What Jimmy Butler accomplished last season during months that typically belong to football deserves more than to be lost in the ether of a juxtaposed 2019-20 NBA schedule.
So do right by both him and what the Heat accomplished in the Disney World quarantine bubble, even if, technically, the next move with rounding out the All-Star Game rosters is rounding them out with the top performers from the start of the 2020-21 season.
In a league turned upside down by the pandemic, with a previous season that ended in October, a current season that started in December, and an All-Star Game to be played in March, tradition needs to be set aside.
For years, particularly when it has come to the popularity contest of voting for All-Star Game starters, selections have transcended the current season.
That, in Butler’s case, should be the case with the reserves for this year’s game.
Because the every-last-breath offered by the Miami Heat forward in last season’s playoffs deserves ample payoff, after the Heat were dispatched from the championship-series stage by the Los Angeles Lakers.
No, no issue here with the combined fan-media-player vote for Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid and Kevin Durant as the Eastern Conference starting frontcourt. Their teams have been at the top of the standings this season, and they individually have been at the top of their games.
And, when living in the moment, Bam Adebayo could have an argument of deserving an All-Star berth ahead of Butler, when solely accounting for this season, based on the time Butler has missed and Adebayo hasn’t.
But that also has to be weighed. The time Butler has missed includes a 10-game absence due to health and safety protocols. If anything should change the approach for 2021 All-Star selections, it should be the coronavirus, if only because of the way it has changed everything about this (and last) season’s NBA.
As a matter of perspective, Durant went into the weekend having played 19 games this season, Butler 17.
Yes, cases can be made for Domantas Sabonis, Jayson Tatum, Gordon Hayward, Julius Randle, Tobias Harris and Clint Capela ahead of Butler when it comes to the selection of East frontcourt reserves. But none of those stood as a face of the league, and certainly of the Eastern Conference, for two months at the end of last season.
No one went to the rooms of Sabonis, Tatum, Hayward, Randle or Capela to purchase coffee.
None provided ample GIFs and soundbites to the degree that Butler helped keep the league afloat at a time when generating interest was paramount.
Granted, considering the grind of getting back from his time in protocols and all that has been required during this most uneven of Heat seasons, there is plenty of value of Butler getting the entire needed week off during the All-Star break, for the push that will be required for the second half of the schedule.
But the entire reason the NBA is staging an All-Star Game is to attract eyeballs, ratings, revenue, to offer a reminder of what the league can be when the season is whole, as it will be again soon enough.
Jimmy Butler, by personality, alone, is an NBA whirlwind, with all due respect to this season’s accomplishments of Hayward, Tatum, Sabonis, Randle.
He kept interest in the NBA percolating at a time when interest needed to be caffeinated.
He won the bubble.
He can help the NBA win the All-Star Game.
So, now, we wait until Thursday, to see what conference coaches have brewing when it comes to the All-Star reserves.
Perhaps yet another triple-double by Butler before that influences their decision. But even if there isn’t another, the body of work over the last six months is as impressive as any other in the East.
All-Star Sunday deserves a Big Face.
