Heat All-Star wing Jimmy Butler has emerged as the leader of a team two games away from the NBA Finals this season. His departures from his prior three teams painted a different picture of his personality.
In a revealing piece, ESPN’s Nick Friedell takes a look at Butler through the eyes of teammates, coaches, front office executives, and team owners past and present, navigating historic quotes that cover Jimmy’s debut in the league all the way through his current standing as one of its premiere players.
There’s more out of South Beach today:
- Butler’s uniqueness as a team-first All-Star has made scoring a lesser priority for him. Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel examines whether Butler can be a dominant scorer for the Heat, especially in the first halves of games, in the rest of the postseason.
- Veteran Heat power forward Udonis Haslem credits the father of teammate Jae Crowder, Corey, with his 17-season NBA career. After going undrafted in 2002, Haslem headed to France, where he linked up with the elder Crowder as both played for French club Chalon-sur-Saône. After Haslem began dominating team practices, he found encouragement from Crowder to try again at the next level. “That’s when I told him, ‘You’ve got to get to the NBA,’” Corey Crowder said.
- As Anthony Chiang of the Miami Herald recaps, former Heat All-Star Dwyane Wade spoke on 790 The Ticket’s Tobin & Leroy Show about the Heat’s youth movement this season and the future of longtime Heat mastermind Pat Riley, who is 75. “I think [Riley’s] going to be around [well after this season],” Wade said. “His office is going to still be his office. Even if he’s not in that position, he’s still going to come into practice everyday. This is his life. This is what he loves. This is him. I don’t see him going anywhere.”
Fans in Chicago, Philly, and Minnesota all blamed Butler for their teams’ shortcomings and now he has Miami one game from the Finals. Look at where the Bulls and Wolves are right now, the Sixers aren’t far behind.
Chicago he broke a teammates jaw. Minnesota he banged CATs girlfriend. Philly they were reluctant to give him a 5 yr or 4 yr max bc year 3, 4, 5 would look ugly. That’s all. Miami drafted and signed a bunch of dudes that can shoot, pass, board, and defend. They upgraded to a Top-15 player vs JRich. And got rid of Waiters cancerous attitude. Miami has always been bully mentality too for the last idk 5+ yrs which is inline with Butlers makeup. Right place right time right dude.
Cannot disagree. Pat Riley was always into bully mentality possibly except for the glam big 3 days. That didn’t change him for long! He may have gone after Olynyk because he broke Love’s arm, but that was half-accidental and HC Stevens was out of control.
I hope to see Waiters get involved if it turns out LAL-MIA.
My takeaway from the espn article is: media elites will have to bend over backwards to accept the Heat and JButler. The writer is barely disguising that, using mostly other people’s quotes. Of course their local team is the Heat’s opponent so that doesn’t help the mood. However it was not unfair and his college coach was most Yoda-like he was.
Butler made rational decisions with his last 3 teams and was a rough kid with Chicago before that.
He needed Miami and they needed him and Riley finally got around to it via Butler’s effort which included acting the bad guy.
The problem was the disaster of Taylor promising the max to Wiggins.
He and everyone but Herro looked tired game 4. The novel zone Miami is using— on TV they called it the “forwards up”— can be hard on the forwards who are not used to being up, even Butler who plays guards sometimes, but it’s been harder for Kemba & the Celts. Writers keep saying the Celts are tentative, but they have to solve that zone, and Miami is a bit slow too since they shortened their deep strong rotation.
The officiating was balanced more or less— tight for everyone— but they seemed to be helping the Celtics at the end, with all those stoppages & interpretations. I was like, 3-1 sorry.