2022/3 season thread

Still buzzing after that.

A massive V, but still massive effort to be needed.

A bit of hope anyway

Butler continued his run of poor games, BUT the Heat won in Denver. It could be a big miss by Vegas coming here.

I think you'll have to explain how he's playing well since game 3 in Boston I'm afraid. My opinion is widely held and supported by his numbers.

More to basketball than numbers, it’s disingenuous to say he is playing poorly just because he isn’t putting up the same numbers as he did in previous series. He is still productive and as shown, finding ways to win. Will they need some big games from him, yes, but most good things go through him anyway

He played very well last night. Playoff Jimmy was back. Clutch performance with eight points and four assists in the fourth quarter. A total team performance too, he was at the centre of everything going on last night for the Heat.

Edit to add: That's just offense I was talking about, he was phenomenal on defense.

It's you that didn't watch the game obviously. Murray scored a playoffs low 18 points, the reason for that was Jimmy Butler who switched on to him. He missed the three pointer at the end because Butler was all over it.

Using stats suggests to me you are making your mind up on things without actually watching the game.

Sometimes the stats line up with the performance but other times they don't.

Butler was brilliant defensively. Offensively he was very involved without providing points or assists until those things were needed in the clutch.

So you have nothing to say about him shutting down Jamal Murray? He gets no credit for 21 points, 8 in the clutch, and 9 assists, 4 in the clutch.

His rebounds were low because he was defending on the perimeter where Murray likes to start his moves.

So Murray has his lowest points total in the playoffs, his last five were 26, 25, 37, 37, 31. Butler was the reason for this and you don't get stat sheet marks for that but you just ignore it like it's not important or never happened.

Steve Kerr even talked about it, saying they looked at Jokic and decided that he's gonna do what he does and let him at it. So they started Love to let Jimmy play Murray and that worked out until the fourth quarter where Butler had to bring it home.

Stop reading stats and watch the game.

Yes I watched the game.

I suppose some star players face less criticism than others, and #wins is the singular stat people struggle to see past.

I have a feeling Miami are going to do it again tonight. Spoelstra is such a great coach. He has his players capable of changing how they play to get what he needs from his team.

We don't know what he'll do at any given time. Will he put Butler on Murray again and just let Jokic do his thing? Will he decide now that he can get at Jokic?

I've a feeling he'll do something similar to game 2 as in put Butler on Murray because if you shut him down you have a great chance to win. Butler will be even more up for the job after spending a game doing it.

Pumped for this game, I think Denver could very well put a hammering on Miami but who knows with this Miami team, just hope it’s close. Watching it in New York today, strange watching a game this late. (Hope you are feeling better btw)