How Good is Jimmy Butler?

[Hangtime84]

He'll probably retire a bull, but still

[bad knees]

He'll probably retire a bull, but still

Maybe he will retire as a Bull, but he will likely go into the HOF as a member of the Heat.

[Jcool0]

Jimmy and Jordan together.... That would not mesh at all. They are both alphas, can you imagine Jordan going after Butler. There would be fist fights at every practice.

Jimmy willingly took a back seat on the 2016 Olympics team, and has never attempted to take the spotlight with any of his All Star Game appearances. And of course he was a player in the background for the Bulls for three years. I'm guessing he could have figured out how to coexist with Mike, if that meant winning basketball games.

Didn't seem to work in the end in Chicago, Minnesota and Philly. But yeah i am sure the 2012 Butler would be someone who could co-exist on the 90s Bulls. But problem is that Butler no longer exists, nore one you could win a title with.

As far as all-star teams and olympics. Even ultra competitive Jordan was able to have fun in those & got along with the same people he would murder in the playoffs. They are a totally different animal.

[dice]

jimmy arguably outplaying lebron heading into game 6 of the goddamn finals. who saw this coming?

if, goodness forbid, jimmy suffers a career ending injury in game 6 and the lakers close it out...could the bulls still be considered to have lost the butler trade?

[dice]

He's not the playmaker or defender but he's significantly better as a scorer that it makes this a legitimate question.

Pippen will always be 'better' due to accolades, but pure peak and talent, this is an interesting talking point.

Jimmy has had the biggest heart in the NBA for awhile. Him and MJ together would have been something special too. Toughness, focus, and determination would have been GOAT for a duo.

Jimmy and Jordan together.... That would not mesh at all. They are both alphas, can you imagine Jordan going after Butler. There would be fist fights at every practice.

jimmy did not behave as an alpha when he knew he wasn't the best player early in his career

[The Box Office]

jimmy arguably outplaying lebron heading into game 6 of the goddamn finals. who saw this coming?

if, goodness forbid, jimmy suffers a career ending injury in game 6 and the lakers close it out...could the bulls still be considered to have lost the butler trade?

No. We didn't lose. No one lost actually.

- GarPax is gone. Got a new respectable coach, scouts, and trainers as well.
- Jimmy B. finally got into a situation where it suited him. People forget that Jimmy still had to go through Minny and Philly to get where he is today.

Just be happy for him and not get wrapped up in winners and losers.

[dice]

Im guessing that Butler isn't worth a player coming off an ACL injury, an old rookie who can't shoot, and moving up 9 spots in the draft with no additional picks?

you're conveniently leaving out the nearly $200 mil from age 30-34, which was what the trade was really about. and it was an eminently legitimate consideration

[RagingBull316]

Paying your star player in his prime and early 30s is not a bad thing. The previous management and owner sold you on that, and they were wrong and us fans have paid the price.

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[Ice Man]

Didn't seem to work in the end in Chicago, Minnesota and Philly.

Say what? Chicago was fine, the only players that Jimmy had a problem with didn't have an NBA future. Minnesota was fine, the team played great with him, he left because Glen Taylor wouldn't pay him. Philly was fine, the team had its best year ever, and its biggest star, Joel Embiid, loved playing with him.

None of this narrative makes sense. Nor does the related narrative that because nobody good will play with Butler, he had to go to Miami where he will be stuck on a team that isn't very good, because any team that has Butler as its best player will lose in the first round of the playoffs, maybe the second round if it gets lucky.

[nomorezorro]

No. We didn't lose. No one lost actually.

- GarPax is gone. Got a new respectable coach, scouts, and trainers as well.
- Jimmy B. finally got into a situation where it suited him. People forget that Jimmy still had to go through Minny and Philly to get where he is today.

Just be happy for him and not get wrapped up in winners and losers.

we didn't lose the trade because the trade was so bad that we actually fired our untouchable gm

i guess that's one way of looking at it

[PhilLeotardo]

The Bulls lost the Butler trade the moment Minnesota made the playoffs for the first time in like a gajillion years. It was one of the worst trades of all time & sparked the exit of one of the most corrosive & volatile, longest tenured regimes in NBA history. There’s no way to defend the trade

[dice]

Paying your star player in his prime and early 30s is not a bad thing. The previous management and owner sold you on that, and they were wrong and us fans have paid the price.

how many players are superstars at age 34? because the bulls would have been paying butler like a superstar at age 34

there were plenty of people, myself included, who thought that jimmy COULD lead a team to the finals. but not a single person that i'm aware of predicted that it would happen

[dice]

The Bulls lost the Butler trade the moment Minnesota made the playoffs for the first time in like a gajillion years. It was one of the worst trades of all time & sparked the exit of one of the most corrosive & volatile, longest tenured regimes in NBA history. There’s no way to defend the trade

minnesota's lack of franchise success after trading KG has exactly zero relevance to the merits (or lack thereof) of the bulls trading jimmy butler. just as the bulls lack of success in between MJ and derrick rose has no relevance when considering derrick's HOF argument

[dice]

I don't understand the people who talk about GarPax's ineptness as support for their thinking that trading Jimmy was a good idea. It's a hell of a lot easier to build a great team around one great two-way wing than it is to build one from scratch. GarPax built a great team around a healthy Derrick quite quickly; there is no reason to think that they couldn't have done the same around Jimmy, if they had appreciated his talent and upside. Seems like the references to GarPax are just an attempt by some posters to shift responsibility from having made a poor judgment. It's not a sin to make a poor judgment about a player's potential - we all do it. There's also no need to shift responsibility either.

