Jimmy Butler has proven once again that when the Playoffs arrive, there’s no other player in the league you would definitively want to take over him. He carried the Miami Heat, Shaquille O’Neal’s former team, to a gentleman sweep over the number 1 seeded Milwaukee Bucks and then proceeded to steal home court advantage from the New York Knicks in the ECSF.
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Butler’s reign of terror over the Eastern Conference doesn’t look like it’s stopping any time soon as the Heat-Knicks series looks like it’s going to be quite the lengthy one. There was concern regarding his turned ankle in Game 1 but he would stay in the game and act as a decoy to get the Heat the win.
In his tenure with Miami, he’s never once scored over 40 points in the regular season. He’s done the same 8 times in the postseason with the Heat. This goes to show just how much Butler wants to win when the lights are at their brightest.
Shaquille O’Neal on Jimmy Butler and his ranking amongst Playoff performers
Butler has scored the most points by a player 30 years or older in the first 6 games of a postseason since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did so with the Los Angeles Lakers. He’s clearly on another level right now despite him being potentially out for Game 2 against the Knicks.
With that being said, his play thus far has earned him the right by the Instagram page ‘Basketball Forever’ to be labelled the best or most powerful Playoff performer in their power rankings. These rankings came out after the first round of the postseason concluded and it seems as though Shaquille O’Neal resonates with this list.
Shaq shares his views on Jimmy Butler and the rest of the remaining players in the Playoffs pic.twitter.com/tG2PhSRKtk
— tragicpatek (@tragicpatek) May 1, 2023
On this list are other players such as Stephen Curry, LeBron James, and Devin Booker, all of whom who had incredible first round series themselves. Curry in particular capped off a gritty 7-game series with a 50-point masterpiece in Game 7.
O’Neal is someone who has had several incredible Playoff runs with a multitude of teams. While his most memorable were his runs with the Los Angeles Lakers, he would lead the Orlando Magic to the NBA Finals in 1995 and win a title playing second fiddle to Dwyane Wade in Miami in 2006.
