Ira Winderman: Heat now with a pause to take (needed) stock of Jimmy Butler

Herro’s game, meanwhile, had grown so similar to Butler’s shot profile that Erik Spoelstra had to subtly instead coax more 3-pointers from Herro, hardly Herro’s preferred mode.

With another run like last season’s to the NBA Finals, you keep it together and move on, age and injury put aside. Entering this season, any doubts had been answered with, “but three trips to the Eastern Conference finals in the last four years.”

Now Butler’s knee has quieted that narrative.

The injury, itself, had nothing to do with being injury prone, old, brittle. It came in a moment of power, force, aggression, all notable attributes for a player who has taken a career beating amid a heavy toll of minutes.

Hard-nosed Jimmy Butler remains the best Jimmy Butler. Wednesday, he again was working his way to the foul line, even on the play he was injured.

Without that moment, who knows what would have followed, with the Heat arguably positioned at that moment for a playoff trip to New York, rather than Friday’s all-or-nothing short-handed showdown in the play-in against the Bulls.

But unlike Dwyane Wade, who ended with the Heat as a supporting piece, willing to play off the bench, committed to the development of the Heat’s next wave, including Adebayo, that is not who Butler is, or at least who he seems to be.

From his social media to the way he carries himself in the locker room and on the court, it all becomes an orbit around Butler. He is the leading man. Period. End of story.

He takes the 3-pointers at the close of two-point games because that is who he is. He will dominate the ball at closing time even alongside talent, because closing time is his time.

But when he moves past this knee injury, confidence assuredly unwavered, can he become part of a wheel of reinvention? Or is he solely an axis?

Butler at 34 was as confident of playoff success as the Butler who arrived to the Heat at 29, the one who immediately led the Heat to the NBA Finals.

But this feels different.

The knee injury ultimately stopped him in his tracks.

Now the Heat have to decide if getting him back on the track, putting the team back on the same track, is the path forward.

The pain was real as he writhed in the lane on Wednesday night at Wells Fargo Center. Next we find out how potentially painful the ensuing decisions are handled in the executive suite at Kaseya Center.