And by the way, here is an article that sets forth in detail what we knew about Jimmy, his skills, his will to improve and his will to overcome odds, at the time that we decided to trade him. His trajectory was already off the charts. He had gone from homeless in high school, to the 30th pick in the draft, to an All Star and All-NBA defender. Yet we decided that his trajectory was going to stop and/or dramatically dip downward going forward. Remarkable really.

https://myhero.com/jimmy-butler-2

It wasn't that they thought that his trajectory was going to end, it was profit.

They just simply didn't want to pay him.

not wanting to pay him had nothing to do with profit. it was all about his ability to earn a supermax payout from age 30-34. because if he couldn't (and nobody should have expected him to), it would hamper the ability to build a contender

It was only after he was gone, the Bulls started to miss the playoff, and JR started to miss that playoff revenue, that he finally woke up.

they knew they were going to miss the playoffs for at least a year after trading jimmy. the jimmy trade SHOULD have put an end to the nonsense about JR only being interested in playoff revenue. because the organization clearly wasn't satisfied with jimmy butler leading them to a low playoff seed year in and year out and they didn't think that they could build a genuine perennial contender around him

And it must hurt JR (and Gar/Pax even more) to watch these NBA finals and have their noses rubbed in their mistake.

sure. but if his game falls off over the next few seasons, they'll be able to justify their actions once again (to themselves, anyway). particularly if the bulls pass the heat at some point during that period of time

[Ugly Duckling]

Paying your star player in his prime and early 30s is not a bad thing. The previous management and owner sold you on that, and they were wrong and us fans have paid the price.

how many players are superstars at age 34? because the bulls would have been paying butler like a superstar at age 34

there were plenty of people, myself included, who thought that jimmy COULD lead a team to the finals. but not a single person that i'm aware of predicted that it would happen

Well you could make the argument that he's outplaying LeBron rn, who's 35. Not saying Jimmy could have the same longevity as LeBron, but his game looks like it'll age well. Sometimes you have to overpay towards the end of a contract to win. If you think about it, it's like he'll be getting more than the super max for the yrs which he's in his prime and less when he's not, even though that's not how his salary is paid out. $40 million is an underpay for him rn the way he's playing. Also have to account for inflation, although with the pandemic, that'll prob be flattened

[dice]

Paying your star player in his prime and early 30s is not a bad thing. The previous management and owner sold you on that, and they were wrong and us fans have paid the price.

how many players are superstars at age 34? because the bulls would have been paying butler like a superstar at age 34

there were plenty of people, myself included, who thought that jimmy COULD lead a team to the finals. but not a single person that i'm aware of predicted that it would happen

Well you could make the argument that he's outplaying LeBron rn, who's 35. Not saying Jimmy could have the same longevity as LeBron, but his game looks like it'll age well. Sometimes you have to overpay towards the end of a contract to win. If you think about it, it's like he'll be getting more than the super max for the yrs which he's in his prime and less when he's not, even though that's not how his salary is paid out. $40 million is an underpay for him rn the way he's playing. Also have to account for inflation, although with the pandemic, that'll prob be flattened

if you're planning to pay a guy like a superstar at age 34 but don't expect him to PLAY like one at that age, there has to be an upside earlier in the contract...like jimmy is providing right now. and again, nobody expected jimmy to be staring down lebron in the finals at any point

[Am2626]

No. We didn't lose. No one lost actually.

- GarPax is gone. Got a new respectable coach, scouts, and trainers as well.
- Jimmy B. finally got into a situation where it suited him. People forget that Jimmy still had to go through Minny and Philly to get where he is today.

Just be happy for him and not get wrapped up in winners and losers.

we didn't lose the trade because the trade was so bad that we actually fired our untouchable gm

i guess that's one way of looking at it

The Bulls didn’t fire Paxson. He went to the Reinsdorf’s and told them he was no longer the best person for the job. He would still be the GM if he wanted to be.

[Am2626]

The Bulls lost the Butler trade the moment Minnesota made the playoffs for the first time in like a gajillion years. It was one of the worst trades of all time & sparked the exit of one of the most corrosive & volatile, longest tenured regimes in NBA history. There’s no way to defend the trade

Player for player I’m not so sure that trade was as lopsided as you make it to be. Both LaVine and Lauri can become All Star Caliber players. Even if Butler stayed I have no confidence that GarPax and Boylen would have been able to make it work. What needed to happen was to get rid of the front office and coach which has finally happened. Who knows maybe Butler comes back at some point. When does his contract end?

[RedBulls23]

He'll probably retire a bull, but still

Maybe he will retire as a Bull, but he will likely go into the HOF as a member of the Heat.

Can't remember if NBA players enter the HOF under any specific team, but i doubt Jimmy feels that kind of connection to the Bulls anymore. I think he'll end up retiring with Miami.

[RedBulls23]

jimmy arguably outplaying lebron heading into game 6 of the goddamn finals. who saw this coming?

yeah and many people didn't see Jimmy turning into an perennial all-star and all-nba caliber player but Jimmy has made a career of proving a lot of people wrong.

Jimmy was a great player for the Bulls and has continued to prove his greatness.