How Good is Jimmy Butler?

[IamSam]

He is somewhat a poor mans Pippen

If Butler had Scottie's job, Mike would have six rings, and if Scottie had Butler's job, Scottie would not have tasted the Eastern Finals until this year.

There, i said it.

https://www.landofbasketball.com/player_comparison/jimmy_butler_vs_scottie_pippen.htm

Interesting discussion... it would be more interesting if Jimmy adds a chip or two at some point but I think there are a couple of areas at least where there is room to compare a bit.

[Southpaw]

yup, multiple defensive plays in that 4th qtr that made a huge difference.

Read on Twitter

Yep, that tweet is a great way to describe Jimmy. He's just a winning player.

I think an underrated part of the Heat culture is Spo. He's been a great coach who always has his team playing great defense. He never got a lot of credit for their championships because they had the Big 3.

The one thing that always struck me watching those Heat teams during the big three was the swarming defense he had them playing. Perhapse its something you can that a young squad can grind with but a more veteran squad needs to pull out in certain points put its nasty.

Aye, when they pulled that trapping defense against us in the ECF it was nasty. Granted Rose was our only option but it was as you say, suffocating. I thought then it was just the talent of his team with the Big 3 but his teams have been great defensively without em.

[johnnyvann840]

I have a ton of respect for Spo as a coach after the last few years.

Miami is interesting, looking at their formula, I thought it was kind of like Kawhi on the Raptors, but it really isn't.
Butler, Bam, and Dragic are a legit big 3 right now. They're all playing at an all-star caliber level (all 3 at kind of low all-star caliber with none of them really dominating every night, it's common that any one of those 3 could be the most important guy on any night).

Their role players have a lot of depth, talent and variety.
Robinson, Crowder, Iguodala, Olynyk, and Jones all have over 60% TS%. Herro (higher volume) is still good as well.

Effectively, they are getting playmaking from Herro, Butler, Dragic, and Bam, and their role players are destroying you when left open.

I agree, Spo is underrated by most people. Also, it's Jimmy... he makes everybody around him better. That's what good players do. At least everybody who wants to get on board with winning. A year ago it was "Jimmy doesn't care about winning that's why he left Philly and joined a team of scrubs.". now, it's... "Look at all the great help Jimmy has in Miami.. he never would have gotten that here".

We could have done what Miami did. It's not like they had three #1 picks in 4 years or something like that. Nope. They did it with smart management of assets and middling picks.

[FriedRise]

So here's a question: if Miami has Jim Boylen instead of Eric Spoelstra, what would their regular season and playoffs record be?

[Susan]

I have a ton of respect for Spo as a coach after the last few years.

Miami is interesting, looking at their formula, I thought it was kind of like Kawhi on the Raptors, but it really isn't.
Butler, Bam, and Dragic are a legit big 3 right now. They're all playing at an all-star caliber level (all 3 at kind of low all-star caliber with none of them really dominating every night, it's common that any one of those 3 could be the most important guy on any night).

Their role players have a lot of depth, talent and variety.
Robinson, Crowder, Iguodala, Olynyk, and Jones all have over 60% TS%. Herro (higher volume) is still good as well.

Effectively, they are getting playmaking from Herro, Butler, Dragic, and Bam, and their role players are destroying you when left open.

Is Miami a contender yet?

[Ice Man]

So here's a question: if Miami has Jim Boylen instead of Eric Spoelstra, what would their regular season and playoffs record be?

It's not just Spo, it's Spo and Riley. The GM and coach are a unit. So I need to compare to Boylen and GarPax, which was a three-headed monster of confusion. To answer your question, I'd say the Heat would have been a 7th seed and lost in the first round to Toronto.

[Jcool0]

So here's a question: if Miami has Jim Boylen instead of Eric Spoelstra, what would their regular season and playoffs record be?

35 wins & out in round 1.

[MrSparkle]

The whole jimmy thing is such an “I told you so” that it doesn’t hurt, it’s just nauseating.

