How Good is Jimmy Butler?

[dice]

He became a headcase getting shopped around from team to team, but DAMN! He's the heart and soul of the heart, and the biggest reason that the East's best team is down 0-3. Miami is literally going to win what should be an unwinnable series against the League's MVP and DPOY.

A head case? Uh, no?

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Idk how this is still the narrative. The bulls FO was soft. the Players in Minny were soft (other than Rose). In Philly, there really wasn't an issue. They incorrectly chose Harris' offense over Jimmy. He did call out the coaching but it seemed like the media made it a bigger issue than it was and he clearly got along with his teammates.

But I guess kobe was a head case too when Smush parker was his starting PG

the sixers did not "choose harris's offense over jimmy." that's a ridiculous claim on its face given that jimmy is more valuable to an offense! then there's the little timeline reality that they didn't re-sign harris until after they traded jimmy

the wolves and sixers did not trade for jimmy butler as a rental or to flip, folks. nor did his play warrant them reconsidering (quite the opposite). he chose to leave both teams

His game translates to wins in the Playoffs. I don't care about regular season stats. There are plenty of guys who are considered top 10 to 15 who don't win in the playoffs. Russ, PG, and Embiid come to mind. And I think you can say that about Giannis to an extent. And I really like those guys and Russ and PG are two of my favorite players (but Russ has been embarrassing me the past couple seasons). I think there's a handful of guys you can point to and say they create wins in the playoffs for their teams; LeBron, Davis, Kawhi, KD, Steph, Jokic, Thompson, and there may be a couple of guys I'm not thinking of. I think Butler has officially forced his way into that group. Took minny to the playoffs, was a travel call away from the ECF and probably make it to the finals if they beat the 76ers beat the Raptors, and this year probably leads his team to the finals.

while i agree that his game translates well to the playoffs, he did not have a notable playoff resume until the toronto series last year, when he was really good in games 2-6 and muted in games 1 and 7. and now there's the milwaukee series, perhaps the result of finally being in a position of ownership of a team, for lack of a better word

[step]

the sixers did not "choose harris's offense over jimmy." that's a ridiculous claim on its face given that jimmy is more valuable to an offense! then there's the little timeline reality that they didn't re-sign harris until after they traded jimmy

They verbally offered Harris the max at the start of free agency and tried to give Jimmy less if I remember correctly. So yes, technically they did trade him, then signed Horford and resigned Harris. But it's obvious they did in fact choose Harris over Jimmy.

If you give any to the reports from Woj and Zach Lowe, they didn't even offer Jimmy the 4 year max, let alone the 5.

It's not exactly like Harris' play warranted the max either, perhaps if they offered both the same maybe it wouldn't have been as insulting? I can't pretend to know what was going through Brand's head, especially given what transpired that year (still baffled how he thought Horford at that money was a solid choice).

[Bandit King]

WHy you guys still crying for Jimmy Butler no one crying for Derrick Rose anymore? Live in the future!!! Bulls have a decent front office and A decent coach will help Lavine reach his potential.

[kingkirk]

i love "jimmy was good but garpax would have never built a quality team around him" as a line of rationale

if only there were another option the organization could have pursued...

This logic doesn't hold up either if the thinking is 'these guys can't build around Butler but sure, they will nail this rebuild'.

As an extension to that, the 'GarPax are bad so we couldn't have been this version of the Heat in Chicago' is also dumb, given the disconnect here that suggests you should trade good players to other places because your management is bad.

(Not say you're saying this, more so others)

[dice]

jimmy for his career:

16 ppg on 56%ts home
18 ppg on 58%ts road

he's far enough along in his career where it is very likely that he will END his career w/ better scoring numbers on the road. that's neither a good nor a bad thing, but it's extraordinarily rare. probably the byproduct of his ability to deal with adversity

[kingkirk]

if LeBron wasn't from Akron the Cavs would never have got him

you realize that both jim paxson and john lucas admitted to tanking in order to draft lebron in the first place, right? and had they not drafted him, there never would have been the backlash when he left and he likely wouldn't have felt compelled to return ("i'm from akron, not cleveland")

and the spurs tanked for duncan. and the mavs might not have ended up w/ luka w/o tanking. the pelicans certainly wouldn't have ended up w/ zion w/o tanking. will those two never win championships? we'll just have to wait and see

Tanking makes sense IF you don't have a all-nba top 10-15 star on your roster. Certainly you don't trade him away when he is fully committed to your team and wants to help make them great again.

