Oh man, Kyle had a terrible game. 7 pts on 3/12 (1/7), 7 assists and five turnovers. You cannot have that play from you ball-handler and play-maker, c'mon.
Bam was strangely quiet, 15 pts and only 6 rebs.
Why does the “Heat” blow games like this? A ten-point lead with 4:42 to play and you can’t close that out? This has happened before on the “Heat’s” Jimmy Butler teams. So I’m blaming it on Butler? I concede that I don’t have the evidence for it but it is in the back of my mind, yes.This is a Jimmy-led team! It seems to me Spoelstra lets Jimmy run the team too much. Taking the last shot tonight, which had to be a three (not exactly Jimmy’s strong suit). He’s done that before. Jimmy took more shots tonight than anyone else on the team and that does not seem to me to be the exception, but rather the rule. Jimmy is not LeBron James! He’s not Michael Jordan! He’s a star, not one of the all-time greats in the league. In the front of my mind tonight is Kyle being putrid, Bam ineffectual, Duncan not being able to shoot straight, again. I cant’t help the lingering suspicion, and I mean “lingering,” as in I’ve had this feeling before, that this has happened with Jimmy Butler "Heat" teams more than on other "Heat" teams of the past seven years. I feel, it just seems to me that these quarter collapses have happened with unusual frequency during Jimmy’s time here. We remember the stultifying 33-9 second quarter collapse against Boston two weeks ago. That was the game! We led by six after 1Q, we didn’t lose another quarter, “just” the second--but by 24 points (!), and lost the game by 17. I didn't watch the game, I wasn't following that second quarter play-by-play, I have no evidence, as I've conceded, that e.g. Jimmy missed ten shots that quarter or was in a catatonic trance; I don't know how or why it happened, like I don't know how or why the 4th Q happened tonight, all I know is that it has now happened twice in sixteen days, both times cost Miami the game, and I'll be a horse's ass if it hasn't happened before with special frequency on Jimmy-"Heat" teams. Look, I know NBA teams go on runs, the NBA game is a game of runs, but what seems unusual to me is there is no counter-run by the "Heat" that offsets the opponent's run, and, most unusual to me, if it's true, so many of these game-deciding lapses seem to me to be confined to precisely one quarter. They seem to me to be circumscribed by a 12-minute fence that gets raised with a referee's whistle and lowered with a second whistle, like clockwork. It does seem to me as if the team does sometimes go into a catatonic state for the 12 minutes of a quarter.
