The Miami Heat were bounced from the NBA playoffs in five games by the Boston Celtics, but star Jimmy Butler believes things would have been different if he was healthy.
Butler suffered a sprained MCL during the play-in tournament against the Philadelphia 76ers. He missed all five games against the Celtics.
“If I was playing, Boston would be at home,” Butler recently said in an interview with Rock the Bells. “New York would d— sure be f–king at home.”
The Celtics cruised to the Eastern Conference’s best record (64–18) this season, but Butler’s confidence likely is coming from the rivals’ recent playoff history. The Heat got the better of Boston in both the 2020 and ’23 conference finals.
Butler was named the 2023 Eastern Conference finals MVP after tallying 24.2 points, 7.7 rebounds and 6.2 assists per game against the Celtics.
Butler ended his quick interview with Rock the Bells by addressing New York Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau, who he played for with the Chicago Bulls from 2011 to ’15 and again with the Minnesota Timberwolves from 2017 to ’19.
Thibodeau and the Knicks are set to face the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference semifinals after defeating the Philadelphia 76ers in six games.
“I love Thibs, but I don’t want him to win,” Butler said. “Thibs, I love you baby, but I want to beat you to a pulp. It’s like a one-sided relationship. You’re in love with me. I love you, but I’m not in love with you.”
Butler, 34, will be paid over $48 million by the Heat next season. He has a $52.4 million player option on his contract for the 2025-26 campaign.
Kendrick Perkins wasn't thrilled with LeBron James's recent statement about former teammate Kyrie Irving ahead of the 2024 NBA Finals.
On his Mind the Game podcast with JJ Redick earlier this week, James said he is "so f------ mad" that he's not Irving's running mate anymore in the NBA.
“Here we go again,” Perkins said Thursday on ESPN. “Bron weaseling his way into somebody else’s moment … This is not about you! Your team is at home. This is about the Mavs and the Celtics, but yet you’re so mad and disappointed that you’re not Kyrie Irving’s running mate anymore. Here we go again.”
Irving and James played three seasons together on the Cavaliers from 2014 to '17 and brought an NBA championship to Cleveland in 2016.
In 2017, Irving asked the Cavaliers for a trade, and he ended up in Boston for two years. When that didn't work out, Irving signed with the Brooklyn Nets in 2019 and later requested another trade in 2023, where he landed with the Mavericks.
Seven years after departing James in Cleveland, things have finally come together for Irving. He and backcourt mate Luka Doncic have proven to be the NBA's best scoring duo throughout the fifth-seeded Mavericks' run to the NBA Finals.
Irving and the Mavericks tip off the NBA Finals in Game 1 on Thursday night at TD Garden.
Early in the fourth quarter it looked like Boston was going to cruise to a 3–0 series lead. A Derrick White three staked the Celtics to a 21-point lead with 11 minutes to play. The three-point line was hot and the Mavericks looked finished. Then P.J. Washington hit a three. Then Luka Doncic hit a layup. Then Dereck Lively II tipped in a miss. A 12–0 run cut the lead to nine with eight minutes to play. A 20–2 run made it a one-possession game with six minutes to play.
Doncic was hot. Kyrie Irving was rolling. Dallas had life.
With 4:38 to play, Doncic picked up his fifth personal foul. Bad. Fewer than 30 seconds later, he picked up his sixth. Worse. Dallas, faced with trying to complete the comeback with its All-NBA guard on the bench, crumbled. An Irving jumper briefly cut the lead to one but Boston quickly pushed it back up to three, then six, then eight. And that was your ball game.
“We had a good chance,” Doncic said. “We were close. Just didn’t get it. I wish I was out there.”
Said Jayson Tatum, “The game of basketball is about runs, and this is at the highest level. You know, it’s the best team in the West at this point. They are going to make shots. They are going to go on a run, and it’s just all about how do you respond.”
