Jimmy Butler went back to Philadelphia on a mission to end their season and he accomplished his objective in a masterful two-way player performance in game 6. The Philadelphia 76ers got booed by their home fans throughout the game as they watched their team get defenestrated by a much better team. The frustrated Philly fans booed, left the game early in the fourth, and were escorted out with “bye bye” beauty pageant parade waves from the CEO of Big Face Coffee.
The last time the Heat were in Philly, they had been blown off the floor due to poor shooting and a defensive effort that didn’t align with the Heat’s brand of competitiveness and toughness. Poor rotations, slow to react help, and fronting Embiid in the post without putting pressure on the entry passer ended up in two decisive defeats for the Heat in Philadelphia that had the 76ers and their fans feeling confident about their prospects in the series moving forward. It was fool’s gold, but they backed up the Brinks truck and loaded up a Fort Knox amount of the iron pyrite anyway. “Heat Lifer”JJ Redick switched his pick from the Heat to the 76ers. It seemed like the sky was falling.
The Miami Heat don’t panic. They just adjust, trust their training, and lean into their culture. The series reset in a major way when the series moved back to Miami for game 5 and you could tangibly feel it right away. Strus and Butler were locked in, and Philadelphia never stood much of a chance after they fell behind 31-19 at the end of the first quarter. The Miami Heat don’t skip leg day or the cardio portion of their work outs either. As the games went on, Jimmy would be visibly exhausted, but he still grew bigger in those exhausting moments while the 76ers conversely started to shrink as the games wore on. The Sixers wore their fatigue on their faces and didn’t have enough fight to make it a competitive game. The Heat could smell the blood in the water.
After the 35-point beatdown in Miami on Tuesday, Jimmy Butler all but guaranteed a Heat victory to end the series in game 6 if the Heat didn’t let their shot making influence how much effort they would put in on the defensive side of the ball. That’s exactly what happened on Thursday night. The Heat were 5 men on a string all night and their suffocating style of defensive basketball shined through. You could see the defensive pressure of Miami slowly constricting the life out of Philly as the game progressed. Butler no longer switched with Bam on the perimeter. Instead, he fought through screens and stayed in front of Maxey. Which effectively nullified Maxey’s impact on the rest of the series.
Bam Adebayo didn’t have his best offensive series against Philadelphia, but switching to a paint protecting drop defense in games 5 and 6 allowed Bam to make Joel Embiid an inefficient player who was just ready to get this series over. Bam is a defensive prodigy. He is a quick twitch fleet footed Nigerian-American Swiss army knife that can adapt to any in game or in series adjustment that his basketball genius coach makes. We won’t spend too much on James Harden’s embarrassing 11 point performance, but the Heat clearly didn’t feel that Harden was capable of reproducing another 31 point performance filled with a bunch of 30 foot step back 3 point shots like the one he had in game 4. It turns out that their assessment of Harden was correct.
The national media is busy dissecting what the 76ers did wrong and they are wondering what happened to James Harden instead of celebrating the superstar level performances Jimmy Butler has given us so far in these playoffs. Jimmy Butler is quickly climbing up the ladder of all-time Heat player playoff records. His name is now next to Heat legends like Dwyane Wade and LeBron James in terms of his playoff performances. In fact, if you compare some of Butler’s numbers to LeBron’s numbers from the 2013 championship run, Butler is scoring more points and at a more efficient shooting clip with less fouls, less turnovers, and more steals. Jimmy Butler is a big-time playoff player who Philadelphia should have never let leave their program.
Jimmy Buckets is the first Heat player to score 30+ points in 4 consecutive road games in the playoffs since Dwyane Wade did it in 2005. Simply amazing! All that’s left is for Butler to put on a ring on it. Let’s see if he can keep it going. Next stop, the Eastern Conference Finals for the second time in the 3 years since the 76ers picked Tobias Harris over him. One team’s trash is another team’s treasure. We here in Miami are forever grateful that Jimmy Butler is a high-pressure moment player on our beloved Heat team. Now, we wait.
