Jimmy Butler is HIM. After a historic 56-point outing in Game 4 of the Miami HEAT’s first-round series with the Milwaukee Bucks, Butler turned around and dropped 42 points more in an overtime thriller.
When the game was closing, Butler and the HEAT needed a bucket to make it to overtime. In the huddle before the acrobatic alley-oop to get to an extra session, head coach Erik Spoelstra was drawing up a play for a different player. Butler interrupted the huddle.
“He looked me dead in the eye and he just said, ‘No. Let me be that guy,’” Spoelstra said.
“He competes to win. That’s a different language. And he’s desperate, and urgent, and maniacal, and sometimes psychotic about the will to try to win…and that’s why he is us and we are him.”
— Erik Spoelstra on Jimmy Butler postgame
Watch his full postgame presser
pic.twitter.com/qOqj5NGQ4q
— Bally Sports Sun: HEAT (@BallyHEAT) April 27, 2023
And he, indeed, was that guy.
The Miami HEAT will move on the play the New York Knicks in the semifinals, placing Butler against his former NBA coach Tom Thibodeau. Game 1 between those two teams will be from Madison Square Garden on Tuesday.
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