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BOSTON – In the NBA playoffs, the games need a good story. Without one, it’s just clashes that aim too late and crawl through too long TV downtime and those long shots of officers piled on top of a monitor, deciding if one player grazing another was actually a flagrantly missing.
The best players write their own stories. Jimmy Butler, the main character of the Miami Heat, knew what he was doing on Friday night when he revealed the private conversation he had with franchise legend Dwyane Wade before the sixth game of the Eastern Conference Finals. According to Butler, Wade told him to forget his knee pain, because no one cares anyway, and to “keep building your legacy.”
A good narrator like Butler would call this context. If he needed a little more tension, Butler could have used the detail of teammates PJ Tucker and Markieff Morris who told him he had to drop 50 in the essential game. With this kind of build-up, the public could delight even more with the conclusion: Butler’s sensational night, when he scored 47 points, the highest of his career in the playoffs, with nine rebounds, eight assists and four steals , on the Boston Celtics home court.
Now, with another postseason masterpiece, a performance that can be compared to some of the best ever seen in the elimination games, Butler’s legacy only intensifies the anticipation of a moment of Game 7 Sunday in Miami .
“Jimmy Butler is a great competitor; “It really is,” said Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, using his star’s full name because only “Jimmy” no longer does. ” is as high as anyone who has played this game. He put his fingerprints on this game. “
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Boston could take more advantage of the impressions of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown in Game 7. The two have grown up together as professionals, the baby Celtics who never had much use for an older brother. Injuries ruined Gordon Hayward’s tenure in Boston, and Kyrie Irving’s cameo lasted only two years and produced vitriol that he will endure every time he steps on the TD Garden floor.
Thus, without relying on a veteran superstar, the young tandem learned from its first highs and lows (the seven-game Eastern Conference Finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers led by LeBron James during the debut season of Tatum), become stars and this season took out Boston. of the image of the play-in and the dispute of the championship.
During each round of the playoffs, sweeping Irving, Kevin Durant and the Brooklyn Nets, then dethroning champion Milwaukee Bucks before facing the Heat, the duo has silenced any lingering questions about whether or not they can fit together. His partnership gave Boston all the context its history needed: three games to two, the Celtics were expected to win because of their potential rival waiting in the west. Draymond Green and the Golden State Warriors had just set their ticket for the final Thursday when Green predicted on TNT, “We’ll play in Boston.”
And they were at home where with a win, 24-year-old Tatum would have lifted the trophy named after Boston favorite Larry Bird as the first MVP of the Eastern Conference Finals.
With a win, Tatum and Brown would have risen to the rare green air of Celtic tradition. But Butler had a chat with Wade, ignored the lingering swelling in his right knee, and then spent the night writing more chapters in Jimmy’s Playoff book.
“D-Wade never hits me until his voice is really needed. And it was,” Butler said. “I texted him and said thank you. Just to let me out, keep building on this legacy and make sure we win.”
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At the same time, the two Boston stars, neither of whom have yet earned such a brilliant nickname, disappeared when their contributions were most important. Together, they combined to try seven field goals in the second half.
As individuals, they looked more like the neophytes of 2018 than the veterans they should be: Tatum spent the fourth quarter treating the ball as if it had been saturated with butter, committing four of the seven losses to his maximum. match, while Brown made a leap. pair of late free throws when the score was tied at 99. Overwriting his mistakes with his own history, Butler appeared in Miami’s next possession, entering from the right bottom line and scoring through the lack of Al Horford.
“Sometimes you just need your best players and your man to make plays,” Spoelstra said. “He was able to do it in those moments of truth.”
There may not be a more compelling drama in sports than a Game 7, but often the previous game can be just as exciting. We don’t have the indelible image of LeBron, hunched forward and with threatening eyes, if he doesn’t first save the Heat against Boston in the sixth game of the 2012 Eastern Finals. Klay Thompson is not called “Game 6 Klay” without his legacy performance, arranging for the Warriors to beat the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2016 on a night when they could have been eliminated. And there’s no shout of Jay-Z in “Jackson … Tyson … Jordan – Game 6” if Michael Jordan doesn’t hit this 1998 Utah Jazz championship jumper.
Add the performance of Butler’s Game 6 to the same top shelf. Only Wilt Chamberlain scored more points (50) than Butler in a playoff win on the road as he faced elimination. The third player with the most points on the same stage? Tatum, who scored 46 points in the sixth game against the Bucks in the previous round.
On Sunday, the legacies will be at stake. Butler already seemed to understand this in Game 6; Tatum and Brown did not. To use Heat’s teammate Kyle Lowry’s description of how Butler took advantage of the moment as a superstar should do: “It’s amazing.”
You may need the beep button, but Butler’s narrative keeps growing. Perhaps some mature words could help young Boston stars as they try to write their own legacies.