Will Manso: Man, Jimmy Butler really carrying the Heat in those final minutes, along with a couple of big shots from Tyler Herro and Terry Rozier. Miami gets win No. 1 of the season. 114-106 the final in Charlotte. Butler with 26 points, 8 rebounds and 8 assists.
Source: Twitter
Anthony Chiang @Anthony_Chiang
End of third quarter: Heat 83, Hornets 72.
-Jimmy Butler up to 13 points, 7 rebounds, 7 assists, 2 steals and 1 block.
-Heat with 20 points off 16 Hornets turnovers.
-Heat with only 22 three-point attempts, but already have 24 shots at the rim. – 9:03 PM
Anthony Chiang @Anthony_Chiang
Jimmy Butler scores his first points of the game with 11:43 left in the second quarter. – 7:48 PM
Anthony Chiang @Anthony_Chiang
End of first quarter: Heat 23, Hornets 23.
-Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo haven’t scored yet.
-Heat already has six points on seven Hornets turnovers.
-Both teams struggling to make threes, combining to shoot 4 of 17 on threes in the opening quarter. – 7:45 PM
It may look and feel different this season, but the Heat’s goals are the same. “I feel like there’s a lot more that we still have to do,” Herro said. “I think just being back on top of the East, even just throughout the regular season. I don’t think we’re a team or an organization that just wants to be in that play-in tournament. So I think that’s goal No. 1 is just being able to play and be healthy and be out there for a whole regular season and be a top-three, top-four team in the East with home-court advantage. Then from there, getting back to the conference finals and winning that and then winning a championship. Every year we have that goal and it’s not going to change.” -via Miami Herald / October 22, 2024
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said to the Miami Herald when asked about the longevity of this core [Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro, Duncan Robinson]. “Those four guys have been part of a lot of winning. Yes, they give you the institutional corporate knowledge for the next wave. So it fast tracks a lot of the stuff. But that’s the deal and that’s not lost on us. It’s hard to win in this league. It’s hard to find a core group that can win consistently. We’ve had some disappointing losses and playoff losses. But if you just look at it in totality, that group … how many have won as many games or playoff series as them?” -via Miami Herald / October 22, 2024
Since Adebayo, Butler, Herro and Robinson became teammates during the 2019 offseason, the Heat has recorded the seventh-most regular-season wins (227) in the NBA during their first five seasons together. This Heat core has also racked up the second-most playoff wins (39) in the league during that time behind only the Boston Celtics. Among the four teams that have recorded the most playoff wins since the start of the 2019-20 season, the Heat is the only one that has not won a championship during that span. The others in that group that have won NBA titles during this stretch are the Celtics, Nuggets and Milwaukee Bucks. “It just shows that we’ve done a lot throughout our first five years,” Adebayo said. “But I feel like we still got another level. Because every year, we all come back better. This year just feels different. The energy feels different, and not just for us as a team. But the arena, the staff, the energy just feels different.” -via Miami Herald / October 22, 2024
This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: Jimmy Butler leads Heat to first win of the season