Everything else was just a warm-up, even with this season's $32.7 million price tag. With Jimmy Butler, the payoff was always about the playoffs.
"Look, he chose us for a reason, and we chose him for a reason and we're finally here," coach Erik Spoelstra said after guiding the Miami Heat through Sunday's practice at Disney World. "This is when everybody is looking forward to the competition and the intensity of the games and seeing what your team is made of."
And seeing what Butler is made of, having a year ago nearly willed the Philadelphia 76ers into the Eastern Conference finals, if not for the multiple-bounce good fortune of a shot by the Toronto Raptors' Kawhi Leonard.
So Butler was asked the simple question after Sunday's practice of whether playoff time is Jimmy Butler time.
"I think so," he said. "But that's for everybody. Now is the time to play your best basketball, to do whatever it takes to make sure that your team can win.
"I know that myself, I know that my teammates, the coaches and this organization know that I'm capable of making it happen. So now it's just me going out there and doing just that, and helping this team win some games."
Speaking for his teammates, forward Jae Crowder said the locker room remains resolute that Jimmy Butler's time has come.
"I mean Jimmy, if you don't know, check his resume," he said. "That's when he comes alive, when the pressure's on, his back against the wall, and he wants to prove a point and prove that we as a team and his team can win ballgames.
"This is when he comes alive."
Crowder said it also is not as if teammates need to ask him to step up.
"I feel like this speaks just about who he is as a person and who he is as a basketball player and the work he puts into it," he said. "I don't feel like it's any pressure on him. I think, collectively, we feel like we're in a good mind state and we feel like we can attack these playoffs and do what we need to do to win ballgames."
The Heat's best-of-seven opening-round series against the Indiana Pacers starts Tuesday at 4 p.m. at the Wide World of Sports complex in the void of fans, amid the NBA's quarantine during the novel coronavirus pandemic.
For Butler, that means moving on from any distractions, even as his rivalry with Indiana's T.J. Warren seemingly continues to simmer.
"Look," Butler said, "I just play basketball. I'm going to go out there and be the best player on the floor. That's what Miami has me here to do. I'm not worried about nobody's matchup, man. We can kill that. That's dead. That's something of the past.
"Everybody wants to make a story out of it. But my job isn't against T.J. Warren, it's against the Indiana Pacers. And my job is to help the Miami Heat beat the Indiana Pacers."
The Heat went 3-1 against the Pacers during the regular season, results Butler called meaningless.
"I don't think anybody is worried about us winning three out of four, them losing three out of four. It doesn't matter," he said. "It's a different style of basketball now. It's a different time. The sense of urgency is going to be at an all-time high, so we can't be focused on what we did in the past.
"Everything that we're going over now is how are we going to continually get better and how we can beat this team four times. So we leave the regular season in the regular season. Everything that happened back then, leave it there. Moving forward, we're going to take it a day at a time and a game at a time."
