Into The Jimmy-Verse

Over the cap, beyond the luxury tax and with minimal flexibility on paper, the Miami HEAT went out and found themselves an All-Star in his prime.

There’s plenty to say about what Jimmy Butler means for the team now and going forward, but it’s also a reminder of what the team has always been about.

Finding talent.

It’s easy to pick apart every move, big or small, made by a team in this business. In fact, you should. The best ones do that to themselves in a far more critical, and composed, manner than anyone could externally. Sometimes a risk doesn’t pan out. Sometimes the house wins against even the smartest bet. The Basketball Gods will trample all over the best laid plans or take mercy on the most rickety. In the end, fair or not, you’re judged on the results, and the HEAT judge themselves behind the scenes on whether their decisions lead to acquiring great players.

As they did before with, among others, Alonzo Mourning, Tim Hardaway, Dwyane Wade, Shaquille O’Neal, LeBron James and Chris Bosh, they figured out a way to meet their standards, sign-and-trading for a player because that player found Miami to be an attractive destination.

While work toward building a true contender remains, this is a foundational move as far as the front office is concerned, one which represents their entire team-building philosophy.

Want to contend? Start with finding a star.

For the last three years, the HEAT have been by and large an offense by committee. Once he returned Dwyane Wade’s usage rate often crept towards 30 – a number typically reserved for the most elite offensive players – but he was doing so in reduced minutes. Goran Dragic and Dion Waiters shared the load three seasons ago, but even then the half-court offense began with them far more often than it finished. And when the clock shortened and the score was tight, the team had to find ways to manufacture good looks until Wade returned to shoulder much of that particular load.

Butler changes all of that.

We can quibble over what exactly that means. Justise Winslow stands to have the ball in his hands plenty as the team seeks to maximize his playmaking skills, Bam Adebayo has untapped potential as an offensive hub and there remain plenty of other capable options on the roster. That can all be true as we acknowledge all the same that Butler stands to step in as a high-usage, offensive engine the likes of which the team hasn’t seen since Wade led the team to the second round of the playoffs in 2016.

Now, we aren’t likely to see Butler step in and take on a James Harden or Russell Westbrook level burden. Butler’s own career-high in usage is 26.5 when he was still with Chicago. He’ll see an uptick from the 22.1 rate during his time in Philadelphia, but wherever it ends up Butler’s impact will be felt before games even begin. He’ll be front and center on every team’s scouting report. He’ll be the one they’re trying to disrupt as he draws the other team’s best defender. Miami’s ecosystem will center on Butler, and that will affect every way in which teams prepare to play the HEAT – especially in the postseason.

Having a true hub will affect how the HEAT prepare, too. It offers the roster stability, and stability breeds role definition. A four-time All-Star is a corner piece, and everyone else builds off of that. In a strange, roundabout way, the best way to achieve a perfectly balanced roster – as all things should be – is to have an imbalanced offensive load.

That wouldn’t matter if Butler didn’t offer that same stability from one game to the next.

Consistency is king in the NBA. It’s what divides the great from the good from the average. It’s also broad. You can call a player consistent and take it at face value, but consistent at what? Consistency of character matters. So does effort. Showing up, on time, every day and putting in the same work can mean the difference between sticking in the league or not.

Even All-Stars can struggle with consistency of performance, however, and that’s where Jimmy Butler shines. Where many see their numbers drop off to one degree or another against top-tier competition, Butler keeps chugging along. Against elite defenses? His efficiency maintains. In the postseason? He sustains. This isn’t to say he can’t have poor games here and there just as anyone can, but it’s possible, even likely, that those nights are more due to variance and the typical grind of the season than they are specific competition.

He’s also the rare player who gets to the free-throw line a ton that still gets to the free-throw line a ton in the playoffs.

Butler is a rock, and in this league, rocks raise your floor. No insignificant point for a team that has struggled at times to generate offense in the half-court against elite defense.

