That was a legacy shot that Jimmy Butler was going for.
There are a few instances where one shot can define a player’s career. Scoring the game-winning bucket in game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals to push your team to the Finals is one of those moments that can make you a household name. It’s the main reason why Kawhi Leonard, a player that is not comfortable with showing his personality to the general public, is a widely recognized NBA superstar. That one shot against Jimmy Butler and the Philadelphia 76ers in 2019 helped fast-track his progress as someone who is indisputably one of the fifty greatest players in NBA history.
Jimmy Butler knew very well what a shot like that can do to a player’s career.
And he was already putting up a Kawhi Leonard-esque performance for the 2022 playoffs. He had a total of four forty-point games in the postseason, including an all-time great performance on the road in game 6 against the Boston Celtics. With the national media writing the Miami Heat off, he single-handedly kept the Heat’s season alive by putting up the stat line of 47 points on 54% shooting, 9 rebounds, 8 assists, 4 steals, and 1 block. If you wanted to buy Jimmy Butler stock, Friday night after that performance was the time to do it. All of a sudden, we were comparing Jimmy Butler to players who are in the pantheon of NBA greats. From Miami Heat legends like Dwyane Wade and LeBron James. We were even throwing Michael Jordan’s name around.
Think about how crazy all of that sounded? We’re talking about a player that has never been selected to the All-NBA 2nd team, let alone the 1st team, and that has never finished further than 10th in MVP voting. You can make the case that there hasn’t been a single season where Jimmy Butler was considered one of the top 10 best players in the league. And maybe… he was for just one season.
However, we can’t deny how great of a playoff performer he is. Being the leading scorer for a team that makes the Finals is a big deal. Outplaying the MVP of the league and only allowing him to win just one game in a playoff series is a huge deal. Producing a forty-point triple-double in the Finals against arguable the greatest player in the history of the league is even a bigger deal. He accomplished all of those things in the 2020 playoffs. Even if this did happen in the happiest place on earth, we can’t minimize how rare it is to be the best player on a team that reaches the Finals.
Here are the players that were selected to be in the NBA 75th team that never reached the Finals: George Gervin, Carmelo Anthony, Damian Lillard, Steve Nash, Dominique Wilkins, Pete Maravich, and *James Harden.
Three and a half years ago, it would have been moronic to even suggest that Jimmy Butler deserved to be mentioned in the same breath as those players. But just a few days ago, it was a real possibility. Maybe it was circumstantial that Butler led his team to the Finals in the craziest season in the history of the NBA. But doing it a second time leaves no doubts. It’s no accident. It proves that you are an all-time great basketball player.
So there Jimmy Butler was, with the ball in his hands, having to make a huge decision. Do you attack the rack with Al Horford backpedaling, or do you take the open three-point shot that would send your team to the Finals? But that moment was bigger than just the Miami Heat’s season. We’re talking about a legacy-altering moment. We’re talking about a chance that all players dream about as a kid. Making one of the biggest shots in NBA history. I’m willing to bet Jimmy Butler knew what that moment would mean for him.
Think about this for a second. Because of one shot, we’re debating if Kyrie Irving deserved to be in that all-time NBA 75th team. How many of us would take Kyrie Irving over Jimmy Butler right now to lead our team? I’m willing to bet no one would. But in every all-time greatest player’s list, you will see Kyrie Irving’s name somewhere there, and you will not see Jimmy Butler’s name. However, every single metric that is out there shows that Jimmy Butler gives more value to his team than Kyrie Irving does. The only thing that Kyrie has on him is scoring, and converting one of the biggest shots in NBA history. There’s no question that his offensive skill is all-time great, but that shot that he made in game 7 of the Finals validated all of that.
So maybe Butler saw a door that he never thought he would see open, and he decided to bet on himself. I can’t blame him for trying to seize a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I’m sure many of us would do the same if we were in his shoes. However, the shot that he ended up taking was just short.
Coincidentally, the same can be said about his playing legacy and how we will ultimately evaluate his career when it’s all said and done. We will look at his accolades, we will look at his career numbers, and we will say that he fell just short of making the next list of the top 100 players to ever play the game in the year 2037.
This leads us to our next point that goes against all conventional wisdom that you hear from sports pundits. The regular season absolutely matters in the NBA. It’s something that history has always taught us, but we consistently fail to recognize it.
Why is Wilt Chamberlain, in the eyes of many, one of the five greatest players in the history of the league with only two championship rings? Why is Oscar Robertson one of the 15 greatest players of all time with only two Finals appearances? It’s because of what they accomplished in the regular season. If you want a more modern example, why is Russell Westbrook arguably one of the 50 greatest players of all time? It’s because of how he has performed in the regular season. It helps offset his playoff failures, and he has had some major ones. Other than winning a championship, it’s the best security blanket a player can have. Since winning in the NBA is so hard, the next best thing you can do is to make the regular season count for something.
Jimmy Butler has failed to do that throughout his career. We’ve already mentioned some of the major regular-season accolades that he has failed to obtain, but there is something else that we can add to that. Did you know that Jimmy Butler has never finished in the top 10 in scoring? I mention that specifically because we all learned during this postseason that it was totally obtainable for him. He averaged over 30 points per game in the first-round series against the Atlanta Hawks, and he has had two games where he scored over 45 points. That’s the same amount of times that he has scored over 45 points during his career in the regular season!
How would his career have turned out if he was more aggressive in the regular season and decided to take more shots? Could he have been known as one of the greatest modern two-way players? Could he have been one of the few wing players that finished in the top 5 in scoring while also being selected to the All-NBA defensive team? Joining the same company of players like Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Dwyane Wade?! At this point, I don’t know if he was never good enough, or if he didn’t want to waste the energy on that.
But maybe those things go hand in hand. Maybe it’s only the all-time great players that can dominate the regular season, and then reach an even greater level in the playoffs when the intensity and pressure rise. Maybe Jimmy Butler is one of the most self-aware players out there and he knows the kind of talent he is. Maybe he knows he can’t score 40 points every other game for six months straight and then drag his team for another two months in the playoffs.
Or maybe… he’s self-consciously bought into the millennium way of thinking that the regular season doesn’t matter. That you can take breaks during the season to save your body for the playoffs. Whether it’s taking games off completely for load-management, or just taking a handful of shots in a meaningless regular-season game to save your legs for the postseason. Maybe… Jimmy Butler isn’t as old-school as we thought he was.
I don’t have the answers to why Jimmy Butler doesn’t always play like this. All we can judge him by are the results. The problem when your numbers in the regular season are so mundane is that you have to overachieve in the playoffs. It offsets the lack of regular season accolades that a player can have, which is a lot tougher to do. However, Jimmy Butler had the chance to be one of the first players of his kind. A player that was usually only an above-average player in the regular season, but then he turned into one of the best players in the league on the biggest stage. A one-year sample wasn’t enough though. We had to see it again before he could reach basketball lore. He bet it all on one shot, but he fell just short.
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