Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler’s NBA story has been nothing short of fascinating.

He was the 30th overall pick in the 2011 NBA Draft, averaging just minutes per game as a rookie. Butler then worked his way up with the Chicago Bulls to becoming a perennial All-Star. He was trade to Minnesota, where he clashed with management and openly doubted their young star players' abilities. The same thing happened in Philadelphia. But now, he seems to have found a home in Miami and he’s playing at the highest level of his career.

Locked On Heat Podcast host David Ramil considers Butler's 40-point Game 1 outburst against the Milwaukee Bucks to be the Heat’s best playoff performance since the days of Dwyane Wade and LeBron James.

David Ramil: Miami did what they do best, they tightened their defense. They made the shots that they needed to make and they got 40 points of their own from Jimmy Butler, who set a career playoff high and was absolutely a clutch performer in the fourth quarter, hitting everything, doing everything. Defending at a high level, hitting all sorts of shots. The exact kind of player that takes over games exactly when you need them. And that's why Miami came away with a 115-104 won to take Game 1 against the Milwaukee Bucks. What a game.

If there's a takeaway from this game, it doesn't really matter what Milwaukee did. I could focus on that. I just don't want to… Watching that game, what stands out the most was Jimmy Butler. Man, like you cannot say enough about his incredible performance. He was just able to do so much, so effectively.

13 points in the first half. It's not like he had a bad first half. And he was asked about this, and I've talked about this in a number of occasions before… he is a guy who absolutely can see how the flow of the game is going and try to determine from there what the next step is…

Somehow, I can't get enough of talking about Butler and his incredible performance. We have not seen a performance like this since the days of Dwyane Wade and his peak, and LeBron James and the Big Three era. This was exactly the kind of performance that we want out of a superstar player on this team, and Butler absolutely carried the team to a win, that everything was necessary.

The Miami Heat came into the bubble with a lot to prove, but now they’ve shown they can handle themselves against the East’s best team.