Also that Spurs team didn't tank by blowing it up. They had injuries and were bad because of that.

Trading Jimmy never made any sense. Then on top of that they decided to not actually fully commit to tanking properly because of some weird philosophy of not building a losing culture.

You can tank for draft picks if you have a Jimmy level player on your roster. You just need to make sure you absolutely nail it.

I would suggest winning 27 games in the first year of the rebuild, re-signing Niko, signing Sean Kilpatrick as a favor to Bartlestein (who won the teams games), then not being prepared to trade up for someone like Luka, is half-assing it.

There's a world where trading Butler works for the Bulls. It works if they're prepared to go the full hog and commit to landing the next franchise guy.

GarPax didn't. They never bought more picks. They didn't take on bad deals for picks, instead using that space on bad players (jabari). They didn't go all in on the tank. They were content in staying still at No. 7. And that's why we're here.

[BullsFTW]

you realize that both jim paxson and john lucas admitted to tanking in order to draft lebron in the first place, right? and had they not drafted him, there never would have been the backlash when he left and he likely wouldn't have felt compelled to return ("i'm from akron, not cleveland")

and the spurs tanked for duncan. and the mavs might not have ended up w/ luka w/o tanking. the pelicans certainly wouldn't have ended up w/ zion w/o tanking. will those two never win championships? we'll just have to wait and see

Tanking makes sense IF you don't have a all-nba top 10-15 star on your roster. Certainly you don't trade him away when he is fully committed to your team and wants to help make them great again.

Also that Spurs team didn't tank by blowing it up. They had injuries and were bad because of that.

Trading Jimmy never made any sense. Then on top of that they decided to not actually fully commit to tanking properly because of some weird philosophy of not building a losing culture.

You can tank for draft picks if you have a Jimmy level player on your roster. You just need to make sure you absolutely nail it.

I would suggest winning 27 games in the first year of the rebuild, re-signing Niko, signing Sean Kilpatrick as a favor to Bartlestein (who won the teams games), then not being prepared to trade up for someone like Luka, is half-assing it.

There's a world where trading Butler works for the Bulls. It works if they're prepared to go the full hog and commit to landing the next franchise guy.

GarPax didn't. They never bought more picks. They didn't take on bad deals for picks, instead using that space on bad players (jabari). They didn't go all in on the tank. They were content in staying still at No. 7. And that's why we're here.

This one bothered me the most. I felt they could’ve moved up to #2 and select Luka.

[dice]

you realize that both jim paxson and john lucas admitted to tanking in order to draft lebron in the first place, right? and had they not drafted him, there never would have been the backlash when he left and he likely wouldn't have felt compelled to return ("i'm from akron, not cleveland")

and the spurs tanked for duncan. and the mavs might not have ended up w/ luka w/o tanking. the pelicans certainly wouldn't have ended up w/ zion w/o tanking. will those two never win championships? we'll just have to wait and see

Tanking makes sense IF you don't have a all-nba top 10-15 star on your roster. Certainly you don't trade him away when he is fully committed to your team and wants to help make them great again.

Also that Spurs team didn't tank by blowing it up. They had injuries and were bad because of that.

Trading Jimmy never made any sense. Then on top of that they decided to not actually fully commit to tanking properly because of some weird philosophy of not building a losing culture.

You can tank for draft picks if you have a Jimmy level player on your roster. You just need to make sure you absolutely nail it.

I would suggest winning 27 games in the first year of the rebuild, re-signing Niko, signing Sean Kilpatrick as a favor to Bartlestein (who won the teams games), then not being prepared to trade up for someone like Luka, is half-assing it.

There's a world where trading Butler works for the Bulls. It works if they're prepared to go the full hog and commit to landing the next franchise guy.

GarPax didn't. They never bought more picks. They didn't take on bad deals for picks, instead using that space on bad players (jabari). They didn't go all in on the tank. They were content in staying still at No. 7. And that's why we're here.

just think if we had barely missed the playoffs in jimmy's last season here and we traded the pick that ended up being donovan mitchell or adebayo instead of justin patton

of course, then there's the alternate history where we decide not to trade jimmy and draft mitchell or adebayo instead of lauri

[RedBulls23]

you realize that both jim paxson and john lucas admitted to tanking in order to draft lebron in the first place, right? and had they not drafted him, there never would have been the backlash when he left and he likely wouldn't have felt compelled to return ("i'm from akron, not cleveland")

and the spurs tanked for duncan. and the mavs might not have ended up w/ luka w/o tanking. the pelicans certainly wouldn't have ended up w/ zion w/o tanking. will those two never win championships? we'll just have to wait and see

Tanking makes sense IF you don't have a all-nba top 10-15 star on your roster. Certainly you don't trade him away when he is fully committed to your team and wants to help make them great again.