I wonder if the whole ASG situation in Chicago didn’t put the spotlight on how bad the Bulls organization was, if we’d still have GarPax talking about how confident they were about their 4 pick and young core while Jimmy was 2 games away from a final with no MVP teammates.

Anyway , the big takeaway is don’t lament about the “ones that got away.” Cause Jimmy wouldn’t have done **** with a Supermax and GarPax build. The morale of the story is that in many ways, players don’t win chips- organizations do. Krause was actually right — besides for his view of how good he was.

[Jcool0]

The whole jimmy thing is such an “I told you so” that it doesn’t hurt, it’s just nauseating.

I wonder if the whole ASG situation in Chicago didn’t put the spotlight on how bad the Bulls organization was, if we’d still have GarPax talking about how confident they were about their 4 pick and young core while Jimmy was 2 games away from a final with no MVP teammates.

Might not have MVP teammates but last night:

Butler: 4-11 for 14 points

Dragic: 10-19 for 25 points

Adebayo: 10-16 for 21 points

Robinson: 6-12 from 3 for 18 points.

This isn't just Jimmy dragging scrubs.

[Ice Man]

This isn't just Jimmy dragging scrubs.

For sure. Who takes scrubs to Conference Finals? LeBron did in 2007, but the East was ridiculously weak that year, with the Pistons the only team that won more than 50 games. And Detroit won only 53. Iverson probably did in 2001 (although he had Motumbo), and again the East was awful. The Bucks were the stiffest competition and they had supporting stars but no true star, with their best guys being Ray Allen, Glenn Robinson, and a oldish Sam Cassell.

There are no doubt other examples, but it's rare. And Butler isn't *that* good.

[dougthonus]

I have a ton of respect for Spo as a coach after the last few years.

Miami is interesting, looking at their formula, I thought it was kind of like Kawhi on the Raptors, but it really isn't.
Butler, Bam, and Dragic are a legit big 3 right now. They're all playing at an all-star caliber level (all 3 at kind of low all-star caliber with none of them really dominating every night, it's common that any one of those 3 could be the most important guy on any night).

Their role players have a lot of depth, talent and variety.
Robinson, Crowder, Iguodala, Olynyk, and Jones all have over 60% TS%. Herro (higher volume) is still good as well.

Effectively, they are getting playmaking from Herro, Butler, Dragic, and Bam, and their role players are destroying you when left open.

Is Miami a contender yet?

Can they win? Yes, they're so close that they absolutely have a chance and that makes them contenders of a sense by default..

They'd be the weakest champion (by a good margin) in my lifetime, so if you extend the term "contender" to teams of their quality, I'd guess you'd ramp up massively the amount of teams you view as contenders compared to how I have traditionally used the term.

That said, there have been teams that have won that I wouldn't have viewed as contenders at the start of the playoffs.

[Jeffster81]

Yep. And he's doing this without the help of a super team. The talent level on their roster is something we could've replicated.

Our Front Office could never create the culture that we see in Miami.

i would argue that we had that culture both under skiles and under thibs. that was more pax than garpax, though

All Jimmy is doing with Miami is showing how lazy and unmotivated GarPax truly was.

[HomoSapien]

Exactly. Jimmy went there and I questioned why he would go to a borderline lottery team.

Everybody did. This year's Heat has a Spurs thing going, the team is better than the sum of its parts. That's really hard to do. Even the Spurs can't do that now, either because they don't have the personnel (the likeliest answer) or because Pops is getting too old and is losing his touch (maybe).

So far, Jimmy has been right about everything.

[MrSparkle]

The whole jimmy thing is such an “I told you so” that it doesn’t hurt, it’s just nauseating.

I wonder if the whole ASG situation in Chicago didn’t put the spotlight on how bad the Bulls organization was, if we’d still have GarPax talking about how confident they were about their 4 pick and young core while Jimmy was 2 games away from a final with no MVP teammates.

