“Nah, they’re not for real.”
Said Charles Barkley on Inside the NBA back on December 28th, right after an overtime win vs. the Sixers. This gave the Heat a five game winning streak along with a 24-8 record.
I’ll admit: despite Sir Charles’s well-documented inability to predict games accurately, I was in agreement with him at the time. While I’ve long been a Jimmy apologist to his critics (primarily Bulls fans), it was hard to see a team without at least two established star players making any kind of noise in the playoffs. After all, Miami came into the season with low expectations and play in a weak conference despite signing Butler as a free agent. Right before Barkley’s declaration, they had played against a Philly team that had lost their 10th of 14 road games – an ominous sign of things to come. The Heat were just in a honeymoon phase with their prized free agent signing, a rising star in Bam Adebayo, and some promising rookies, right? And were enjoying a favorable stretch of their schedule, right?
Wrong.
These Heat are for real. Fast forward to these Bubble Playoffs, where Miami just surprised many of us by handily defeating a heavy favorite #1 seed in Game 1. This took place shortly after disposing of an Indiana team with such ease that the Pacers decided to fire their coach.
So why did we (the majority) get the Heat wrong? It’s likely a combination of these three main reasons:
- We overestimated Milwaukee
- We underestimated Jimmy Butler
- We undervalue cultural alignment between a team and its star player
Reason 1: We Overestimated Milwaukee
There’s a growing camp of folks who attributed Game 1’s loss to Miami as some combination of: Milwaukee’s overrated, Giannis is overrated, and the Bucks don’t have a closer. All of which are valid arguments.
ESPN’s Amin Elhassan – who had started a “Heat Island” prior to the start of the series as one of the few to predict an upset – cited several concerns about Milwaukee on Tom Haberstroh’s “Habershow” podcast. The rationale was based on the Bucks’ reputation (and Amin’s own observation) of continued failure to adjust over the course of a playoff series. Amin argued that they’ve traditionally banked on the fact that their talent and game plan will eventually win 4 games in a series. This faulty strategy manifested as long ago as last season, when the Bucks dropped Game 1 of the 2019 Eastern Conference Semis vs. Boston. While they eventually won the series – thanks in part to the Celtics’ chemistry issues that started to boil over – it appeared that part of the equation was the Bucks’ long-standing vulnerability.
The Bucks’s issues resurfaced as soon as the playoffs started, having dropped Game 1 by double digits to an overmatched Orlando Magic team. Unlike the Magic’s improbable Game 1 win in last year’s playoffs vs. the eventual 2019 champion Raptors, this was a convincing win that once again had us questioning Milwaukee’s ability to contend for a title. While it didn’t bite them in that series, those same concerns came full circle.
The criticism of Milwaukee starts with their franchise player, Giannis Antetokoumnpo. Just as after last year’s conference finals loss vs. Kawhi and the eventual-champ Raptors, Giannis’s ability to win playoff games is once again being questioned. When a good defensive team like Miami barracades the paint, Giannis’s ability to impact the game becomes limited and his weaknesses – primarily outside shooting – become more glaring. Going 4-12 from the foul line certainly doesn’t help that sentiment either.
Still, as much as we now pick apart Giannis and the Bucks, one can’t help but attribute Game 1’s loss to their opponent rather than themselves.
Reason 2: We Underestimated Jimmy Butler
Not your traditional superstar, Jimmy Butler didn’t become an elite player overnight. In fact, he was the final 1st round pick in 2011 when he was scouted as a potential defensive specialist – far from a potential franchise player and leader. A 10-year veteran, the 30-year old’s career stats haven’t screamed ‘superstar’: 17.0/5.1/3.7 in terms of points/rebs/assists with a 20.3 career PER. But his body of work has not gone unnoticed – especially by the media; he’s a five-time All-Star who’s been named All-NBA player twice (TBD for 2019-20) – both as a third team selection in 2016-17 and 2017-18. Despite ranking 55th in the league in Real Plus-Minus, he has earned a reputation for being a great defender from the get-go, having won All-Defense honors four times in his career.
Jimmy’s 40-point Game 1 outburst – where he completely dictated the game offensively and defensively – was a playoff career-high. Although a highly impressive performance and perhaps his greatest playoff game to date, that’s 15th among active players when purely looking at single game point production.
| Rank | Player | Playoff Career High (Points) |
| 1 | Donovan Mitchell | 57 |
| 2 | LeBron James | 51 |
| 3 | Russell Westbrook | 51 |
| 4 | Kevin Durant | 50 |
| 5 | Jamal Murray | 50 |
| 6 | Damian Lillard | 50 |
| 7 | Paul George | 49 |
| 8 | Stephen Curry | 47 |
| 9 | Anthony Davis | 47 |
| 10 | Kawhi Leonard | 45 |
| 11 | James Harden | 45 |
| 12 | Nikola Jokić | 43 |
| 13 | Kyrie Irving | 42 |
| 14 | Giannis Antetokounmpo | 41 |
| 15 | Jimmy Butler | 40 |
The optics will tell you that Jimmy is a very good player, but not an elite playoff performer. What may not stick out in the history books is that particular performance came against the NBA’s #1 defense.