Also that Spurs team didn't tank by blowing it up. They had injuries and were bad because of that.

Trading Jimmy never made any sense. Then on top of that they decided to not actually fully commit to tanking properly because of some weird philosophy of not building a losing culture.

You can tank for draft picks if you have a Jimmy level player on your roster. You just need to make sure you absolutely nail it.

I would suggest winning 27 games in the first year of the rebuild, re-signing Niko, signing Sean Kilpatrick as a favor to Bartlestein (who won the teams games), then not being prepared to trade up for someone like Luka, is half-assing it.

There's a world where trading Butler works for the Bulls. It works if they're prepared to go the full hog and commit to landing the next franchise guy.

GarPax didn't. They never bought more picks. They didn't take on bad deals for picks, instead using that space on bad players (jabari). They didn't go all in on the tank. They were content in staying still at No. 7. And that's why we're here.

Certainly I acknowledged that they did a terrible job of committing to the tank when they actually ended up trading Jimmy.

[drosereturn]

the sixers did not "choose harris's offense over jimmy." that's a ridiculous claim on its face given that jimmy is more valuable to an offense! then there's the little timeline reality that they didn't re-sign harris until after they traded jimmy

They verbally offered Harris the max at the start of free agency and tried to give Jimmy less if I remember correctly. So yes, technically they did trade him, then signed Horford and resigned Harris. But it's obvious they did in fact choose Harris over Jimmy.

If you give any to the reports from Woj and Zach Lowe, they didn't even offer Jimmy the 4 year max, let alone the 5.

It's not exactly like Harris' play warranted the max either, perhaps if they offered both the same maybe it wouldn't have been as insulting? I can't pretend to know what was going through Brand's head, especially given what transpired that year (still baffled how he thought Horford at that money was a solid choice).

they sort of thought Harris was the better fit and chose him at the time bc Butler never shot the 3 and Harris was this next melo 2.0 with a 3 ball, as exemplified by his 40%+ shooting from deep before he joined philly.

[The Box Office]

I'm happy for Jimmy Butler. I was one of the few here who was very vocal on trading him. Because we suck. And we still do. Butler didn't belong here. He earned the right to be in a winning situation. It wasn't Chicago.

Once he leads the Heat to the Eastern Conference Finals then he's officially a Superstar. That could be today 9/8/2020.

[mack2354]

Jimmy has the mindset of Jordan and Kobe. He plays defense, drives hard to the rim, is unselfish, and plays with a hellava motor. Jimmy isn't on their tier as a player because his jumpshot and handles aren't as good. Jimmy makes his living in the mid range, at the rim, and free throw line.

The mid range shot has proven to be inefficient in this 3 point shooting era and the refs can choose to swallow their whistles on any given night. These offensive shortcomings is what stops Jimmy from being a superstar in my book. If the Heat win the championship it will be because the TEAM played amazing like the Chauncey Billups' Pistons championship.

We could have kept Jimmy and tried to build a better roster/culture around him like Miami has but I know why the FO didn't. Players and coaches will deal with Jordan/Kobe personality if that player is a clear superstar. Jimmy wasn't/isn't so they opted to ship him out and not pay him the Supermax. Pat Riley created a culture that was more accepting of a Jimmy type. I'm happy for him but nobody should be pining over him. It never would have worked out in Chicago with GarPax behind the steering wheel of our culture.

[ATRAIN53]

He's not top a top 10 NBA talent....

You can't build a contender around him.....

8 playoff games in the bubble.

Team is 7-1

Shooting .470+ from 3

He's 11 FTA per game

He's on team he can lead and they follow.

He's got a new kid and seems to dig parenthood, he's got a great commercial so now he's marketable on the big stage.

He's good.

I do think he is driven to show how much better than Rose he is.
You ever hear them discuss each other?

[DaMayor07]

Butler is good, very, very good. He was going to be used and abused here in Chicago. I'm glad he is able to grow outside of Chicago. The org wasn't going anywhere great with Butler, especially since they choose Hoiberg over Buckets.

