Heat’s Jimmy Butler ‘stupidly locked in’ and confident, ‘I like our chances anywhere’
It has been a month since Jimmy Butler challenged both his team and himself.
“All we got to do is get there,” Butler said of the NBA playoff on April 21 after a victory in San Antonio. “We get there, us as a team, I’ll handle the rest.”
The Heat are there, to open their best-of-seven first-round series Saturday at 2 p.m. against the Milwaukee Bucks at Fiserv Forum.
Now, the Heat hope, as was the case in last season’s run to the NBA Finals, comes Butler time.
While their overall 40-32 record landed them only with the No. 6 seed in the Eastern Conference, the Heat went 33-19 with Butler in the lineup this season. That .635 winning percentage practically mirrors the .639 that got the Bucks the No. 3 seed.
It is a level that Butler feels confident can be reached, maintained and perhaps exceeded.
But first after Thursday’s practice at AmericanAirlines Arena he wanted to clarify.
“I didn’t say ‘I,’ I said ‘we’ll’ handle the rest,” he said. “It was a misinterpretation of my quote.
“I really can’t do it by myself. I got a squad; I got a team with me. These are the guys I’m rocking with, I have been all year long. I’m going to make sure that they’re comfortable. I’m going to make sure that I’m comfortable. And we got nothing to worry about. We’re in this thing together. Like I say all the time, I like our chances anywhere.”
With the appreciation that Playoff Jimmy has been activated.
“I think I’m stupidly locked in, I can tell you that,” he said, “the amount of film that I watch, the amount of time that I spend on the court working on my game, trying to figure out where everybody’s going to be on the floor.”
Although Butler missed the final two games of the regular season over the weekend with back pain, he is back in the mix.
“I’m good. I’m ready to go. I’m in shape,” he said.
That further heightens the Heat prospects of taking a playoff series from the Bucks for a second consecutive season.
“Jimmy’s played at an incredibly high level all season long,” coach Erik Spoelstra said. “And he’s done it on both ends of the court. You need your best players to play well and to lead and to give your team confidence, and that’s what Jimmy has proven, that he has an ability to do that.”
After missing all three games of a regular-season series the Bucks took 2-1, Butler said he has no doubt the Bucks will have a Butler book.
“I guarantee that they still got a scout for me, whether I played or not,” he said.
“I’m ready for anything. You leave the past in the past, all the wins, all the losses, all the mishaps, all the great fortunes. It’s a different time of the year right now. You’re supposed to be playing your best basketball, be healthy. And first one to 16 wins, so we’ve got start with the first four.”
The Bucks spent much of last season’s series with Wesley Matthews defending Butler. Now in Matthews’ place enters the All-Defense stylings of Jrue Holiday.
“With the way the roster’s been constructed, I think the way we’ve grown defensively, I would phrase it as everybody’s going to guard Jimmy Butler,” Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said Thursday.
Bucks forward Bobby Portis, who played his first two seasons with Butler with the Chicago Bulls, said Thursday he is not surprised that Butler has emerged as a playoff leading man.
“When you have heart like that and competitive spirit, they do all these tests in the draft, how high you can jump and this and that, but you can’t test nobody’s heart,” Portis said. “And that’s one thing he has. He has a lot of heart and he has a lot of dog in him.”
Having eliminated Butler’s Minnesota Timberwolves while with the Houston Rockets in the 2018 first round, Bucks forward P.J. Tucker said he is aware of what looms.
“Jimmy’s just a competitor. He wants to win,” Tucker said Thursday. “So it doesn’t matter how much he scores, how many rebounds he gets. He’s going to do whatever it takes for that team to win. We’ve just got to match his intensity, be smart.”