Might not have MVP teammates but last night:

Butler: 4-11 for 14 points

Dragic: 10-19 for 25 points

Adebayo: 10-16 for 21 points

Robinson: 6-12 from 3 for 18 points.

This isn't just Jimmy dragging scrubs.

Well, the point is not one of those guys was a top-10 pick or max/star FA, which apparently GarPax needed in order to build around Jimmy. They were just "out of options" (despite having cap-space and a bunch of young FRPs that ended up being entirely worthless). Not to mention it didn't occur to them that perhaps their coaching hires were part of the problem.

Chicago would've had the exact same resources Miami had. Limited cap-space, mid FRPs.

But the real funny kicker to me is they ended up with tons of dead LONG-TERM pay-roll to the cap by dumping Jimmy and following with the Wade buyout and Niko dump. Here's the ultimate irony for me:

2018:

Felicio $8m
Asik $11m
Pondexter $4m

And Asik was still paid until this season, while is still paid into next year. Also bought out Wade's $25m instead of riding out the season. And honestly, they picked up the tab for an overpaid Robin Lopez with that Rose trade.

But for all the fear of paying $40m to Jimmy, they sure found a way to spend $40m on 4 guys who cumulatively literally averaged zero minutes.

[Leslie Forman]

Dragic: 10-19 for 25 points

Adebayo: 10-16 for 21 points

Robinson: 6-12 from 3 for 18 points.

This isn't just Jimmy dragging scrubs.

And what are these guys doing without Jimmy? What are they doing if they have to spend way more energy handling the ball, finding their own shot, guarding the tough assignment on defense…

What he's doing is really reminiscent of Pippen without Jordan. Not scoring a ton, but just doing so much else on the floor that all these other role players can really just lock in on what they're good at and save their energy for that - and if needed, putting in that scoring when necessary. Except Jimmy is actually even better at that last part.

I'd say that this team is in fact kind of a better version of the '94 Bulls.

[beeshma]

I have a ton of respect for Spo as a coach after the last few years.

Miami is interesting, looking at their formula, I thought it was kind of like Kawhi on the Raptors, but it really isn't.
Butler, Bam, and Dragic are a legit big 3 right now. They're all playing at an all-star caliber level (all 3 at kind of low all-star caliber with none of them really dominating every night, it's common that any one of those 3 could be the most important guy on any night).

Their role players have a lot of depth, talent and variety.
Robinson, Crowder, Iguodala, Olynyk, and Jones all have over 60% TS%. Herro (higher volume) is still good as well.

Effectively, they are getting playmaking from Herro, Butler, Dragic, and Bam, and their role players are destroying you when left open.

Is Miami a contender yet?

Can they win? Yes, they're so close that they absolutely have a chance and that makes them contenders of a sense by default..

They'd be the weakest champion (by a good margin) in my lifetime, so if you extend the term "contender" to teams of their quality, I'd guess you'd ramp up massively the amount of teams you view as contenders compared to how I have traditionally used the term.

That said, there have been teams that have won that I wouldn't have viewed as contenders at the start of the playoffs.

I think that "weakest champions" needs a bit more perspective before you can claim that. If Bam, Herro and others turn out to be exceptional players then we'll look back at this like Kawhi's 2014 championship with the Spurs. Back then his reputation was nothing special either but with more context we can see how strong a contributor he was. Same will be true for Bam and Herro is they end up becoming perennial all stars.

[dougthonus]

I think that "weakest champions" needs a bit more perspective before you can claim that. If Bam, Herro and others turn out to be exceptional players then we'll look back at this like Kawhi's 2014 championship with the Spurs. Back then his reputation was nothing special either but with more context we can see how strong a contributor he was. Same will be true for Bam and Herro is they end up becoming perennial all stars.

The 94/95 Rockets were the last team to win the title and have a SRS (Simple Rating System) as lower than the Heat. The vast majority of champions were 2x the Heat's SRS or more. I used SRS because it was the best metric I could find to rate team quality on basketball reference, but I'm open to looking into some other dimension.

