His current coach calls him “maniacal and sometimes psychotic,” but Jimmy Butler’s first NBA coach can have to plan a plan to stop the familiar All-Star guard as the newest potential MSG playoff villain within the second round of the playoffs.
Butler, who played for Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau with each the Bulls and the Timberwolves, carried the eighth-seeded Heat to a rare upset of the No.1 team within the Eastern Conference in a shocking five-game elimination of Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Bucks.
Based on Miami coach Erik Spoelstra’s description following Wednesday’s comeback win in additional time in Milwaukee, the 33-year-old Butler isn’t as more likely to wilt under the intense lights of Recent York as Donovan Mitchell and the Cavaliers did within the opening round.
“A whole lot of guys play the sport of basketball on this league. He competes to win. That’s a distinct language,” Spoelstra said Wednesday night. “He’s desperate and urgent and maniacal and sometimes psychotic concerning the will to attempt to win.
“He’ll make everybody within the constructing feel it. And that’s why he’s us and we’re him. That’s the best way we operate as well. The psychotic meets the psychotic. And it gets a bit of bit whatever.”
The six-time All-star scored 56 points within the Heat’s Game 4 victory, and he followed that by hitting a late shot to force additional time within the series clincher, ending with 42 points to establish a second-round matchup with Thibodeau and the Knicks.
“I’m not apprehensive about Thibs,” Butler said afterward. “Truthfully you’re asking the fallacious person. I don’t care who we play. We’ve just got to beat them 4 times.
“I understand you’re attempting to hype it up. But we’re going to go on the market and compete. We’re going to be the higher group. And we’re going to be together through good and thru bad, similar to we were on this series. So whether we play in Miami, whether we play within the Garden or we play in Rucker Park, we’d like to win 4 games.”
Butler became a first-time All-Star and won the league’s Most Improved Player award under Thibodeau with the Bulls in 2014-15.
They spent 4 seasons together in Chicago and were reunited in Minnesota in 2017 when Thibodeau traded for Butler while the Knicks’ current bench boss was the coach and head of basketball operations with the Timberwolves.
By the beginning of Butler’s second season there, nonetheless, he expressed unhappiness with the commitment of the T-Wolves’ young players, notably Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins.
His demand for a trade was granted in November of 2018 when Thibodeau shipped him to Philadelphia, where he played out that season before signing as a free agent with the Heat the next summer.
Still, Thibodeau recurrently speaks highly of Butler at any time when the teams have met throughout the regular season.
Following Butler’s 56-point performance earlier this week, when it began to look as if the teams could meet within the second round, Thibodeau said, “It doesn’t surprise me. I’ve seen him do this. He’s an unbelievable talent. … If I’ve had a relationship with you, I would like all those guys to do well, except once we play him. I do know what he’s attempting to do. And I do know what we’re attempting to do.”
And now as a substitute of attempting to game plan against Antetokounmpo and the Bucks, who swept the Knicks (3-0) within the regular season, Thibodeau’s team will face Butler and the Heat starting Sunday on the Garden.
The Knicks took three of 4 head-to-head meetings, with Butler averaging 22.5 points per game.
“We don’t hearken to the skin noise. And we is not going to hearken to any outside noise,” Butler said. “We’re going to do what we do. We’re going to learn from our mistakes and get well, and take the subsequent series like we took this one.”
