Can Knicks cool down Heat's Jimmy Butler?
Jimmy Butler #22 of the Miami Heat reacts during the fourth quarter against the Milwaukee Bucks in Game Four of the Eastern Conference First Round Playoffs at Kaseya Center on April 24, 2023 in Miami. Credit: Getty Images/Megan Briggs
GREENBURGH — As the Knicks began preparations for the renewal of hostilities in an Eastern Conference semifinal series against the Miami Heat, there is one name that is the focus of every bit of the game plan, and it is a familiar one for coach Tom Thibodeau.
Jimmy Butler.
Thibodeau was there from the beginning, scouting Butler during his days at Marquette. He was Butler’s coach for years in Chicago and Minnesota as he developed from the last pick of the first round in 2011 to the most fearsome player in the playoffs right now.
Butler almost singlehandedly carried the eighth-seeded Heat past the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in the first round. There was a 56-point masterpiece in Game 4 and then an improbable last-second shot to force overtime in the Heat’s Game 5 win.
“I’ll be honest: I didn’t see this,” Thibodeau said of predraft work when he was with the Bulls. “I saw — the things that stood out were his toughness, his competitiveness. He played a lot of power forward. But when you look at him, you say, OK, we had what I thought was the best team in the league . . . so I felt like we were getting a rotation player. I didn’t know how good he would become.
“I think his first year was the lockout. And he was behind Luol Deng. Really the first opportunity he had to play was here at the Garden. It was [Dec. 2, 2011], Luol was out. And he had to guard [Carmelo Anthony]. He came in — we started talking to the coaches before the game. I said, ‘Are we really playing him first game [in this spot]?’ And he was great. So that told me a lot about him right there. And then each year he just got better and better.”
What Butler has become is the centerpiece of the scouting report, the prototypical Thibodeau player — a beast he helped create and now must defeat.
“Well, I think there’s nothing he can’t do, because it’s not just the shot-making,” Thibodeau said. “It’s the ability to get into the paint, make plays, get to the line. You have to be disciplined against him, but also the shot creation. So your team has to be locked into the things that he’s doing, you have to have an awareness and you can’t gift him free throws and you got to have good body position against him, and you gotta go guard it with your team. But they are a lot more than just Jimmy.”
The Heat certainly are, with Bam Adebayo and Kyle Lowry and an assortment of unheralded players who have risen from undrafted wannabes to postseason contributors.
The Knicks must plan for Butler the same way they had to plot to limit the Cavaliers’ Donovan Mitchell in the first round.
Years after he scouted and drafted Butler, Thibodeau was running the show in Minnesota and had Josh Hart in for workouts. And in Hart, he saw a comparison to Butler.
“Yeah. Certainly. The toughness, the competitiveness, all those things,” Thibodeau said. “All the intangibles. Playmaking ability of whatever the game needed. The toughness aspect of it, very similar.”
Now Hart likely will be counted on most among a group of players Thibodeau will utilize to try to limit Butler. Hart certainly knows what the task is, not only after defending him much of the time when the Knicks and Heat played in the regular season but also watching on television when Butler hit the tying shot Wednesday night. Hart simply tweeted, “Wow.”
“My mentality never changes,” he said. “Obviously, he’s on a great streak right now. My job is to make it difficult for him, force him to shoot tough shots. I think the biggest thing with him . . . he does a really good job of getting to the free-throw line. I have to be smart with not having stupid fouls, stupid reach-ins. He’s a smart player. He uses that to his advantage. Nothing different. Just make it as tough for him as I can.”
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of Butler, “He’s desperate and urgent and maniacal and sometimes psychotic about the will to try to win.”
Thibodeau saw that, too, and he knows he needs his players to rise to that level.
“I think when you look at intangibles of winning players, that’s one of the main things is competitiveness,” he said. “The ability to think on your feet, how competitive you are, your drive, the ability to sustain great effort over a long period of time — those are the things you try to identify in players. And that’s what drives winning, drives improvement. Those are winning characteristics.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
