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Jimmy Butler Has The Answers

Dwyane Wade had made seven threes in all of the 2015-16 campaign.

Then the Miami HEAT were on the ropes. Down 3-2 to the Charlotte Hornets in the first round, on the road, Wade’s team was engaged in a possession-to-possession battle as Kemba Walker threatened to send them on a miserable flight home.

“If we were going to lose, I was going out shooting it," Wade said at the time.

With about three minutes to play, Wade hit his first three. Seven consecutive Walker points later made it a two-point game, and as the clock ticked into the final minute Wade hit another triple to make it a two-possession lead. Miami took the win, and eventually survived to the next round.

Nobody would have expected Wade to take, much less make, those two shots based on how his season had played out to that point, but great players have a way of surprising you when the playoffs roll around. Because when everything breaks down and you just need a basket, great players give themselves a chance to make those shots by simply taking them.

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It flew a bit under the radar this season, but Miami’s late-game offense was not particularly good. An elite offensive attack otherwise, in the last five minutes of close games the HEAT’s scoring efficiency dropped from its usual 111.9 Offensive Rating to 102.2, ranked No. 23 in the league. And in those clutch minutes that weren’t in overtime, where the HEAT were a stellar 8-1, they scored just 95.1 points per 100 possessions – a mark that would be the worst in the league by a mile.

The Why didn’t require much investigation. As a team that thrived on its ball movement and defense-befuddling two-man actions, they looked brilliant when shooters were able to spring free but rather ordinary when switch-heavy schemes flattened everything out. Typically one of the more reliable late-game players in the league, Jimmy Butler led the team in clutch attempts but was just 17-of-61 (27.9 percent) and 3-of-20 from three. As Butler struggled with his jumper, good teams were able to load up paint help on him and Bam Adebayo. When they weren’t able to make scoring look easy, the HEAT often made the hard way look even harder in the minutes that would most closely resemble the postseason. Like an iffy movie trailer (hello, The New Mutants) that leaves you unsure about spending your money, it was plenty fair to question Miami in those situations based on the (small sample-size) evidence.

Keeping Wade’s four-year old heroics in mind, players have a way of surprising you in the playoffs. With faith and support in ready supply around him, what Butler did Tuesday evening made plenty of sense in that surprising sense.

“That’s what he has been his entire career,” Spoelstra said. “He’s somebody that in those pressure moments you throw him the ball and he’s going to make a play that you trust is good for the team.”

Locked into a winnable game and trailing by six, nobody was going to blame the Indiana Pacers for going to war armed with the information and math available to them. Unable to keep Butler out of the paint most of the game when approaching with one-on-one coverage, as Adebayo came up to screen Indiana center Myles Turner dropped back and waited at the free-throw line. Butler was shooting 30.5 percent on pull-up jumpers and 20.5 percent on pull-up threes, so if that was the shot then that was the shot.

Problem was, that was the shot.

There’s an argument to be made for pull-up threes being the most important shot in basketball these days given the way most defenses are played. Either you can get the look against drop coverage or the threat distorts the defense in such a way that you can pass into an advantage. As incredible as Duncan Robinson was this season, adding pull-up volume to their repertoire was a big part of Miami’s offensive resurgence. Butler hitting this off the dribble is just as important as it being worth three points.

It had been eight years since Butler took as few threes, just 3.0 per 100 possessions, as he did this season, but he seemed to sense when they were most necessary. He was five times as likely to take a three in the final five minutes of a close game as he was in the first three quarters, and his assist rate – a career-high this year – dropped in those high-leverage possessions in turn.

“I take what the game gives me the majority of the time,” Butler said. “Sometimes I force it and take some bad shots.”

But everyone around him knows that this time of year, you can’t always look for better. Sometimes you’re just best.

“I yell at him all the time to shoot the ball,” Adebayo said. “Tonight, it just clicked where he listened to me.”

About a minute after his first three, the same play occurred only flipped onto the right wing. Another strong Adebayo screen. Another drop by Turner. Another three from Butler.

“In the end, my teammates and my coach [said] ‘Don’t lose this game. Win it for us,” Butler said. “That’s what I was thinking. Make the right play, and on those two possessions it was the pullup three.”

The reality is that unlike with Wade in Charlotte, Miami was probably still going to win this game whether Butler hit those threes or not. He took chance out of the equation and slammed the door, sure, but with Victor Oladipo out after being poked in the eye and the team already down Domantas Sabonis, the Pacers had precious little shot creation left on the floor. Without any other ballhandlers to occupy the HEAT’s best defenders, Malcolm Brogdon kept running into one Adebayo wall after another, and with Miami sending help at TJ Warren whenever he tried hunting a mismatch, Indiana’s offense was sputtering.

Game 1 is not really the point, beyond the technical necessity of it. What’s important is that Butler, for now, answered Miami’s late-game questions. It’s one you have to answer, continually, until there are no more worlds to conquer, but in a sense Butler helped bring an order to things. Spoelstra whittled Tuesday’s rotation down to nine players and more importantly opted for the trio of Butler, Adebayo and Andre Iguodala down the stretch, flanked by Goran Dragic – excellent early in the final period himself – and Tyler Herro. That’s a lineup that hadn’t been used before in part because the lack of shooting from the aforementioned trio made spacing a struggle. In their 45 regular season minutes together, they scored just 83.6 points per 100 possessions no matter who joined them on the floor.

In part thanks to 4-of-8 shooting from deep, that five-man unit posted an Offensive Rating of 130.4 in 11 minutes Tuesday night, finishing plus-eight overall.

Butler isn’t always going to make those shots at a high percentage barring further postseason magic. Him being a threat to at least take them at a decent clip could make a difference in unlocking the viability of that finishing group. There will be games when Tyler Herro, playing beyond his years of late, or Duncan Robinson hits late threes in bunches, or when Goran Dragic keeps unleashing hell in the lane, but the deeper Miami goes the more games will come down to what Butler can do with the ball.

That’s the job he signed up for, and despite Butler’s up-and-down regular season in big moments not a person in Miami has a problem with it.

“He’s willing to put himself out there,” Spoelstra said. “Make or miss, he wants that responsibility.”

Great players are willing to fail. That’s why they succeed.