As fans hope to have Butler back, the team would announce on their official X, formerly Twitter, page that he is “questionable” with the illness. During the aforementioned defeat against the Thunder, Butler would leave towards the end of the first quarter where at first, it looked to be an ankle injury as he limped off the floor after a bang-bang play.
The team would then announce that he was “feeling ill” and wouldn’t return to the game as it was specified as a stomach bug that prevented him. Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra would speak about Butler entering the game with an illness and expressed his thoughts about him playing.
“I’m not thinking any other thought,” Spoelstra said. “If guys say they can go, we’re going right now.”
Heat’s Bam Adebayo on the team’s mindset without Jimmy Butler
As Butler and the Heat are surrounded with trade speculation, they still have a season in front of them as getting the star back would be huge, especially after the dreadful loss to Orlando where they led by as much as 25 points. If he won’t be able to go, it will be on Heat All-Star hopeful Tyler Herro and Bam Adebayo who spoke about having a next-man-up mentality.
“We got to figure this thing out,” Adebayo said. “You can’t harp on who’s in, who’s out. It’s about going out there and trying to get the W.”
Miami made slight history Saturday night, but not in the way they would have liked as according to Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press, “Teams with a 22-point lead or more entering the fourth quarter had gone 796-0 in NBA games since Dec. 22, 2019.” The Heat had a 22-point lead going into the final period and lost the game 121-114 as the Heat’s captain in Adebayo spoke about what went wrong and how the collapse is a “teaching point” according to Anthony Chiang of The Miami Herald.
“It’s hard to get wins in this league,” Adebayo said. “The easiest thing to do is be mediocre and lose. For us, this is definitely a teaching point. Being up like that, how can we sustain our mindset to keep pushing forward.”
“I feel like we relaxed because we were up,” Adebayo continued. “I feel like that’s the karma of the game. You relax and then you let a team get hot, and then it goes the other way and you’re trying to fight back.”
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Heat’s Erik Spoelstra on the “tough lessons” learned
One has to wonder if Butler would have played in the contest if the Heat would have prevailed, but it’s not like it was a close game throughout. Miami would finish the first half with 76 points which is a season-high for the team, but would break down in the fourth quarter where they scored a measly eight points as Spoelstra spoke about the “tough” aspects of the loss.
“These are tough lessons that we all have to learn,” Spoelstra said. “We all had our fingerprints in this loss in that fourth quarter, including myself.”
“These are tough a** lessons to complete a game,” Spoelstra continued. “This is the modern NBA right now. A 20-point lead is not what it was a decade ago and you have to finish all the way through.”
The Heat next face the Nets on Tuesday night, hoping to have Butler back as they are on a three-game skid just when they had a four-game winning streak recently.
