Jimmy Butler and the Heat want to get out of Denver with a win. Saturday night, Butler prepared with an Escape Room.
“I’m as normal as they come,” Butler told reporters, explaining that he’d been playing card games with his daughter and was planning an Escape Room trip. Meanwhile his Heat teammates went to see the new Spider-Verse movie. “It’s not always about basketball. It will never always be about basketball,” Butler said.
It’s a departure from the so-called “Mamba Mentality” of Kobe Bryant, where laser-like focus on winning pre-empts any kind of personal life. Butler is choosing a “Work-Life Balance Mentality.”
Nuggets star Nikola Jokic had a similar attitude toward preparing for the Finals. When Charles Barkley asked Jokic how he spent the nine days between the Western Conference Finals, Jokic proudly announced that he’d been at the swimming pool so much that he had a sunburn.
Both Butler and Jokic have been bringing it in the playoffs so far, so mixing in relaxation with preparation seems to be a successful approach this year. Down 3-0 to the Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals, the Celtics went to TopGolf to regroup.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t fit in a golf outing during halftime of Game 7, an elimination game you could say they shanked.
We’ll see if the Heat’s recreational activities help them bounce back in Game 2. As for Jokic, once the series moves to Miami, we would advise him to use sunscreen with a higher SPF.