When Dallas surged to an early 13-point first-quarter lead, there was Tatum, scoring 20 of his 31 points in the first half to keep the game close. When Boston needed buckets down the stretch, there was Jaylen Brown, who scored 24 of his 30 in the second half, including nine in the fourth quarter.
It wasn’t a flawless game. Tatum struggled with his shot, finishing 11-for-26. Brown was 2-for-9 from three-point range. But they refused to get discouraged. It was Tatum’s driving dunk in traffic that pushed the Celtics’ lead to six late in the fourth quarter. It was Brown’s 21-footer that put the game away. For just the second time in Celtics history, two players scored at least 30 points in a Finals game. And when the final buzzer sounded, the two stars embraced near center court.
“Just you know showing the emotions of the game,” Tatum said. “Two guys that were excited, tired, that, you know, after the game. We’re not necessarily saying like, ‘One more,’ or anything like that. We are just saying, ‘However long it takes.’ Nobody is relaxed. Nobody is satisfied. Just at that moment, you know, just told him I was proud of him and he said the same thing. That we’ve got to keep fighting. We can’t relax.”
Role players have become the story of this series. For Boston, the first two games were dominated by Kristaps Porzingis, who returned from a 38-day absence to help power Boston to a 2–0 series lead. In Game 3, with Porzinigis out, it was White (16 points) and Sam Hauser (nine) making shots. Al Horford stretching out for 37 minutes. Xavier Tillman, playing his first minutes of this series, finishing a +9 in 11 minutes.
“I just think that top to bottom, we trust everybody, and we just compete at a high level,” White said. “Obviously, they are great players, and it’s a challenge but [it’s] just consistently being in the right position and just competing.”
Tillman came up big in Game 3, playing his first minutes of the Finals. / Peter Casey-USA TODAY Sports
On Dallas’s side, it was more of the same. Washington chipped in nine points during Dallas’s fourth-quarter comeback but finished with 12 overall. Derrick Jones Jr. was a non-factor. Maxi Kleber, too. Jason Kidd dusted off Tim Hardaway Jr. for 20 minutes. Hardaway finished 0-for-5. In the first half, Kidd’s rotation went 11 deep.
“We were trying to find someone to come off the bench and give us a spark,” Kidd said. “It doesn’t always have to be someone making a shot. I thought the guys that played tonight helped us get the lead or get back into the game.
“When you look at some of the guys who played, we got good looks, some of them made them, some of them didn’t. I thought the group that played, once that third quarter got away from us, it just showed the group kept playing.”
In the conference playoffs, Luke Kornet gobbled up the bulk of the non-Porzingis minutes. In Game 3, Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla went with Tillman, in part because of the ex-Memphis Grizzlies forward’s experience against the Mavericks. Tillman responded by knocking down a corner three in the third quarter and swatting away two shots.
“Big shout out to X,” White said. “To not be in the rotation but to stay locked in and he gives us big-time minutes. He just does a little bit of everything out there. Then he guarded his ass off and hit a big shot and rebounds, and he just did a little bit of everything for us. Credit to him. Great, great teammate, great guy, and he was big for us.”
The statistics say no. Of the 156 teams that have trailed 3–0 in an NBA playoff series, zero have come back to win it. The more pressing concern is if Dallas can avoid a sweep. Doncic struck an optimistic tone at his postgame news conference. “Being down 21 in the third game and then coming back was a really positive thing for us,” he said. And the Mavs did get a breakout game from Irving (35 points). But as talented as Doncic and Irving are, they are not getting enough help. And a Celtics team that nearly completed a 3–0 comeback last season isn’t sounding like one ready to let this one slip away.
“You have to expect the expected,” Mazzulla said. “You’ve got to understand we are just as vulnerable if not more vulnerable than they are. And we have to play that way. So as long as we have that mindset, and when you understand that you’re vulnerable and your back’s against the wall, you’ve got to fight. And so that’s the mindset that we have to have.”