Jimmy Butler will make his return to Miami on Tuesday night as a member of the Golden State Warriors. If you’re wondering how he’ll be received, you’re not alone. His exit was pretty messy. But he also took the Heat to playoff heights that nobody outside the Miami organization believed they had any chance of reaching.
For most players, two Eastern Conference titles in five years (we’re not really counting the 25 games he played for Miami this season) would qualify as a damn good run.
But Butler, in so many ways, probably both good and bad, isn’t like most players. Ahead of his return to Miami he chose to basically dismiss what was by far the most successful stretch of his career.
“We was aight,” Butler said of the Heat during his tenure. “We didn’t win nothing like we was supposed to. We made some cool runs. We had some fun. I think that’s all we did.”
Butler also gave the classic it’s just “another game” when asked about his emotions in returning to play against the Heat. There’s no chance it’s just another game. But with Butler, it might actually be closer to that than when other players make this claim ahead of clearly emotional matchups. He really is a unique dude who can clearly compartmentalize and narrow his focus on the task at hand, as we’ve seen when he gets into “Playoff Jimmy” mode. Blocking out everything and playing a poised and indeed unemotional brand of basketball is perhaps Butler’s greatest strength.
Still, this is a clear jab at the Heat, right? This sounds a lot like an ex that has moved on to what feels like a more exciting relationship right now (Butler is still in the honeymoon period with the Warriors, which he was in with the Heat for close to half a decade) painting their previous marriage with the dullest colors possible. Miami coach Eric Spoelstra was a little brighter with his remarks.
“We had a great five-year run,” Spoelstra said of Butler’s time with the Heat. “We didn’t win the title, but only one team does. We had some great moments here.”
This feels like the more reasonable perspective. There is just no logic in the idea that only one team actually achieves anything in a given season. Relative to personnel and by extension outside expectations, no team achieved more than the Heat during Butler’s run if we’re being honest.
In 2020, the Heat made the Finals as a No. 5 seed, and two years later they made it again as a play-in team. Butler elevated himself into an almost mythical class of playoff performers. Again, there is simply no logic in brushing off this level of success.
But great athletes often don’t operate from a place of logic. It makes me think about the movie they made about Dale Earnhardt, played by the great Barry Pepper, who delivered the most memorable line: “Second place is just the first loser.” Players like Butler, or at least how he comes across, really do categorize the 29 teams that don’t win the title in a given season as losers.
The Heat were not anything close to losers during Butler’s tenure. What Miami did with Butler was a lot more than a couple “cool runs.” The “We Believe” Warriors making the second round as a No. 8 seed in 2008, or in 2013 when Stephen Curry burst on the scene with a first-round upset of the Nuggets; the 2021 Hawks slipping into the conference finals only to crash completely back to earth in the years since; the Pacers making last year’s conference finals or the Wolves making it in the West — these are “cool runs.”
Butler knows this, I think, but he isn’t about to give the Heat the satisfaction of acknowledging the successes they enjoyed together ahead of the first post-breakup reunion. It should make for some excitement on the court, at least during introductions, and perhaps it will bring out the best in the Heat. They could use the extra juice as losers of 10 of their last 11 games.
