When Jimmy Butler sat at the dais alongside Kyle Lowry for the pair’s postgame media availability following the Miami Heat‘s series-clinching win over the New York Knicks on Friday, he looked much the same as he has throughout the postseason.
Strong.
Of course, his striking visage was aided in no small part by the fact that he elected to hit the presser without a shirt on his back. Instead, he flashed his musculature for the assembled media.
“I would take my shirt off but I don’t want to embarrass him,” Lowry joked about Butler’s shirtlessness, via ESPN.
After the two players shared a chuckle, Lowry then asked whether his teammate was truly going to proceed with the scrum sans shirt, to which Butler replied: “You
do have to deal with this.”
Responded Lowry: “I ain’t gonna lie, you could have at least waxed this right here (his chest).”
Despite Less-Than-Stellar Series Finish, Heat Star Jimmy Butler Is Having a Historic Postseason
Jimmy Butler and Kyle Lowry are too funny 😂
In 41 minutes of action against the Knicks in the clincher, Butler scored 24 points and added eight rebounds and four assists (with zero turnovers). However, he hit on just seven of his 22 field-goal attempts and logged a completely neutral zero in the stat sheet’s plus/minus column.
Despite the backward step to close out Miami’s second-round series, though, Butler has been one of the playoffs’ best performers to date — and of all time, really.
Across his 10 appearances this postseason, Butler has averaged 31.1 points, 6.6 rebounds, 5.4 assists and 1.7 steals per contest. Meanwhile, he has connected on 52.7% of his field-goal attempts overall and 36.1% of his attempts from three-point range.
That line is on pace to make him one of just nine players in NBA history to have logged a line of 31-6-5-1.5 or better during a single playoff run. The others to have accomplished the feat: Michael Jordan (seven times), LeBron James (twice), Russell Westbrook, Tracy McGrady, Kawhi Leonard, James Harden, Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic.
And only three of those players did so while logging a true shooting percentage higher than Butler’s current mark of 61.8.
Despite that historic output, when Butler was asked by a reporter after Friday’s win what it was that set his team apart from typical No. 8 seeds, he didn’t call his own number. Instead, he shouted out his floor general.
“We got Kyle Lowry,” Butler said with a smile.
Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra Sounds Off on Team’s Eastern Conference Finals Berth
What the Heat have been able to do as an eighth seed — as well as a play-in team — has been eyebrow-raising to say the least. And the unlikelihood of it all isn’t lost on Miami’s play-caller, Erik Spoelstra, who took stock of the team’s advancement during his own session with the press corps.
“It is hard to win in this league. It’s hard to win in the playoffs and it is really freaking hard to get to the Eastern Conference Finals,” Spoelstra said, via Five Reasons Sports.
“We’ve had our normal big audacious goals for this season but when you get to one step
like this you just, you have great gratitude because there’s a lot of teams that would love to be in this position and we’ve had to fight and claw to earn everything that we’ve gotten in this postseason.
“We don’t take this for granted.”
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Heat’s Kyle Lowry Dumbstruck by a Shirtless Jimmy Butler Following Clincher