Jimmy Butler makes Knicks look ill from start
New York Knicks guard Quentin Grimes (6) blocks a shot from Miami Heat forward Jimmy Butler (22) during the second half of Game 3 of an NBA basketball second-round playoff series, Saturday, May 6, 2023, in Miami. Credit: AP/Wilfredo Lee
MIAMI —It took all of 42 seconds for Jimmy Butler to show the world just how little his sore ankle was bothering him.
Butler, who wasn’t cleared to play until an hour before tipoff, stuck it to the Knicks on the very first possession of what would end up being a 105-86 Miami victory in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference playoffs.
Butler scored the first of his 10 first-quarter points on the Heat’s very first possession, hitting a turnaround jumper over R.J. Barrett. He was the architect of a nightmare first quarter for the Knicks in which they quickly fell behind by double digits and were never able to recover.
Now, a stunned looking Knicks team, has to find a way to recover and recover quickly as they are just two losses away from losing to the eighth-seeded Heat.
Game 4 is in Miami on Monday night and it almost becomes a must win if the Knicks don’t want to play an elimination game in front of their home crowd at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday.
No one in the NBA is having a better postseason than Butler, who finished the game with 28 points. The Heat are now 6-1 in the postseason when Butler is playing, and Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said that just having him on the floor was a huge morale boost for the team.
“You can’t put an analytic to it,” Spoelstra said. “It’s just the overall confidence level your team has. You can always get the ball to him and know that he will get something efficient and coherent. . . . . You gotta have a guy like Jimmy also when you are playing against a good team.”
“A guy like Jimmy” who knows how to send a message to the other team early. Butler scored eight points in the first six minutes. But to the Knicks, it felt like he just dumped them in shortly after tipoff.
“Jimmy had eight points in the first two minutes or something,” Barrett said. “They just came out strong. They threw a bunch and we battled throughout the game. They started out great and they had a good game.”
In seven postseason games, Butler is averaging 34.4 points. That makes him second in the league, trailing only Phoenix’s Devin Booker, who leads with 36.9 points per game after scoring 47 in a win over the Denver Nuggets on Friday night.
The only game the Knicks won in this series was Game 2, which Butler sat out with the ankle he hurt at the end of the Heat’s Game 1 win.
That ankle was the focus of much drama over the last couple days. Butler stoked the fire by posting Instagram pictures of a private workout. He even posted a photo of his ankle as if to prove it wasn’t swollen.
The Knicks never doubted that he would be back on the court Saturday and weren’t surprised he came out on the attack. “That’s just Jimmy being Jimmy, playing his game,” Josh Hart said. “He was aggressive. We all kind of knew that was going to be the case.”
The last time Butler played a game in Kaseya Center, which is now what Miami is calling its home arena, Butler scored a career-high 56 points to lift the team to a win over the Milwaukee Bucks in Game 4 of their first-round series. He didn’t need that to beat the Knicks, who were offensively challenged the entire game.
Still, knowing what he is capable of, Butler’s teammates were pretty pumped up to find out he would be joining them Saturday.
“He’s been the best players in the world lately, so can’t be mad at having him on the floor,” Max Strus said. “Having him always helps. We just try to feed off of everything he gives us. And everyone’s just trying to help him. He’s been so great. We just want to do our job and be great for him.”
Butler’s ability to set the tone of the game weren’t limited to the first quarter. When the Knicks went on an 8-0 run with five minutes left in the fourth to cut Miami’s lead to 14 points, Butler came in and quickly hit a jumper to halt the run and any thought of a last-minute comeback.
Judging from his postseason demeanor, there’s no place that Butler would rather be than heading into Game 4 of this series.
Butler was asked if he believed he was at the peak of his career in the postseason. Said Butler: “I’m comfortable. I’m confident. I work extremely hard at my craft.”
Right now, that may be enough to push the Heat to the next round.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
