Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler made the rounds on social media recently after the 35-year-old did his best Terry Rozier impersonation by stealing the guard’s look in Miami’s preseason game against the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday.
Butler’s agent — Bernie Lee — responded to a question on why Butler looked like a Rozier doppelganger.
Rozier also commented on the matter.
While Butler and Rozier looked similar against Atlanta, the former played at a higher level than the latter. Butler finished with a game-high 24 points on 8-of-11 shooting to go along with five rebounds, all of which came on the offensive glass. He also had three assists and three steals.
As for Rozier, he took the same number of attempts from the field at 11, but just three of those looks found the bottom of the net. He ended up with six points, four rebounds, four assists, one block and one steal.
The Heat’s nine-point victory over the Hawks marked Miami’s third preseason victory in four contests. The team’s lone exhibition loss to this point came in its preseason opener against the Charlotte Hornets on Oct. 8.
Rozier, Butler and the Heat will wrap up the team’s five-game preseason slate when they take on the Memphis Grizzlies at FedExForum on Friday night.
Butler and Rozier haven’t been teammates on the Heat for a very long time, as the latter was dealt from the Hornets to Miami midway through the 2023-24 season.
Plus, Rozier and Butler were both battling untimely injuries by the time the 2024 NBA Playoffs rolled around. Butler was dealing with an MCL sprain while Rozier was dealing with a neck injury. Neither player appeared in a playoff game.
Without Rozier and Butler to carry the scoring load for the Heat, Miami scored the ball as well as fans could have realistically expected. It wasn’t pretty. The Heat averaged just 92.2 points per contest in their first-round series against the Boston Celtics, and the team scored under 90 points in three of the five contests. The Heat were ultimately eliminated.