Coming off a gentleman’s sweep of the top seed in the Eastern Conference, Jimmy Butler is feeling plenty confident.
This weekend, the Miami Heat star brushed aside the notion that the team should feel like underdogs against the Boston Celtics in the upcoming Eastern Conference Finals. Butler said, per Nick Friedell of ESPN:
“We don’t really use ‘underdog.’ We may say that we have a chip on our shoulder, but I don’t think that we’re the underdog. I think that we’re a really good team. We play together. Everybody knows their role. We just compete.
“I think we’re supposed to be here. That’s how we think of it. To me, to us, that’s all that matters. We’re not underdogs. We’re competitors.”
The Heat enter the series as the No. 5 seed in the East as opposed to Boston, which is the No. 3 seed. But Miami just toppled the Milwaukee Bucks, the No. 1 seed and the NBA’s best regular-season team, in five fairly lopsided games in the second round. Thus, the Heat have to feel like they can beat anybody in the league right now.
Butler has helped carry the Heat this far with some unwavering confidence, and he is certainly not about to stop with the bravado now.
