Heat’s Jimmy Butler — Exchange with Grant Williams fueled me in Game 2 win

BOSTON — Miami Heat star forward Jimmy Butler has spent his life overcoming people who have slighted him, so it should come as no surprise that in the heart of a hard-fought 111-105 victory over the Boston Celtics in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference finals on Friday night, Butler made forward Grant Williams pay for talking trash to him.

The pivotal sequence of the game came midway through the fourth quarter after Williams drained a 3-pointer to give the Celtics a 96-87 lead with 6:37 left. On his way back down the floor, Williams began jawing with Butler, who proceeded to smile and then responded by hitting his next shot and getting fouled by Williams for a three-point play.

After the basket, Butler immediately got head-to-head with Williams as the pair exchanged words and were each assessed a technical foul. From that point, the Heat closed the game on a 24-9 run and left Boston with a stunning 2-0 lead in the series. Butler admitted that the exchange got him rolling down the stretch.

“Yes, it did,” Butler said. “But that’s just competition at its finest. He hit a big shot, started talking to me. I like that. I’m all for that. It makes me key in a lot more. It pushes that will that I have to win a lot more. It makes me smile. It does. When people talk to me, I’m like, OK, I know I’m a decent player, if you want to talk to me out of everybody that you can talk to. But it’s just competition. I do respect him, though. He’s a big part of what they try to do. He switches. He can shoot the ball. I just don’t know if I’m the best person to talk to.”

Butler, who scored nine of his team-high 27 points following Williams’ initial words, once again showed why he has been arguably the best player in the postseason by making clutch plays down the stretch. After the game, his teammates were surprised that Williams pushed their star player to that point, but they were glad he did.

“I knew it was going to be good for us,” Heat guard Caleb Martin said. “Knowing Jimmy, at that point in the game, you get him going, we’ll take mad Jimmy any time. I knew that you could kind of see it in his eyes that he was ready to go after that.”

For his part, Williams defended his response to Butler, noting he wasn’t going to back down from anybody on the floor.

“I think he said something and I just responded,” Williams said. “I’m a competitor and I’m gonna battle. He got the best of me tonight, and at the end of the day it’s out of respect, because I’m not gonna run away from it. My mom always taught me, and my dad as well, you get your ass kicked and you don’t come back home until you come battle again. You either come back before you die or you come back and get a win, and I’m not willing to die in this finals. I’m ready to…