ASK IRA: Are Heat asking too much in requiring Jimmy Butler to be a heavyweight champ?
Q: Is anyone else seeing what I’m seeing about small ball being the wrong choice? Jimmy Butler is a small forward. It’s not fair to him to always have to play undersized. Of course he can play power forward. That doesn’t make him a power forward. We are letting him down. – V.R.
A: Which is interesting, because Jimmy Butler read the room at his initial media session ahead of training camp and stressed that he would not be the Heat’s starting power forward in the wake of the offseason loss of P.J. Tucker to the 76ers in free agency. And then it became clear that Jimmy, indeed, was as good as it would get as a two-way presence at the position. It’s one thing to ask added minutes from Jimmy in the playoffs. It’s another to ask him to move up in weight class. Jimmy’s goal should be an NBA title, not a heavyweight championship.
Q: As I stated since the 2020 Finals, we’re always one big short. Should’ve been working on the big-big lineup a long time ago, because everyone else in the league plays big-big with the exception of Philadelphia and Golden State (Draymond Green and P.J. Tucker are short-but-effective bigs). Erik Spoelstra doesn’t understand that Bam Adebayo needs a big-big next to him. Now we’ll all pay the price for not having confidence in it. – Swann.
A: Well, they had that alongside Bam Adebayo with Meyers Leonard and Kelly Olynyk even after those 2020 NBA Finals. And if they didn’t trade Kelly for Victor Oladipo, they still might have it. What we won’t know is if Erik Spoelstra would have stayed with an Omer Yurtseven-Bam Adebayo alignment, the one he experimented with during training camp, had Omer not required ankle surgery in November.
Q: Thank you for that story on Meyers Leonard and his quest for forgiveness. We need more stories like that to bring attention to anti-Semitism. Whether it is Jews or African-Americans or Hispanics or Asians, we all need to do better. Thank you again for bringing attention to this subject. – Barry, Deerfield Beach.
A: And thank you for reading. For those who might have missed it, the story can be found here.
