Best career season? Spoelstra says Heat’s Butler deserves All-NBA ‘without a doubt’
Erik Spoelstra paused to consider the question, whether, at 33, this has been Jimmy Butler’s best season.
But once Spoelstra took stock of the moment, particularly with Butler sitting out Sunday’s regular-season finale against the visiting Orlando Magic, the Heat coach had no trouble offering a fitting closing statement.
“The way he’s played this year, for sure, is definitely at an All-NBA level, without a doubt,” Spoelstra said. “Like the biggest takeaway from this is he’s an All-NBA guy this season.”
In his 12th season, Butler closed a career-best .539 from the field, his .560 effective field-goal percentage also a career high. And while his playing time was somewhat measured, he still finished with a career-best offensive rating and career-best scoring average per 100 possessions.
Beyond that, he posted career highs in win shares per 48 minutes and box-score plus-minuses.
The media vote for All-NBA and the rest of the league’s postseason awards closes on Monday, ahead of the play-in tournament and playoffs. Three All-NBA teams are selected, with Butler never having finished higher than the third team, which he made in 2017, ‘18, ‘20 and ‘21
To Spoelstra, it was as simple as an old dog insisting on learning new tricks.
“With his mind and IQ for the game, and you add experience, you add the competitiveness, you add his continued work on skill development, and he continues to grow as a basketball player,” Spoelstra said.
“And this is what I’ve said for a long time, that improvement is not only for the young players in the first three years. I think there’s this adage in the NBA that you only can improve your first three or four years and then you are who you are after that. I’ve just seen it countless times that that’s not true, if you approach it the right way, if you have a growth mindset.”
For the Heat, that is particularly heartening, with Butler under contract for three more years at $145 million total.
“Now there are some veteran players that think they are who they are, and they don’t want to necessarily try to get uncomfortable to improve,” Spoelstra said. “But Jimmy has played a little differently each of the four years [with the Heat], as well. So I think that’s invigorated him and I think that also has helped him develop different skill sets from these different responsibilities he’s added.”
Spoelstra stopped short of calling this Butler’s best Heat season, considering how Butler led the Heat to the NBA Finals in the 2020 Disney pandemic bubble and then within one victory of last season’s NBA Finals.
“I feel like each year he’s gotten better,” Spoelstra said.
“I don’t know if the statistics back that up. Obviously the first year with us and then the time in the bubble was at a world-class level. But the next year, even with some of the missed games, and that was kind of a wild season, he was very efficient that year. And then last year I thought was the next step in improvement, and then driving us all the way to the seventh game of the Eastern Conference finals.”
Emotional time
Even before 42-year-old veteran captain Udonis Haslem took the court Sunday for the final regular-season game of his 20-year Heat career, Spoelstra admitted there had been emotional days leading up to the moment.
“It’s somebody I care so deeply about, as a competitor, but even more as a person,” Spoelstra said. “And our relationship has really just grown in so many different ways over the years. I’m going to miss his spirit. I’m going to miss his voice. I’m going to miss his intentions. He has incredible, pure team intentions.
“Every single day, he doesn’t have a bad day. He may express himself with anger at times, at his teammates or even with me. But his intentions are pure. He doesn’t have bad days. There’s not a moodiness. He doesn’t come in with any type of baggage. It’s pure. It’s always about winning.”
The selflessness, Spoelstra said, is what has gone unseen externally.
“I think the average person would be shocked about how much he’s thinking about other people in the locker room or the coaching staff. It’s a beautiful trait to have as a human being.”
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