Jimmy Butler is showing the Sixers that they need him, both now and in the future | David Murphy

What was once the most pressing question about the Sixers’ future became a formality on Monday night. Jimmy Butler’s performance in Game 2 was that significant. It might not have been the most overpowering outing the NBA postseason has ever seen, and it certainly wasn’t the prettiest. In scoring 30 points to lead the Sixers to a 94-89 win, he wasn’t even the most dominant player on the court. But this is not a discussion about transcendence or greatness. It is a discussion about necessity.

Butler’s performance was necessary. The Sixers acquired him to do a certain type of thing, and he went out and did it. Against a swarming Raptors defense that might be quicker to the ball than any unit in the league, Butler shot 9-of-22 from the floor, got to the foul line five times, and sank all eight of his free throws. To put that in perspective, the rest of the Sixers’ starters combined for just 34 field-goal attempts and 11 free throws.

In a lot of different respects, Butler’s performance was a case study on the fallacious nature of the reservations that many of us — myself included — expressed before the November trade that brought him to Philly. The volume-dependent nature of his scoring production, the ball-dominant style of his play, the attitude that had led to his ouster from two organizations: the mistake we made was in framing those things exclusively as potential liabilities. Turns out, they were also characteristics that the Sixers desperately needed.

You saw that throughout Game 2. Midway through the third quarter, with the Raptors clawing their way back into the game, he willed himself into a clean look at the rim, sealing off Pascal Siakam after the Raptors forward went over the top of a ball screen, and then dribbling into the paint for a pull-up that gave the Sixers a 55-48 lead. Two possessions later, there was a similar sequence at the top of the key, where he ended up hitting Greg Monroe on a roll to the rim for a layup. There were also plenty of moments that do not show up in the box score. Late in the first quarter, he beat Danny Green with his first step, drove hard to the rim, and finished with a left-handed layup attempt that Monroe tipped in.

It comes down to this: the Sixers do not win Game 2 if they do not have Butler. Without Butler, they are what they were last year at this time, a dead-team walking. Over the last 48 years, 185 teams have fallen behind 0-2 in a best-of-seven series in the conference semis or later. Only 13 have come back to win the series. Had the Sixers lost Game 2 in Toronto, they would have been deader than a Dothraki horde on a cold winter night. It is only because of one man that their flames still burn.

Simply put, the Sixers need Butler, or they need a player like him, and since there are not many players like him, well, they need Butler. It’s a realization that has significant implications for the upcoming offseason, when the Sixers will essentially need to set their team in stone. At the beginning of the postseason, there was a lot of evidence to suggest that Tobias Harris had surpassed him as an organizational priority for July, when both players can hit free agency. In the regular season, Harris’ skill set looked like the better fit in a rotation that would be built on a foundation of Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. Butler had his moments, no doubt, but he also had long stretches where he looked like an afterthought within the framework of the offense.

Seven games into the postseason, the whole script has flipped. In the aftermath of Game 2, Brett Brown referred to Butler as “a rock," and that’s exactly what he has been since the start of Round 1. A significant portion of his value comes from the subtle sorts of things that are tough to monitor and contextualize in real time: the breakneck speed at which he can get back on defense, the verticality he displays in contesting outside shots, the loose balls he corrals, the offensive rebounds he initiates even when he does not come down with the board himself. The overall efficiency of his game is greater than the sum of its most obvious parts.

But those obvious parts were a big deal in Game 2, and they have been throughout the postseason. Of Butler’s 41 field goals this postseason, 26 have been unassisted, a rate of .634, which is by far the highest on the team. Compare that to the two players whom he effectively replaced. Last postseason, Dario Saric and Robert Covington combined for just 13 unassisted field goals on 86 attempts.

Harris, on the other hand, has been a missing piece in the first two games against the Raptors. He is 9-for-28 from the field with seven turnovers and just two free-throw attempts. He has struggled to adapt to the closer confines of postseason defense: the scouting report clearly says to get up in his personal space and press his dribble. He is not a confident ball handler, and his court vision seems to shrink to the dimensions of a paper-towel tube in those sorts of situations.

That’s not an indictment of Harris as much as it is an appreciation of Butler. We’ve seen similar struggles out of Simmons and Embiid, and we saw them in Saric and Covington last postseason. As his head coach has said on numerous occasions, Butler is the adult in the room that every contender needs. Regardless of how the rest of the postseason plays out for the Sixers, that need is not going away.