So have we underestimated Jimmy Butler, the individual? Maybe a little, but the eye test and superficial stats say not likely, as his play has translated into multiple All-Star, All-NBA and All-Defense selections. So that leaves one other possible reason we underestimated Miami…
Reason 3: We Undervalue Cultural Alignment Between Team and Its Star Player
Prior to this season, Jimmy was quickly given the above-average-player-who-can’t-get-along-with-teammates label. After all, it didn’t work out in Chicago. Or Minnesota. Or in some respects, Philadelphia. Whenever we see outspoken players experience chemistry issues on multiple teams, the conventional formula for these narratives is to blame the player (e.g. Kyrie) instead of the team(s).
In other words, the jury has always been out there on whether Jimmy can be a franchise player (or put up franchise player-worthy stats) – let alone whether he can get along with teammates. Here’s what we’ve never debated: his work ethic, will to win, year-to-year improvement, and status as arguably the league’s best small forward behind LeBron, Kawhi, and KD (when healthy).
The question with Jimmy, as with many players, is finding the right fit.
Culturally, it’s no secret that Butler can only function in a team that’s completely committed to hard work and winning. Jimmy is a notorious gym rat. So when he sees his teammates not put in a respectable level of effort, he calls them out. This obviously does not rub off well on many players in today’s NBA, and Butler hasn’t been shy about calling out teammates. It got him in trouble in Chicago, despite being co-signed by D-Wade. It got him in trouble in Minnesota. It was about to get him in trouble in Philly, but he and the Sixers figured out relatively quickly that he didn’t fit in. In an interview with his then-teammate JJ Redick, he detailed his butting heads with former teammates and his growing reputation as a “villain.” If his time in Miami so far has taught us anything, it’s that a team’s culture can be more important than its talent pool.
If Butler thought that Philly truly had a winning culture, he would have re-signed. If a deep playoff run that was ended by a miraculously clutch Kawhi buzzer beater wasn’t enough to convince him, that says a lot about what he felt. And after Philly got swept in the first round the year after they lost Butler to free agency, it’s safe to say the team is asking “what if?” Just ask Joel Embiid.
But work ethic and culture only gets you so far. One of the biggest key issues with team chemistry is, unsurprisingly, money; how the team manages its allocation to players is certainly an underlying issue with team chemistry. In other words, does a team compensate its players in accordance with its culture? And are the players on board with that structure? It’s often the elephant in the room in NBA locker rooms when player salaries are public.
| YEAR | TEAM | SALARY | Team Rank |
| 2011-12 | Bulls | $821,748 | 12th |
| 2012-13 | Bulls | $1,066,920 | 12th |
| 2013-14 | Bulls | $1,112,880 | 10th |
| 2014-15 | Bulls | $2,008,748 | 10th |
| 2015-16 | Bulls | $15,257,500 | 2nd (D. Rose) |
| 2016-17 | Bulls | $16,402,209 | 2nd (D. Wade) |
| 2017-18 | Bulls-Wolves | $18,151,070 | 1st |
| 2018-19 | Wolves-Sixers | $19,295,779 | 2nd (J. Embiid) |
| 2019-20 | Heat | $32,742,000 | 1st |
At a quick glance, he sure wasn’t in a Scottie Pippen-like situation. His main complaint from a contract perspective wasn’t with Chicago, but rather with the Wolves; although he was the highest paid at the time, it was primarily because the Wolves’ younger stars were on rookie contracts. That season, the team already committed lucrative extensions to Karl-Anthony Towns ($190M/5 years) and Andrew Wiggins ($146M/5 years) which would kick in the following season(s). Clearly, Minnesota positioned Towns and Wiggins to be their franchise cornerstones and put Jimmy lower on their priority list. So when the Wolves offered him $110M over 4 years, it’s easy to understand the frustration – especially since Jimmy didn’t believe Towns or Wiggins have the work ethic and mental makeup to turn the team into a winning franchise.
In short, it’s important for a franchise to put their money where their mouth is. And how they pay players speaks volumes about what their culture and mentality really is.
Now this isn’t to say that the Heat have always gotten this right. In fact, one can argue that Pat Riley grossly mismanaged the franchise’s all-time greatest asset, Dwyane Wade. Understandably, Riley was cautious about locking Wade in for long-term deals due to his chronic health issues. But on the other side, he deviated from his usual formula by offering questionable contracts to the likes of Hassan Whiteside in that same time period rather than reward Wade for his past sacrifices – most notably taking less money to orchestrate perhaps the biggest free agency splash of all-time in 2010 by bringing in LeBron and Chris Bosh. Feeling disrespected, Wade decided to leave Miami for Chicago out of principle – even though the Bulls didn’t give him much more ($47.5M/2 years) than what Miami offered ($40M/2 years).
Although Riley and Wade had since set aside their differences to bring Wade back for his final seasons, Wade’s disappointment in Riley could make it difficult for any future superstar to fully trust Riley to take care of them long term.
It’s safe to say Riley learned his lesson and didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of Jimmy’s former teams. He ignored all the “warning signs” and signed Butler to a 4-year $142M contract, establishing him as the franchise player from both a cultural and monetary perspective. He knew that the issues Butler had at his previous stints were a pure result of a lack of cultural fit and his former teams’ failure to understand his importance as a foundational piece.
Miami now has a clear direction, and a commitment to build around a hard-working star who is willing to accept the growing pains of a young team, but won’t accept less than full effort.
And so far, it’s working.