Miami Heat’s season ended pretty much the same way it did last year: with Jimmy Butler putting the entire franchise’s championship dreams on his shoulder in the form of a 3-pointer–then missing it.
That’s not to say that Butler let down the Miami Heat for two consecutive years. It’s the opposite of that. Butler carried, dragged, towed, and hauled the Heat to the deep end of the NBA Playoffs yet again, but just falling short yet again.
In the Heat’s last game, Butler missed 13 of his 18 shots, including a tough turnaround 3 with 17 seconds left that could’ve tied the game. The Heat’s storied run ended there, with the Nuggets grabbing the rebound and scoring two more points on the other end.
Despite his horrid shooting, Butler was still Miami’s leading scorer with 21, which was a clear sign that the Heat would just not win against the Denver Nuggets. Not like that. Not with Max Strus, Gabe Vincent, Duncan Robinson, and Caleb Martin shooting a combined 2-of-17 on 3s.
Save for a few glimpses of heroism from his teammates, Butler was the only consistent force for Miami. He averaged 26.9 points, 6.5 rebounds, 5.9 assists, and 1.8 steals per game. He shot close to 47 percent from the field and at many times was the dude who held it together for his team, mostly made up of undrafted stars, a couple of former champs, and Bam Adebayo.
"I've had some helluva teammates come through here and compete with me and give us the opportunity to win a championship, which I still believe, with everything in me, that we will do as a team here,” Butler said after Game 5, the pain of losing in another NBA Finals series to a stronger Western Conference team still steaming from his eyes.
This has been a recurring thing for the Heat, a team built on grit and character and doing things the hard way. While the Heatles of old went on a more glossy, rockstar route, this version of the Himmy Era Heat is more of a garage band.
The path that got them to the finals is enough for its own Greatest Hits album. Barely making it in the playoffs as the eighth seed via the play-in tournament. Defeating the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks (with half a Giannis) and then manhandling the New York Knicks (a team that was a bully of their own versus Cleveland).
But the one that made this most recent Heat run a testament to who and how they are was the seven-game Eastern Conference Finals matchup against the Boston Celtics. They won the first three games, only to drop three straight, and risked being the first team in league history to blow a 3-0 lead. In Game 7, the Heat took control, handled their business, and finally closed. From play-in to the finals - that type of inspiring trajectory made this team a special one.
“Our guys will be able to take that quality the rest of their career–that grit, the perseverance, the toughness, the ability to compete and put yourself out there for everybody to judge and to be able to handle adversity,” Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra said postgame.
Miami didn’t end the season with the Larry O’Brien trophy, but their journey was far from a disappointment. If anything, it was a lesson on perseverance and adversity management. While the Nuggets dominated their way to the championship, the Heat just clawed their way to get just one win in the finals, swinging away as their season fades into another long summer.
The Heat, just because of the tough means of getting there, probably had no business being in the finals. But they probably do. They’re there to show that bad perceptions, negative opinions, and dismissals don’t matter. For Spo, the Heat were in the NBA Finals because there are lessons to be learned–not just in sports but in life.
“I think this is a team that a lot of people can relate to if you ever felt that you were dismissed or made to feel less than. We had a lot of people in our locker room that probably have had that, and there’s probably a lot of people out there that have felt that. But also the way this team handled setbacks and adversity, to develop a collective grit and perseverance,” he said.
“Hopefully these are lessons that will transcend this beautiful game, that we can pass along to our children.”
