When Jimmy Butler walked off the floor following Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals, moments after a last-second putback by Derrick White won the game for Boston, he exuded confidence in the face of shock.
“That’s good basketball,” he said in his postgame press conference. “I think, I believe, as we all do, like you’re going to get the same test until you pass it.”
The loss was the latest twist in a roller-coaster postseason run for the Miami Heat. In the last two months, Butler has willed Miami from the fringes of the Eastern Conference playoff picture to the brink of the NBA Finals, elevating his game to a ridiculous level and empowering an undermanned roster to exceed expectations.
In a win-or-go-home play-in matchup, Butler scored 31 points to topple the Bulls, his former team, and clinch the East’s eighth seed. In the first round, he averaged 38 points, six rebounds, five assists, and two steals as Miami beat the top-seeded Bucks in five games. Next, he battled a sprained ankle to lead the Heat past the Knicks, evoking memories of his performance in the 2020 bubble in Orlando, when a similar rampage led the fifth-seeded Heat all the way to the Finals.
The Eastern Conference finals against Boston initially followed a similar blueprint. Despite a talent gap, the Heat took a 3-0 lead on the Celtics, behind strong clutch performances from Butler and confident play from the rest of the Heat. But since a Game 3 blowout, Boston has flipped the script and, for the first time all playoffs, Butler has seemed mortal. Though he sank three massive free throws to put Miami ahead in the waning seconds of Game 6, he shot just 5-for-21 from the field in that game and struggled to wrest back control, leading some observers to wonder whether he and the Heat have enough left in the tank to finish off the Celtics.
Now the Heat will head back to Boston for Game 7, where they will make history one way or another: Either they’ll become the first NBA team ever to lose a series after leading 3-0, or they’ll become just the second 8-seed to make the NBA Finals, where the Denver Nuggets await. Given the stakes, Monday’s game will be the Heat’s toughest test yet.
But the whiplash of this series has ultimately given Butler another chance to do what he does best: defy expectations. He has spent his entire basketball life proving people wrong—and relished every opportunity to do so along the way.
“It comes from probably consistently being told no, or that there’s other guys that are better, or we’re going to recruit him instead of you,” says Brad Ball, who coached Butler in high school. “He’s constantly having to prove himself. And I think he’s had to do that his entire career.”
Butler has become one of the NBA playoffs’ most inevitable stars, but his career has been anything but. He was the 30th pick in the 2011 draft, chosen by Chicago, where, under Tom Thibodeau, he developed from a defensive specialist to an All-Star. Before that, he spent three seasons at Marquette, but only after playing a year with Tyler Junior College—Centenary had been the only Division I school to offer him a full scholarship when he was coming out of Tomball High School.
As Butler grew into an NBA star, he kept tabs on his buds back in Tyler, and one year made a pact with the squad. “Around 2015, he talked to that team and told them what it meant to play at Tyler,” Mike Marquis, the Tyler coach, tells me. “And then he promised if we made the championship game of the region, he’d be back.”
Sure enough, the team held up its end of the bargain, and Butler made good on his promise, returning over that summer to work out with the team and participate in scrimmages. But one day, after practice, a Tyler player issued a challenge.
“One of them mouthed off to him in the training room afterward,” Marquis says. “And Jimmy looked at me and said, ‘Coach, what time we play tomorrow?’ I said, ‘3:30.’ He said, ‘Bet, I got this.’ And he called one or two of our former players, and he took a walk-on and they won all seven games the next day.”
While an NBA player dominating a junior college team isn’t necessarily surprising, similar stories litter Butler’s basketball career. When he feels slighted, Butler responds with vengeance. In 2018, following a preseason contract dispute while he was a member of the Timberwolves, Butler flew in for a training camp practice, picked four bench players, and famously beat a starting group that included Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns.
This postseason, with Miami down 96-87 in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference finals, Butler got into a verbal kerfuffle with Celtics forward Grant Williams and went on a scoring binge to help the Heat take a 2-0 series lead.
“I feel like things like that always fuel Jimmy,” said his teammate Bam Adebayo following that game. “I feel like he starts it so it can get him more in the competition. You see down the stretch what he was doing.”
For as individually brilliant as Butler has been this postseason, the Heat would not have ascended to the conference finals if not for his teammates, many of whom were castoffs or journeymen before they found a role in Miami. Several have credited Butler for empowering them to expand their games, and the team seems to have adopted the no-fear mentality of its star.
Gabe Vincent, an undrafted guard, has blossomed in these playoffs, averaging 17 points per game against Boston and becoming an indispensable source of offense for the Heat. Caleb Martin, another undrafted player, has become a clutch contributor on the wing; he put up 21 points and 15 rebounds in Game 6, and is shooting 46 percent from 3 in the conference finals.
Butler’s unbridled confidence and belief in himself have seemed to spread outward to the rest of the Heat. “I think the big thing is he recognizes who wants to win,” Ball says. “And I mean, he wants to win. And I think that’s what makes him great: He can be whatever you need him to be. You need him to be a guy that scores 56, like he did last week, or week before, or he needs to be a guy that scores 19, and has 10 rebounds, and guards their best guy. He’ll do whatever he has to do to win.”
But for Miami to advance to the Finals, it will need a heroic effort from Butler. In addition to home court, the Celtics have all the momentum, not to mention the deeper, more talented team. The Ringer’s NBA Odds Machine gives Boston a 68 percent chance to win Game 7, but Miami has Butler and a group of players who have defied the odds every step of the way. Do they have one more unexpected victory in them?
“Like I told the guys on the bench,” Butler said after Game 6. “I play better, we’re not even in this position, honestly speaking. And I will be better.”
Then a sheepish smile appears.
“That’s what makes me smile, because those guys follow my lead,” he continued. “We’ve got to go on the road and win in a very, very, very tough environment. But we are capable of it. So let’s get busy.”
