Jimmy Butler’s agent constantly makes his voice heard on different topics regarding the NBA, and he recently said players who competed in the NBA’s 2020 bubble “saved the league.”
Not that anyone outside should or would care but just from a business perspective the guys doing this saved the business & what was asked of them really was a lot. I did it for 2 wks, and I couldn’t believe ppl did it for 100 days. That group of players saved the league https://t.co/gXKNdP8op2
— Bernard Lee (@BernieoLee) February 4, 2024
There are plenty of people who believe that the bubble season shouldn’t be as valued as other seasons due to the circumstances it was played under.
Multiple teams found themselves finishing the 2019-20 campaign in Orlando, Fla. at Walt Disney World Resort. Home-court advantage was among the things that didn’t really exist inside the bubble, and players were affected in different ways being away from their families.
Butler and the Miami Heat made it all the way to the 2020 NBA Finals, where they lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in six games. Bam Adebayo, who was a key part of that team, recently said the 2020 title was the hardest to win.
“That was the hardest championship to win, in my opinion,” said Adebayo. “Fifteen deep, plus coaches, staff, whatever you need, training staff, but other than that, it’s you, your thoughts in one room boxed in. … It felt like you was gang affiliated when you was in the bubble. Lakers got on purple and gold. We got on black. The [Milwaukee] Bucks got on they green, and nobody was walking by they self.”
Former Lakers big man Dwight Howard, who won the first and only title of his NBA career so far that year, agreed with what Adebayo said, calling it the “hardest finals hands down.” Howard made sure to make it clear that it was harder than playing against Kobe Bryant in the 2009 Finals, which the Lakers won over the Orlando Magic.
Since the bubble, Butler and the Heat have made it back to the Finals once. They lost to the Denver Nuggets in the 2023 championship series after upsetting teams like the Bucks, New York Knicks and Boston Celtics as the Eastern Conference’s No. 8 seed.
Miami has also made the conference finals one other time with Butler on the roster, losing in the 2022 Eastern Conference Finals to the Celtics in seven games.
Butler’s agent recently said the superstar will never leave the Heat and that he will end up winning a title in Miami. That’s surely music to the ears of Heat fans all over.
It’s been an up-and-down 2023-24 season for the Heat, but past seasons have shown that the organization can never be counted out come playoff time.
Only time will tell what the rest of this season holds for Butler and his Heat squad.
