quarter, rallied and won in OT. It was the largest fourth quarter deficit ever overcome in a game that clinched a playoff series.
They sent it to extra time on an impossible last-second, fallaway basket by Butler.
Spoelstra had drawn up a play that would end with someone other than Butler taking that last shot.
Butler wasn’t having it.
“He looked me dead in the eye,” Spoelstra said afterward, smiling, “and he just said, ‘No. Let me be that guy.’ I said, ‘OK, but what if we can’t get that pass.’ He said, ‘I’ll get it. Don’t worry about it.’”
Gabe Vincent made the pass into the key. Butler cashed it.
“[Spoelstra] trusted me in that moment,” said Butler, “like he has done multiple times.”
It made Butler the first player in Heat history to have eight playoff games of 40-plus points. That’s one more than that guy named, what was it ... Dwyane Wade.
Miami sealed it in OT when Max Strus got fouled on a three-point .. airball.
Serendipity.
The Milwaukee Bucks were the No. 1 seed, best team in the NBA this season by the record. They were home, and they were desperate. Must-win desperate. Our-great-season-was-wasted desperate.
Miami Heat didn’t care.
Heat came into the other guys’ house and took what it wanted.
“We just play hard,” said Butler. “We know what we’re capable of. We don’t listen to the outside noise, and we will not listen to any outside noise. We’re going to do what we do.”
Spoelstra outcoached his Bucks counterpart Mike Budenholzer.
Milwaukee failed to get off a final shot to perhaps win in regulation, leaving two timeouts unused, which Budenholzer later admitted was a mistake.
He also did not adjust when Spoelstra directed Bam Adebayo to bring the ball up late n the game, which drew Brook Lopez out to cover him and freed up the paint for in-close passes to Butler.
The No. 8 seed moves on to the next round now.
The top seed gets to the offseason way too soon.
With the win, the Heat completed a stunning 8-over-1 upset on the road.
In the NBA history of seven-game series since 1984, teams with a 3-1 lead have won to advance 170 of 179 times, or 95 percent. Miami’s chunk of that is 13-0 — the Heat has never blown a 3-1 lead.
Had the Heat lost to see its series lead at 3-2, league history still would have suggested Miami had an 84.7 percent chance of winning. With the Heat 9-2 on advancing from this situation.
Of course that optimism would have leaned on a Game 6 home win to avoid a Game 7 in Milwaukee.
And those historic trends would not have accounted for the opponent having had the best record in the league. And having Giannis.
Now, Miami only need look ahead.
It’s the New York Knicks next, in the second round. It will recall great old rivalries from back in the day.
Save the nostalgia, though.
Appreciate the now.
A No. 8 seed has just vanquished a desperate No. 1. On its home court.
That is because Jimmy Butler has scored 98 points in the past two games.
Yes: Miami had a disappointing regular season. Barely snuck in as the last playoff seed. Fair enough. All of it.
“We’re a resilient group,” Butler said. “We stick together through everything.”
Now, though!
The top-ranked Milwaukee Bucks, vanquished.
The hated New York Knicks on deck.
And Jimmy Butler — that alone!
This story was originally published April 27, 2023 at 1:12 AM.
