LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — In another basketball life, maybe Jimmy Butler and Tyler Herro would be wearing green and dominating these Eastern Conference Finals together against whichever lesser opponent stood in their way.
Maybe if Boston had taken Butler with that 27th pick in 2011 rather than JaJuan Johnson — a mistake that gets talked about in Celtics’ front office circles to this day as their most painful miss in recent franchise history. And maybe if the Miami Heat hadn’t seen something special in Herro two Junes ago, when they took him 13th overall out of Kentucky.
According to a Tuesday report from NBC Sports Boston’s A. Sherrod Blakely that Herro pick inspired a “collective moan” from the Celtics group that had serious interest in him at No. 14 and could have nabbed him higher if only they hadn’t lost a lottery coin flip to the Heat (they took Romeo Langford, who played just 32 games during his injury-plagued…
