stitches wrote:KqWIN wrote:SoCalJazzFan wrote:There were maybe two or three of us in favor of that. Everyone else was concerned about his attitude. The two or three of us saw his attitude as an MJ, in your face, basketball winning attitude. Although there would be a concern about his 3pt shooting, everything else about him would have been perfect.
I think it's tough to mix young players finding their place and vets trying to establish their legacy. Jimmy's attitude never bothered me, and I thought it would be a good thing for our team because Gobert operated the same way. Maybe that's why Gobert and Mitchell clashed...but if it's Jimmy+Gobert, that is enough star power to make sure that they define the culture. I feel like there's just too weird of a dynamic between Gobert where they're different, one is better than other, but the other gets the majority of the attention.
Yeah, I remember thinking Gobert and Butler would have loved eachother. They are both "I don't give a damn" type of leaders. They call out outwardly and visibly their teammates for not giving effort and not making winning plays. They don't play the passive aggressive type BS. I thought they would fit seamlessly. My worry at the time had more to do with worry about his age at the end of his contract, but yeah... if we were going to break the bank it probably was better to do it on him than on Conley. The weird thing is that Butler's attitude got questioned for nothing else other than being extremely demanding from him teammates and then asking for a trade when those teammates didn't respond in kind. Now I'm far away from saying Butler handled that thing perfectly... he didn't... but in the root of it all was extreme competitiveness and if you can channell that into a good direction(what MIA has done) and pair him with similar minded players and coaches(I believe we have at least several of those) IMO it could have worked really well too.
BTW just want to point out that Jimmy Butler was a free agent and it's very possible he just didn't want to come to Utah anyways.
There were some concerns about Butler besides his attitude, but yeah his attitude never bothered me and I thought it was a plus. Like...we're really going to crucify Butler because his attitude clashed with Wiggins and Towns? Something tells me Butler knows how to win and those guys do not.
Ironically, Conley came with a lot of the other concerns. He's older than Butler, his contract situation with the player option was worse, and Conley also had injury concerns.
Who knows if we would have actually been able to pull it off, but it's a big what if IMO. If we had Butler, I think we're actually a title contender or extremely close to it. That guy is a killer. This is right there with choosing George Hill over Jrue Holiday (which was more forgivable given that Hill worked out too well).
Hell, if we could have just gotten CP3 or Shroeder instead of Conley we'd have been in a much better spot.