Even in defeat, Jimmy Butler establishes himself as the Sixers’ greatest reason for hope | David Murphy

The scorebook said that Jimmy Butler was on the bench, but as the third quarter ticked to its conclusion on Sunday afternoon, the bench was nowhere near him. Out on the court, the Sixers were locked in a back-and-forth battle with Kawhi Leonard and four other people wearing Raptors jerseys, and it was not something that Butler could watch sitting down. Having staked out a strip of hardwood behind the baseline on the Sixers end of the court, he paced back and forth with a coach’s gait, yelling and waving and twirling his finger in a circular motion. Moments afterward, during the end-of-quarter break, he sat himself down next to Ben Simmons and spent a solid minute filling the second-year point guard’s ear.

Be aggressive. Push the rock. If you’ve got something, take it, whether the play’s called for you or not.

Later, when Butler’s head coach spoke of the imprint that the 29-year-old veteran has made on his team, it was with scenes like this in mind. There are lots of reasons why the Sixers might ultimately look back on Game 4 of this Eastern Conference semifinals as a missed opportunity, reasons why they are now headed back to Toronto with a 101-96 defeat and a series that is tied two games apiece. Jimmy Butler is not one of them. In fact, he might be the biggest reason to think that the Sixers have what it takes to win the now-requisite two-out-of-three.

After Game 1, there was every reason to wonder how this team could possibly expect to win four games in seven tries. Yet by the end of Game 4, there was some degree of solace in the understanding that a team featuring Butler will not go gently into that good night.

For 40 minutes, he was the near-singular reason that the Sixers even came close to withstanding the Law-and-Order-level disappearances of Joel Embiid and Tobias Harris. Down 11 in the first quarter, he helped pull them back to within three, first hitting a fade-away jumper over Leonard, then backing Kyle Lowry down into the paint to set up a kickout pass for a James Ennis three-pointer, then sealing Lowry off near the elbow and scoring an easy layup off the assist from Embiid.

For four quarters, that is how it went. Leonard would knock down a series of contested shots to push the Raptors out to a lead, and then Butler would find some way to push, pull, or drag the Sixers back toward even. He finished with 29 points from all possible angles, including several that he initiated with one of his five offensive rebounds. Late in the first half, he elevated for an offensive board and then dropped a floater through the net to cut the Sixers’ deficit to three. Three minutes into the third quarter he drove and kicked to Tobias Harris in the corner for one of the two three-pointers that Harris hit on the night (he attempted 13). A couple of possessions later, Butler hit a three-pointer of his own, off a handoff from Simmons to give the Sixers their biggest lead of the game to that point at 57-52.

“He’s been phenomenal this whole series," Simmons said. “He’s been a great defender; offensively, he’s been great scoring the ball and keeping everybody’s head high, so he’s been a great leader this series.”

The mark Butler was making on the game was never more obvious than midway through the third quarter, when the Raptors sent Marc Gasol out to meet him 28 feet from the basket alongside Danny Green (the possession ended with Butler hitting a fallaway jumper near the right elbow to give the Sixers a 62-57 lead).

The Raptors tried everything. Danny Green. Kawhi Leonard. Double teams. Even lightly-used third-year forward Patrick McCaw got a look, despite having logged just 10 minutes of action in the series’ first three games. But omnipresence is a difficult thing to defend, and Butler was close to that level. Five minutes in the fourth quarter, Lowry nearly picked his pocket near the top of the arc only to watch Butler somehow regain possession of the ball and, in one motion, with the shot clock about to expire, launch an off-balance 27-footer in the general direction of the basket that ended up banking in hard off the glass to give the Sixers an 84-81 lead.

It’s funny - the more Butler impacts the game as a scorer, the more he overshadows all of the other things he does to contribute to wins, from the loose balls he chases down, to the rebounds he grabs, to the pep talks he delivers.

On the Raptors’ first possession of the fourth quarter, he helped contest a shot by Serge Ibaka and then got himself to the foul line on the ensuing trip down the court. A minute later, he chased down a James Ennis miss and got fouled on the put-back attempt to earn another pair of free throws.

“He wills his way into putting his thumbprint on just the game," coach Brett Brown said. “There’s a physicality that he plays with, he’s just a runaway train at times. And him coming up with some rebounds and loose balls, you see his just jaw-dropping athleticism. And then you just see his toughness emerge.”

As Butler sank a couple of those foul shots early in the fourth quarter, the volume at the Wells Fargo Center rose to a rhythmic roar.

JIM-MY BUT-LER, they chanted in unison, again and again.

In a series that is now best-of-three, it’s a comforting thought.