After a hard-fought 117-116 overtime defeat of his old Sixers team, the Heat’s new All-Star wing Jimmy Butler reflected on the heightened expectations that come with his squad’s new winning ways, Ira Winderman of the Florida Sun-Sentinel reports.
“We can’t be happy with where we are,” Butler said. “Nobody in this locker room is, nobody in this organization is. We’ve got a couple of more levels to get this thing up before it gets real.”
The Heat sit at 24-8, the second-best overall record in the Eastern Conference. They have won their last five games in a row.
In a separate piece for the Sun-Sentinel, Winderman notes that coach Erik Spoelstra is not concerned with Butler’s shooting percentages through 28 games this season. Butler is shooting 42.6 percent from the field and 27.6 percent from three-point range.
“It’s early in the season. It will level out,” Spoelstra noted. “I don’t even look at the field-goal percentage number. If you factor in free-throw attempts and free throws, he is one of the most efficient offensive basketball players in the league.”
Butler is connecting on 83 percent of his 9.4 free-throw attempts per game.
Here are more Heat notes…
- Embattled Heat off-guard Dion Waiters has returned to practice, according to Khobi Price of the Florida Sun-Sentinel. He has yet to see on-court action this season, having been suspended three times thus far. Waiters has played just 120 of a possible 278 games during his stormy tenure in Miami, due to injuries and suspensions. The No. 4 pick in 2012 is currently in the third year of a fully guaranteed four-year, $52M contract he signed in the summer of 2017.
- Ira Winderman of the Sun-Sentinel spoke with an anonymous Eastern Conference NBA advance scout about how the Heat stack up against the top-seeded team in the East, the Bucks. “You have the best player in the league in Giannis [Antetokounmpo]. He’s really hard to stop. You really have to be solid in the middle,” the scout relayed to Winderman. “I think Miami has the ability with [Bam] Adebayo and [Meyers] Leonard and some big guys. You can’t let him get into the middle.”
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The Miami Herald’s Anthony Chiang takes a look at the friendship and on-court chemistry blossoming between Butler and the Heat’s most recent All-Star, Goran Dragic, now their sixth man. Chiang observes that, across the 284 on-court minutes Butler and Dragic have shared this season, Miami has outscored opposing teams by 66 points. “[Dragic] is moving up on my all-time favorite teammates list,” Butler confirmed.
