He almost saved things down the stretch.

He first drained a triple pull-up to the face of Marcus Smart with less than two minutes left in the game. Then (finally) he took the ball hard to the hoop and finished off by contact for an e-1.

And then there were the three free throws he made with just three seconds left and his team trailing by two.

Those last three points gave Jimmy Butler 15 in the fourth quarter and 24 on the night. He added 11 rebounds and eight assists. It’s a great looking stat line. And if it weren’t for a miraculous, almost imperceptible setback by Boston Celtics guard Derrick White that gave the Celtics a 104-103 victory in Game 6 on Saturday in Miami, those free throws would have sent the Heat down. to the NBA Finals.

Instead, Miami is now just one loss away from becoming the first team in NBA history to lose a 3-0 lead in a best-of-seven series.

But the late-game explosion doesn’t make up for Butler’s performance during the first 45 minutes of the game. Because in those minutes, Butler was horrible.

After the game, he addressed his teammates in the locker room.

“I told them,” he said during his postgame news conference, “‘If I play better, we’re not even in this position.'”

Butler’s right, but the question now is whether he can fix things for Game 7. Because it wasn’t just that he missed 16 of his 21 field goal attempts in Game 6. Even the best of the best endure tough nights. It was his behavior, and the way she shot him cold (he started the game 1 of 7) seemed to throw him off the rails.

He stopped attacking the rim, even when he had thinner defenders isolated in space. He seemed to fake pump every time he got close to the rim, instead of coming up hard. There were times when he caught the ball in the middle of the floor and didn’t even turn to face the rim.

Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra also seemed to lose some confidence in his star.

Not only did the Heat run offensively for Duncan Robinson down the stretch, but before their final possession, TNT announcer Stan Van Gundy said he could hear Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra say to Butler, “Do I want?”.

It’s hard to imagine even considering asking Butler such a question early this postseason.

What should really worry the Heat is that Butler’s performance in Game 6 was a continuation of a trend, not a fluke. He shot just 5 of 13 in Game 3. He Scored just 16 points in Game 4 and just 14 in Game 5. He made just 37% of his shots in the last four games.

To be fair, Butler doesn’t look 100 percent, and he seems to lack confidence in his ability to get up off the court. The Celtics also deserve credit. They made sure to get into Butler’s chest, stay on their bomb fakes, and slide in to help from the weak side. Robert Williams III’s length has vexed Butler on numerous tours. But let’s not forget how dominant “Playoff Jimmy” has been over the past month. This was a player who for the first two and a half rounds of the playoffs had been playing at a level that no scheme could contain. And yet, over the last four games, that relentless, soul-grabbing, weakness-hunting vampire who wiped out the Milwaukee Bucks and left Giannis Antetokounmpo contemplating the meaning of failure has disappeared.

“Jimmy leads with everything: his spirit, his soul, his competitive nature,” Spoelstra told reporters before the game.

Which is exactly why it’s fair to place the blame for the Game 6 loss at his feet. Until the end, that competitive nature was nowhere to be found.

That doesn’t mean Miami is cooked. These Celtics have already proven vulnerable, especially at home, where they are 5-5 so far in the postseason.

But the Heat will only be able to avoid making the wrong kind of story if “Playoff Jimmy” appears.

Yaron Weitzman is an NBA writer for FOX Sports. He is the author of “Tanking to the Top: The Philadelphia 76ers and the boldest process in professional sports history.” Follow him on Twitter @YaronWeitzman.

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