Basketball

Jimmy Butler’s bad knee ‘no excuse’ for poor Game 4. How hurt are the Miami Heat?


BOSTON — Marcus Smart limped down the hallway at TD Garden.

The hood of his sweatshirt was pulled over his head. His torso, V-shaped, protruded through the shirt.

Smart was heavily favoring the sprained right ankle the Celtics coach had just said Smart was going to try to test to play in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals. But when Smart was hobbling down the hallway, having just gotten to the arena, less than 75 minutes remained before tip.

He wasn’t playing and he already knew it. He said something to a Celtics game ops employee, and as soon as she turned the corner from talking to Smart, she said out loud, “well heeeeee’s not playing.”

Smart is hurting, and with the swelling he’s experiencing from the sprain he suffered in Game 3, there is at least a question whether he will be ready for pivotal Game 5 in Miami on Wednesday, where the 2-2 series tie will be broken. Robert Williams III played Monday after missing Game 3 because his surgically repaired knee was too swollen. He’ll be dealing with the possibility of more flare-ups throughout the playoffs.

The Heat’s injuries are more ambiguous, other than the 102-82 gaping wound of a loss they suffered in Game 4 to the Smart-less Celtics on Monday. Players are bouncing in and out of lineups, and for the past six quarters, the offense has been a disaster.

The Heat said Jimmy Butler didn’t play the second half of a 109-103 Game 3 win because of right knee “irritation,” then he was brutal in Game 4 (3-of-14, six points, one assist). One could reasonably deduce he didn’t play well because his knee — the knee that knocked him out of the previous game — was still bothering him.

“I’m straight. No excuse for how I played tonight — it don’t got nothing to do with my knee,” Butler said. “I’ve just got to be better. I will be better. I’m not too worried about it.”

Tyler Herro is Miami’s second-leading scorer this season. Butler is first. Herro didn’t play in Game 4 because of a left groin strain he suffered in Game 3.

Herro may not have been able to rescue them, but missing Herro and a healthy Butler is costing Miami upward of 40 points. The Heat trailed 18-1, missed their first 14 shots and were down by 30-plus before the halfway point of the third quarter.

“We are not making any excuses,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “Our guys love competition, and our team has proven that we have a bunch of different ways that we can find a solution to get a win. We can do it in the mud. We can win it ugly. We can win it when the floodgates come open hitting 3s. We can do it with Jimmy taking over a game. We can do it when he’s facilitating. We have the mental fortitude and the collective toughness to be able to embrace what we have.”

It’s the Eastern Conference finals, and four of Miami’s top players are breaking down. Butler and Herro and Kyle Lowry (with his hamstring history) and PJ Tucker (knee bruise). That’s one way, but not the Heat way, to look at it.

The playoffs are not typically the time for players to miss a game here or there due to something they can otherwise play through. During playoff series, when asked for injury updates, then-Cleveland coach Tyronn Lue used to say everyone’s hurt and everyone’s playing. It’s the end of a long season, and every player on the team has something that doesn’t quite feel right.

Miami has had one significant injury this postseason, and that was to Lowry. Hamstrings, even if they’re just strained instead of completely torn, are tricky. Coming back too soon can make it worse, and even if the injury doesn’t worsen, running at significantly slower speeds is not exactly conducive to playing point guard. Ask James Harden.

Lowry did play a couple of games last series, but he sat games 5 and 6, then games 1 and 2 of this series. One difference between Lowry and the Heat and what Harden and the Nets went through in the playoffs last year is Miami has two capable backups. Basically, a struggling Lowry is not better than a healthy Gabe Vincent and Victor Oladipo. The Nets didn’t have that luxury last year. The Heat were wise to let Lowry recover.

Beyond that, Tucker suffered a knee bruise in Game 2 against the Celtics and missed the second half. He sits after Heat practices wearing what looks like a full-body air cast over his leg as treatment. But Tucker, 37, has basically threatened Spoelstra to not even consider holding him out, forbidding him to talk to trainers when Tucker is near.

That is typically the attitude of all players in the playoffs. If they are upright and otherwise able, there is nothing a coach can do or say to stop them.

Spoelstra not only insists the following to be true but also brags about it. He says all the Heat players are like Tucker. But they are not all treated like him.

Harkening to the first round, the Heat held a 3-1 lead over the Atlanta Hawks and sat Butler — in a closeout game! — because of the same right knee issue. He’d scored 36 points the game before. In the second round, Dewayne Dedmon missed a game for what the Heat called a head cold.

And of course so far in this series the Heat held Butler out of the second half of Game 3 and it almost cost them (a 26-point lead was whittled down to one), only for him to be back out there Monday night. Herro, ruled out for Game 4, has already said he should be able to play in Game 5.

There is a bit of a long game being played here by the Heat. There is calculus done to consider where they are in the series, who might be hurt on the other side, and what the team’s chances of winning later, more important games are with a healthier player rather than if he tried to play through an injury earlier in the series. And how healthy can most of their players be in the NBA Finals?

Butler didn’t play in the second half Saturday because the Heat were up 15 and were otherwise dominant in the game. And because they won Game 3 on Saturday, taking a 2-1 lead in the series and regaining home-court advantage, they held Herro out in Game 4, knowing there simply wasn’t the same urgency to win this one.

“This is nothing about a matter of want,” Spoelstra said, refusing to blame a miserable game Monday on injuries. “I understand the narratives and you can easily point to, they had desperation and urgency and we didn’t.

“Our guys want this. It’s not a matter of that.”

The Heat couldn’t get a decent shot. They were outrebounded, 60-39. They took only 14 foul shots (to the Celtics’ 38). In addition to Butler playing poorly, Tucker shot 0-of-4 and Max Strus was 0-of-7. Lowry was 1-of-6, and his backup, Gabe Vincent, was 2-of-10.

Miami’s star from Game 3, Bam Adebayo, who scored 31 and took a career-high 22 shots in that game, managed just five shots Monday.

“Injuries are a part of this,” Adebayo said. “Guys being out, guys playing half, guys playing 20 minutes in the game, just depends. You’ve just got to find a way to win.”

Injuries or gamesmanship, these absences are taking a toll on the Heat in the near term with a hope of a long-term benefit of being fresher (and still playing) in June.

(Photo: Winslow Townson / Getty Images)





READ NEWS SOURCE

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.