Revisiting the ‘Playoff Jimmy’ narrative after Miami Heat’s NBA Finals loss

Jimmy Butler struggled mightily on the brightest stage. It will bring about questions about his star power for the Miami Heat. 

With the Miami Heat‘s season on the line, Jimmy Butler shot 27 percent from the field, totaling 21 points. Nine of those points came at the free-throw line. It wasn’t the prettiest game of his career and it’s unfortunate that it came in an elimination game in the NBA Finals.

As you would’ve expected, it wasn’t enough as the Denver Nuggets outlasted the Heat in Game 5 to clinch their first NBA Championship in franchise history.

Jimmy Butler is now 0-2 in the NBA Finals in his career, and averages 24.1 points, 8.3 assists, and 6.6 rebounds, along with seven free throws per game. This postseason was a rollercoaster ride for Jimmy; the only thing different about this ride is once it went down, it never came back up.

“Playoff Jimmy” this postseason

In the first round of the playoffs, Jimmy averaged 37.6 points per game, six rebounds, and 4.8 assists, while going 59.7 percent from the field. Playoff Jimmy seemed to be in full effect.

In the Conference Semifinals, he averaged 24.6 points per game, 7.2 rebounds, and six assists. He shot 43.2 percent from the floor.

In the Conference Finals, he averaged 24.7 points per game, 7.6 rebounds, and 6.1 assists, shooting 42 percent from the floor.

And on the biggest stage, the NBA Finals, he averaged 21.6 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 6.4 assists, on 41.3 percent shooting.

Each round, his points per game and field goal percentage have gone down. That has been because of the matchups or coaching adjustments, but as a superstar and best player on the team, you have to maintain a level of consistency when it comes to scoring the basketball, and it seems like there was too much pressure on the role players as the playoffs went deeper.

But that leads us to the question, is Jimmy Butler a superstar?

Are we expecting too much of him? Are our expectations too high? Is he capable of being the best player on a championship team?

Maybe his ankle injury had something to do with his downhill performance. He injured his ankle late in Game 1 against the New York Knicks and has been playing on it ever since.

He was asked if it hindered his performance in the NBA Finals, and his comments were very blunt.

Maybe Jimmy Butler isn’t a superstar in this league currently, so it’s unfair to put superstar expectations on him. He’s averaging 22.9 points, 5.9 rebounds and 5.3 assists this season, along with five free throws per game.

When looked at in hindsight, they seem like pretty average numbers. So maybe we have to look at him and see if we are overrating him just a little bit.