Miami will face New Orleans on Friday, with tensions already high.
With the Miami Heat’s next key game against the New Orleans Pelicans on Friday night, the focus will be on the two teams’ history rather than the game itself. The Heat and Pelicans last met on Feb. 23, when star Jimmy Butler got into a heated disagreement with Naji Marshall that turned physical, forcing both sides to separate many players from the incident.
Butler and Nikola Jovic were expelled for one game, while Thomas Bryant received a three-game suspension for a separate confrontation with a New Orleans player. Following the Heat’s victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night, Butler and Bryant were questioned about the next meeting, which has bas blood associated to it.
Butler downplayed the history, but smiled when asked if he feels the Heat would win the Pelicans as he did soon after the confrontation, according to Ira Winderman of The Sun Sentinel.
He went on to claim that “we’re gonna get a dub” against New Orleans, which had won eight of their past 11 games since the event, while Miami has won seven of their last thirteen.
“I don’t go into any game thinking we’re going to lose,” said Butler, who participated in his first game after missing the previous two due to a foot ailment. “But we’ll get a dub. It’s on our home floor anyway. “We’ll be fine.”
Tempers are flaring in New Orleans 😳 pic.twitter.com/ngqs1HDJGJ
— Bally Sports Florida & Bally Sports Sun (@BallySportsFL) February 24, 2024
Butler says he’s “trying to get my bread back” after heated altercation
Butler led the Heat to a victory over the Cavaliers with 30 points, five assists, four rebounds, and four steals. When queried about his memories of the heated argument, he stated that he “got fined a lot of money” and is “trying to get my bread back.”
“There is a freakin’ memory,” Butler added. I was fined a lot of money. I don’t give a damn about tensions rising and all that. I have kids. I have diapers and baby food. That’s all I’m worried about: getting my bread back.
Thomas Bryant talks Heat leaving incident in the past
Bryant, who had the most games suspended and was ejected that terrible night, chatted with Butler and Jovic following the game against the Cavs. He would say that the ideas and memories of that time “do not linger.”
“It doesn’t linger,” Bryant, the Heat’s big man, remarked. “I’m not going to let that linger or anything like that.”
Bryant is coming off a performance in which he started in place of the injured Bam Adebayo, scoring six points and grabbing ten rebounds in 15 minutes. He is more concerned about moving on and leaving everything behind, since the Heat “don’t look in the past.”
“It happens, it stays in the past, and we just move on,” Bryant told reporters. “The train keeps moving. “We don’t look back.”
A look back at the incident from Feb. 23 as Heat beat the Pelicans, 106-95
On February 23, the Heat defeated the Pelicans in a heated game, but it was not without controversy, including the aforementioned fight and ejections from both sides. Butler was heated up after the game and predicted that when the two teams meet off again, Miami will win.
“We’ll beat them the next time, too,” Butler said after Miami defeated New Orleans. “We’re just a better team.”
“I’m not going to say they’re not a good team,” Butler explained to The Sun Sentinel. “I don’t think this matters; when we play them on our own floor, it will be a different game. I hope they are healthy. It’s going to be the same outcome.”
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