You’re probably asking by now exactly what sort of offense Butler will be generating? The repertoire is vast. We’ve discussed often in this space how important it is for a primary offensive option to be a three-level scorer, and Butler is one of the most well-rounded players in the league. In fact he profiles statistically, though not stylistically, in the same ballpark as Wade. Butler is the better shooter as he’s been around league average for the past few seasons, but with regards to a package that includes strong finishing at the rim, soft touch in the paint and an ability to get a mid-range look off against any sort of defender, HEAT observers will find themselves in familiar territory.

It’s getting downhill where Butler really excels. Over the past three seasons, and three teams, a Butler drive has been worth 1.07 points per possession including passes, which ranks 12th among the 35 players with at least 2,000 drives during that time – a rank that fits between dynamic points guards Kyrie Irving, Kemba Walker and Damian Lillard. And it’s here where the HEAT should be able to maximize Butler as a team that has excelled at generating driving lanes over the past three years.

With Butler’s physicality and touch, Erik Spoelstra can plug one punishing drive after another into an offense that prioritizes downhill action.

Not to mention there may be some untapped potential for a player who may be even better running off handoffs – another Spoelstra focus – than he is in a traditional pick-and-roll, which he’ll surely run plenty of with Adebayo, Kelly Olynyk and new-arrival Meyers Leonard (a pick-and-pop capable big whose spacing only makes life easier for everyone around him).

Late-game numbers are notoriously fickle. We’re typically talking about somewhere between 150 and 200 total minutes, and far fewer shots. The fact remains that Miami had the lowest ranked clutch offense last season, and their 21-24 record in games that were within five points in the final five minutes stood as the primary barrier preventing them from entering the postseason field.

Over the last three seasons, the year they did make the playoffs was the year the HEAT finished with more wins than losses in clutch games (29-24 in 2017-18).

Over the last six seasons, Jimmy Butler ranks 5th out of 44 players who have taken at least 25 shots in one-possessions games in the final shot clock, with an effective field-goal percentage of 44.9.

He’s made six true game-winners, including two with Philadelphia last season.

There’s also no guarantee he’ll continue to make shots at the same rate. Such is life as a late-game playmaker. You’re clutch until you’re not until you’re clutch again, though once public reputation loads too heavily in one direction it can take some doing to get it to reverse course. It’s less important that Butler has made big shots than it is that he’s simply taken them. Whether you’re clutch or not is simply a byproduct of being able to create opportunities for yourself and your teammates in the highest-leverage situations, and in tight spots Butler can still get to the rim.

Or he can set himself up for a makeable jumper – when the math favors the highest percentage chance to score any points, not the most efficient way to score the most points – if the defense pulls back to prevent attack.

As much as we all like to see beautiful sets create wide open looks in big spots, it’s easy to underrate just how valuable it is to have someone you can depend on with the ball in their hands. Sometimes the best thing at the end of the game is to know you can get a shot off with the right amount of time on the clock.

Of course the ideal isn’t just that adding a player like Butler creates more close victories, but that it eliminates the same need for them with more wins that aren’t close. The less you’re at the mercy of chance, the better position you’ll be in down the stretch of the regular season.

As significant as the last week has been to reshaping Miami’s roster, many of the same truths about this group hold true. We haven’t discussed defense too much because, well, the HEAT were a very good defense before and though they’ll likely miss the chasedown blocks of Josh Richardson and rim protection of Hassan Whiteside, adding an elite All-Defense guy in Butler should ensure that they remain, at least, a very good defense.

What also holds true today ,same as last month, is that much of Miami’s future is tied to how their young players, led by Justise Winslow and Bam Adebayo, develop. Having Butler as a stabilizing force soaking up some high-leverage pressure will ease the burden and help to define roles, but this team’s ceiling is tied to how Winslow improves as a pick-and-roll scorer, how Adebayo grows with the ball in his hands, and how the rest of the growing young cast can solidify themselves as rotation players.

It’s a unique position to have a young core surrounding an established star, but it’s a position which offers plenty of possibilities.

Possibilities that are about ceiling, but ones we won’t get clarity on anytime soon.

Eventually, everything and everyone will settle into the season and it’s just you and what you have. There won’t be anybody else coming from some other floor (that anyone knows about). That’s when we’ll start to get some real answers. We might have a decent idea of what this team will look like in the near term, but any roster shakeup is an opportunity to learn – and that’s always worth looking forward to.