Getty Images Jimmy Butler of the Miami Heat and Marcus Smart of the Boston Celtics.
Marcus Smart was caught taking a shot at the Miami Heat while mic’d up during the Boston Celtics‘ Game 1 win over the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals.
Smart was urging the Celtics to play better defense after a first quarter that saw Stephen Curry score 21 points to kick off the series. It was the highest-scoring single quarter in the Finals since 1993, when Michael Jordan dropped 22 on the Phoenix Suns.
Smart — the Defensive Player of the Year — knows the challenge the Warriors provide is much different than the Heat.
“This isn’t the Heat series. We can’t start back. We have to start up,” Smart could be heard saying in the clip. “Especially if they start so high, you start up then drop cause we’re chasing. Now he goes down into the paint.”
His team listened and tightened up, overcoming a second-half deficit and taking a 1-0 lead in the series.
Heat Had Miserable Showing From Deep Against Celtics
While it’s some subtle shade from Smart, he’s not wrong. The Heat shot just 30% from deep in their series against the Celitcs, which was much more of a grind-out affair than what’s expected against the Warriors the rest of the way.
Heat forward Max Strus was complimentary of the adjustments the Celtics made during the series to make him — and the other Miami shooters — uncomfortable.
“Teams made adjustments to what we’re good at and what works. They made me do more than make threes. You can put the full blame on me for the 3-point percentage. I should be the leader on that, as the best shooter on the team,” Strus said during his exit interview. “To start the series, Marcus Smart was guarding me and he’s Defensive Player of the Year. That says something in itself that I did something [good] this year.”
Heat skipper Erik Spoelstra said better defense and smaller tougher shots are just part of the postseason, although he felt the storyline of Miami’s bad shooting might have been overblown.
“The level of scouting and attention to detail increases exponentially. Some of those looks that may have been described as open or lightly contested might be different a shot than in December or January,” Spoelstra said in his exit interview. “Our shooters will continue to work on making shots under duress with shorter windows. I’ll go into a full autopsy of that this summer, but my instinct is that [the three-point percentage drop, as a topic] was overplayed.”
Heat Star Jimmy Butler Gets Support for Final Shot
Despite their struggles shooting the ball, the Heat were just a few plays away from the Finals. Ironically, it was a Jimmy Butler 3-pointer that came up short with less than 30 seconds left that was the deciding shot in Game 7.
With 16.6 seconds left in the game and the Celtics’ Al Horford back on his heels, Butler appeared to have a lane to the hoop. But instead of trying to tie the game, he pulled up for a 3-pointer. The ball bounced off the rim and into the hands of Horford.
While the deep ball is not his game, Butler was supported for taking the shot after the outstanding series he had.
“I mean, he’s the only reason they were alive in this series and it is a wide-open 3. So, I had no problem with it. Hey Jimmy Butler, he proved to me man, he’s a stud man,” Hall of Famer and NBA analyst Charles Barkley said during an appearance on “The Dan Patrick Show.” “What he did in Game 6 and tried to do in Game 7, got nothing but love and respect for Jimmy f-ing Butler as I call him.
“I had no problem with Jimmy taking the shot and if he makes the shot we’d be having a different argument. We’d be saying damn Jimmy Butler we need to move him up on the line.”