[HomoSapien]

I mean, there's a world where a trio of Butler, Mirotic, and Rose (at their current levels) is good enough to carry this team into the playoffs and maybe be a deep playoff team if they're surrounded with quality coaching and role players.

I will never understand how the FO who perpetually over-valued and kept their players too long, traded Butler -- the guy that was their shining draft pick, who embodied their ideals of tireless work-ethic and a commitment to defense, and actually made them look okay by carrying to the playoffs. It's just mid-boggling.

But Mark is right. If they actually tanked well, then this criticism probably vanishes.

[League Circles]

I mean, there's a world where a trio of Butler, Mirotic, and Rose (at their current levels) is good enough to carry this team into the playoffs and maybe be a deep playoff team if they're surrounded with quality coaching and role players.

I will never understand how the FO who perpetually over-valued and kept their players too long, traded Butler -- the guy that was their shining draft pick, who embodied their ideals of tireless work-ethic and a commitment to defense, and actually made them look okay by carrying to the playoffs. It's just mid-boggling.

But Mark is right. If they actually tanked well, then this criticism probably vanishes.

Yep, and not only did they dump Butler insanely, but they dumped the 2nd most talented player they've ever had in Rose, with just a harmless year left on his deal, for drastically inferior talent on longer contracts. Then they negotiated a tremendously smart deal to re-sign Niko, saw it work as well as it possibly could where he was realizing all of his potential, and then preposterously traded him for garbage in a failed attempt to tank.

The way they got rid of the 3 guys that would form their core now was mind boggling. They could easily have re-signed Rose for cheap and added serious talent to those 3 via FA.

[HomoSapien]

Ok, it's official. A large portion of this board owes Jimmy Butler a big apology.

[kulaz3000]

Ok, it's official. A large portion of this board owes Jimmy Butler a big apology.

Why though? I don't think anyone discounted the fact that he was a really good player. At worst, I think most agree that he is a top 15 player in this league, then and now. The problem was that the Bulls thought he wasn't a player they could build around as a championship player, so they opted to rebuild.

The Heat and their management are clearly on a different level, where they have built a championship teams in the past and have done a great job at doing just that with Jimmy at the helm, but also, let's not get ahead of ourselves, he has yet to be on a team as the best player who has got passed the second round.

I absolutely love the guy, and have ever since we drafted him, but I don't regret moving on from him, because I had zero confidence that the Bulls front office at the time could properly build around him and the hope was that they would do better via the draft. He still don't think he is a player who can be the best player on a championship team. I would abosolutely be over-joyed if he can and does, but he is a teir below the best players of the league, and usually championship teams have one or two of the top 10 players in the league.

[Susan]

I mean, there's a world where a trio of Butler, Mirotic, and Rose (at their current levels) is good enough to carry this team into the playoffs and maybe be a deep playoff team if they're surrounded with quality coaching and role players.

I will never understand how the FO who perpetually over-valued and kept their players too long, traded Butler -- the guy that was their shining draft pick, who embodied their ideals of tireless work-ethic and a commitment to defense, and actually made them look okay by carrying to the playoffs. It's just mid-boggling.

But Mark is right. If they actually tanked well, then this criticism probably vanishes.

It's not mind boggling, he was adversarial to them/Hoiberg and they couldn't handle it. They were threatened by him.

Same thing with Thibs.

Glad Jimmy is making his haters eat crow right now, people who bought into the pro-Bulls PR media narrative were pretty damn wrong about this man.

[HomoSapien]

Ok, it's official. A large portion of this board owes Jimmy Butler a big apology.

Why though? I don't think anyone discounted the fact that he was a really good player. At worst, I think most agree that he is a top 15 player in this league, then and now. The problem was that the Bulls thought he wasn't a player they could build around as a championship player, so they opted to rebuild.

The Heat and their management are clearly on a different level, where they have built a championship teams in the past and have done a great job at doing just that with Jimmy at the helm, but also, let's not get ahead of ourselves, he has yet to be on a team as the best player who has got passed the second round.

I absolutely love the guy, and have ever since we drafted him, but I don't regret moving on from him, because I had zero confidence that the Bulls front office at the time could properly build around him and the hope was that they would do better via the draft. He still don't think he is a player who can be the best player on a championship team. I would abosolutely be over-joyed if he can and does, but he is a teir below the best players of the league, and usually championship teams have one or two of the top 10 players in the league.

Because the argument was that you couldn't build a contender around Jimmy Butler. The Miami Heat have built one and the support they've given him is something we could have replicated.