Is Jimmy Butler The Most Underrated Playoff Star In The NBA?

Jimmy Butler is not always the first name that comes up when discussing the best in the NBA.

Respectfully, he does not always come up in the top-five, or even top-ten conversations, despite some of the relied-upon metrics proving against those rankings.

For example, this past season he found himself ranked tied for 3rd with expected MVP Joel Embiid with 12.3 Win Shares, one of 24 players to average over 22 points a game, and he had a defensive rating of 112.

But, he always seems to play his best in the postseason, thus reminding NBA fans that he is still one of the best in the league. So, how impactful is he when the games have more at stake?

The eighth-seeded, play-in Miami Heat defeating the top-rated Milwaukee Bucks in just five games could be the best example of this, especially when we break down how big Butler was for Miami.

In these five games, Butler averaged 37.6 points per game. That’s 188 in just five games, which is just the 15th time in NBA history that a player has averaged 35 per game in at least a 5-game playoff stretch.

While a smaller sample size, this per-game average is 14.7 points per game more than his regular season average, which is also nothing new for ‘Playoff Jimmy’, as in 4 of the past 5 postseasons he has surpassed his regular season per game average.

These historic series numbers were also capitalized by his monster Game 4, where he led the Heat to victory on a 56-point performance.

Butler became just the 7th player in NBA history to drop 56 or more in a playoff game, and the 5th to do it without overtime.

But, since Butler is such a versatile scorer, he would actually have the highest single-game performance of this group if we inflated everyone from their separate eras to the same league average, as his 56 would jump to 61.

Simply put, Butler has been considered an above average playoff performer since he stole the show in the 2020 NBA Bubble, nearly defeating the loaded Los Angeles Lakers in the Finals.

Since then, he’s been able to prove it was not a fluke, and thus jumping those deemed ahead of Butler in terms of the historic greats come the end of the 82-game season.

And as we know, being passed up or looked over is nothing new for Butler. Whether we are talking about him being taken 30th overall in the 2011 Bulls, not being built around as the franchise player in Chicago, or not receiving the max contract by the 76ers, which was instead awarded to Tobias Harris, Butler has always had a knack for proving the doubters wrong.

So, at a certain point, is it about time we stopped being surprised by what he is able to do once him or his team is counted out?