How Jimmy Butler hijacked Erik Spoelstra's final play in regulation - "He trusted me in that moment"

With the way Jimmy Butler had carved up the Milwaukee Bucks all season long, there was just no way he was going to take a back seat with his team down two in regulation in Game 5. Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra had drawn up a play with two seconds left and his team trailing by two, 116-118. However, an adamant Butler insisted that he be the one to take the shot.
“He (Spoelstra) trusted me in that moment, as he has done multiple times,” said Butler at the podium after Game 5. “He was, like, ‘Go ahead, man. Take us home.’”
Trust in Jimmy
Spoelstra, as brilliant a basketball mind as he is, knew when to keep things simple and get the ball in the hands of the player who has brought them this far.
“I was going to do a different version of it,” Spoelstra said, “and he just said ‘No, let me be that guy.’”
Of course, Spoelstra had some apprehensions. After all, the player who was covering Butler—Jrue Holiday—is arguably the best perimeter defender in the league today and could have very easily spoiled the look. But Spoelstra was confident that Butler, who had already taken over this series with remarkable performances in each of the four previous games he played, could do it again and get them the win.
“I mean, Jrue Holiday is one of the best defenders on this planet,” Spoelstra said. “So if you’re going to throw something like that, it’d better be pinpoint, and you’d better have a Megatron-type guy that can go up there, take a little bit of contact and then somehow find a way to will it in the basket. But that kind of epitomizes JB.”
Jimmy knew what was going to happen
The former Marquette star had his imprint all over the series. So, he already had a feel for what the defense was going to do. He then leaned into this knowledge to manufacture a clean look and get the game-tying shot off and into the basket with just 0.5 of a second left in regulation.
“You could just tell, the entire series for that matter, that Jrue wasn’t taking a body off of me,” Butler said. “He wasn’t going to shoot the gap. He wasn’t going to do any of that. So I said, ‘I guarantee you whenever I turn this corner, he’s going to be locking and trailing. He has no choice but to be behind.’”
The rest, as they say, is history.
#NewProfilePic pic.twitter.com/tJebhIWVYF
— Miami HEAT (@MiamiHEAT) April 27, 2023