Finally fully healthy, Miami Heat gives Jimmy Butler some of the help he so badly needs

There’s a moment in virtually every game for the Miami Heat when coach Erik Spoelstra has to take a gamble. Usually, it comes sometime in the third quarter, when the game is typically close and Jimmy Butler needs to steal a breather to be ready for crunch time. The star forward goes to the bench and Heat fans from Miami-Dade Arena and beyond hold their collective breath.

Sometimes, it costs the Heat the game, but not Monday. Butler went to the bench with with 2:41 left in the third quarter and Miami narrowly trailing the Utah Jazz. When Butler returned for the second half of the fourth quarter, the Heat was ahead. With its lineup as healthy as it has been in months, Miami won 119-115 in the style it likes.

“That’s when we play our best basketball,” Gabe Vincent said Monday, “when we move it and share it.”

Although Butler led the way with 24 points, the Heat (37-33) won because of balance. Vincent and fellow guard Tyler Herro each scored 18. All-Star center Bam Adebayo had 16 and a game-winning block in the final seconds. Forwards Victor Oladipo and Kevin Love both scored 11. Forward Caleb Martin added 10. The seven scorers in double figures matched a season high for Miami, and point guard Kyle Lowry, playing in just his second game since returning from a month-long absence for knee soreness, just missed with nine.

For the first time in a long time, the Heat was deep and it will be again Wednesday it hosts the Memphis Grizzlies (41-26) at 7:30 p.m. in Miami.

Lowry’s return over the weekend pushed it there. The guard had been out for more than a month before he returned to the lineup Saturday in the Heat’s overtime loss to the Magic, and even then Herro was dealing with an illness. Monday was the first time in months Spoelstra felt comfortable playing a 10-man rotation, to the extent he even at one point in the first half had five bench players on the floor together at the same time.

He didn’t go to it again in the second half, though. The coach admitted it: He had to do some experimenting.

“We haven’t had a lot of these games where we’ve had so many guys available,” he said Monday.

Overall, the starters were still the reason the Heat won — no one on the bench had a positive plus-minus — but across the board it got useful scoring contributions from sources other than Butler.

Lowry, who came off the bench for the second straight game, hit two straight three-pointers with Butler on the bench to give Miami a 102-110 lead with 8:42 remaining. Oladipo, also off the bench, scored five straight points when Butler was out. Martin, who was pushed to the bench after the Heat signed Love last month, scored four points in the fourth quarter, too.

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Adebayo, of course, was the driver when Butler was sitting, scoring nine points during the second-half stretch without his co-star, including seven straight in the last 1:45 of the third quarter. Miami just found enough secondary scorers to help out when Butler, its only reliable go-to scorer, was sitting.

“Jimmy’s energy, and relentlessness and aggressiveness in these kind of minutes really is just super unique,” Spoelstra said. “We’ve had a few moving parts with that second unit, but they’ve been gaining a little bit more of a comfort level in how they can impose their well and be effective, be efficient.”

Lowry, both Butler and Spoelstra argue, makes a big difference, even though most of his production is well below his career averages.

In each of the last two games, the 36-year-old guard has hit timely threes in the fourth quarter of comebacks and, perhaps most importantly, he gives the Heat a natural initiator of offense, rather than forcing Adebayo into a role he’s not entirely comfortable playing.

Even though he’s not a star anymore, Lowry at least gives Miami some of the depth it has been lacking all year.

“He’s a winner. He plays at a high level and he’ll do whatever you ask him to do, whether it be start, coming off the bench, getting the ball where it needs to go,” Butler said Monday. “He made some big threes tonight, had some key passes. That’s what we want from him, no matter if he’s coming off the bench or a starter. He’s always going to help us win.”