'Tobias Harris over me?' is a rallying cry for Jimmy Butler and the Heat
Butler, playing as well as anyone in the playoffs, has led the Miami Heat to their second conference finals in three seasons.
As Jimmy Butler walked off the court and turned through the tunnel of Wells Fargo Center, he waited until he was in earshot of TV cameras and mics before he belted out words that may haunt 76ers fans for years to come.
“Tobias Harris over me?!”
Those four words are less of a refrain on Harris — who’s a fine player and, by all accounts, a nice guy — and more a statement of bravado. A reminder that Butler — who scored 32 points in the Miami Heat’s closeout win over the 76ers Thursday night — is closer to the Joel Embiids and Giannis Antetokounmpos of the NBA than to Harris.
They are also an indictment on the 76ers, who traded Butler to Miami in 2019 in part to create enough space to sign Harris and Al Horford. Since then, the Heat have made it to the Eastern Conference finals two of Butler’s three seasons while the 76ers have failed to make it out of the second round, traded another star (Ben Simmons) for a celebrity guard (James Harden) who Embiid might not be super pumped to play with and prematurely enter another offseason of potential upheaval.
“I won't sit here and say I didn't wish he was my teammate,” Embiid said after the game. “I still don't know how we let him go.”
Meanwhile, here is Butler, the overlooked star, leading an overlooked Heat team to the cusp of a second Finals appearance in three seasons. Derided as a bad teammate in Minnesota and Philadelphia, Butler’s brashness is accepted and encouraged in Miami. Those four words — Tobias Harris over me — more than anything are a rallying cry for this Heat team,
“I’m where I belong,” Butler said. “Where I should have been a long time ago. A place where I’m welcome.”
Among the NBA’s top tier, Butler occupies a plane by himself. Unlike Embiid, Giannis, Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic and Devin Booker, he did not receive MVP votes. Unlike Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, his team did not receive the benefit of the doubt until it was too late. Unlike Stephen Curry, K-pop super fans did not flock to social media to get a teammate voted onto the All-Star team.
Most would consider Butler a tier or two below those players, on the fringe of the top 10 but not quite within the neatly round-numbered club. He once shared that top-12ish tier with Jayson Tatum, but Boston’s star has been tapped on the shoulder thanks to the Celtics’ drubbing of the Nets in the first round. Unlike the 24-year-old Tatum, Butler at 32 is too old to move up. No matter what he does, Butler will always be considered a notch below the NBA’s top-flight stars. A perennial All-Star who isn’t quite good enough to be the best player on a championship team.
And yet, perhaps that doesn’t matter.
Butler has been arguably the best two-way player in these playoffs. His 28.7 points per game ranks third among players still in the mix, behind only Luka (31.1) and Giannis (31.1), while his incredibly efficient shooting percentage of 52.5 bests both MVP candidates. He also gets to the line as much as Luka, is averaging 5.4 assists per game and is turning the ball over just 1.7 times per game (compared to more than four times per game by Giannis and Luka).
Defensively, Butler’s 2.1 steals per game leads the playoffs and the Heat have outscored opponents by an average of 11.8 points per game when he’s on the court.
Maybe Butler isn’t the top-tier, capital-S Star, but he’s sure playing like one, and he’s leading better than any of them.
Over in Golden State, the Warriors prematurely cited “Whoop That Trick” in advance of a potential closeout game in Memphis before getting their trick whooped by the Grizzlies. For the Phoenix Suns, Devin Booker joked about the “Luka special” a game before getting outscored by Luka 33 to 19 and now faces a Game 7. Las Vegas considers both the Warriors and Suns better bets to win the Finals than the Heat, and yet only the Heat entered their close-out game with appropriate urgency. Butler waited until after the game to talk his smack.
Butler is surely a lot of things, but entitled to success he is not. This is someone who at 13 was kicked out of his Texas home and slept on the couches of neighbors before playing basketball at a junior college. He was not blessed with NBA parents or alien-like athleticism. Everything Butler has he earned through sheer work, including his confidence. It’s that mindset that has his teammates following his lead.
“I didn’t know how good Jimmy was until I got here,” said PJ Tucker, who signed with the Heat last summer. “He’s showing me more than I ever thought. His heart, how he’s never scared of the moment, and that in itself is a talent.
“You can play with guys who are really good but, in those big moments, they shy away and they don’t want it. He wants part of every moment. He’s not scared at all. And that fearlessness, he puts that into a lot of guys on our team. He gives them confidence.”
Butler and the Heat are 2-0 in closeout games and the first team to advance to the conference finals because they meet the moment. The national media will continue to talk about the superstars while the Heat wait to learn their opponent, overlooking the team that made their Stars look mortal.
Embiid talked about not being allowed to catch the ball. Injury or not, that’s unthinkable to hear a 7-footer say.
Harden was pushed further to the #washed zone.
Trae Young was made to look more like Ish Smith.
While these things were happening, the national media wondered if Young “wasn’t ready yet” and focused on Harden’s uninspiring playoff history. But the common denominator in all of this is the Heat.
Make no mistake, the Heat have a chance.
The Heat will not be favored in the next round, and they probably shouldn’t be. The Bucks and Celtics are very good, with their own stars and unique set of strengths. The Heat will rightfully respect their next opponent which, along with their connectedness and sense of urgency, is their greatest strength.
“We’ve been doing it all year long,” Butler said when asked about his team’s success. “I’m not saying we deserve it, because we’re gonna have to earn it, but we be in there working, we study everybody.
“I just think it’s our time.”