The Heat were the 15th best offense and 10th best defense this year. It's pretty rare to win at title without being elite on one of those ends and top 10 on the other.

They're playing great in the playoffs and I'm absolutely pulling for them to win, but they're definitely not a team that you'd look at as having traditional championship qualities or even remotely close to that. Of course, that is part of the great things in sports. It doesn't matter if someone thinks your qualities are this that or the other, what matters is what you prove on the court in the playoffs.

[Jvaughn]

I have a ton of respect for Spo as a coach after the last few years.

Miami is interesting, looking at their formula, I thought it was kind of like Kawhi on the Raptors, but it really isn't.
Butler, Bam, and Dragic are a legit big 3 right now. They're all playing at an all-star caliber level (all 3 at kind of low all-star caliber with none of them really dominating every night, it's common that any one of those 3 could be the most important guy on any night).

Their role players have a lot of depth, talent and variety.
Robinson, Crowder, Iguodala, Olynyk, and Jones all have over 60% TS%. Herro (higher volume) is still good as well.

Effectively, they are getting playmaking from Herro, Butler, Dragic, and Bam, and their role players are destroying you when left open.

And not to be lost in the mix, but Crowder has been absolutely great shooting the ball and playing defense this postseason. Riley really put a super balanced team together.

[PaKii94]

I think that "weakest champions" needs a bit more perspective before you can claim that. If Bam, Herro and others turn out to be exceptional players then we'll look back at this like Kawhi's 2014 championship with the Spurs. Back then his reputation was nothing special either but with more context we can see how strong a contributor he was. Same will be true for Bam and Herro is they end up becoming perennial all stars.

The 94/95 Rockets were the last team to win the title and have a SRS (Simple Rating System) as lower than the Heat. The vast majority of champions were 2x the Heat's SRS or more. I used SRS because it was the best metric I could find to rate team quality on basketball reference, but I'm open to looking into some other dimension.

The Heat were the 15th best offense and 10th best defense this year. It's pretty rare to win at title without being elite on one of those ends and top 10 on the other.

They're playing great in the playoffs and I'm absolutely pulling for them to win, but they're definitely not a team that you'd look at as having traditional championship qualities or even remotely close to that. Of course, that is part of the great things in sports. It doesn't matter if someone thinks your qualities are this that or the other, what matters is what you prove on the court in the playoffs.

If the heat win they would be a Cinderella story just like how Jimmy's career individually is.

[Stratmaster]

He is the best player Pax and company ever drafted.

The only reason he was considered a head case, is he had a wining attitude this organization did not embrace or support. He rubbed the old system in place the wrong way, and became the guy when he wasn't supposed to be the guy.

I love Jimmy's attitude, and will root for him!

In Chicago he never had a team built around his skills. Were now seeing what he can do in that role.

Exactly.

Jimmy was never actually a head case. He rubs people wrong because he doesn't settle for people not working as hard as they possibly can to win. Much like Jordan (I'm not saying he's MJ) you love having a dog like him on your side, but you're probably not going to be his best friend if you're not trying to match his intensity.

The only times he has cohesiveness issues is when he's in an atmosphere where people aren't willing to grind like him. In Chicago, he openly criticized Hoiberg's work ethic, which in hindsight was warranted. Minnesota, he rubbed the organization wrong, because their two stars are lazy and don't work hard. In Philly, it was said that he had an issue with a player or players for the same issue. Looking back on it now, it seems that may have been Simmons.

You never hear any stories like that coming out of Miami, because they've built a team that's full of players willing to grind, a FO who supports paying what it takes to build a contender, and a coach that is battle tested and knows what it takes to make a title run. I miss Jimmy, but I'm happy for him, because he wasn't getting any of that here.

Jimmy rubs people wrong because he is an ****.

Great player though.

Don't compare him to Jordan. "Wanting to win" isn't unique. Being able to put a team on your back game after game is a different level and is unique.