How Good is Jimmy Butler?

[kingkirk]

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

He’s also constantly referred to Bam as the heart and soul and most important player on the team. Did so with Embiid as well. He also is super unselfish on the floor.

This idea from some that Jimmy as an alpha like someone like Kobe misguided.

[RedBulls23]

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

He’s also constantly referred to Bam as the heart and soul and most important player on the team. Did so with Embiid as well. He also is super unselfish on the floor.

This idea from some that Jimmy as an alpha like someone like Kobe misguided.

Can't remember, but wasn't the 3 alpha stuff more media driven?

[PhilLeotardo]

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.

Butler will always be attached to the Bulls, forever. He became a folk hero there, and a living testament to hard work & dedication. He embodied everything the Bulls are (were) about. And I’m sure he wishes he could have done this in Chicago, it would’ve meant an infinite amount more to do it as a Bull than on an expansion team in Florida lol

[PhilLeotardo]

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.

And you know this how? No one knows what precisely went down besides the individuals that were present throughout the endless waking nightmare that was the past 4 years, and it’s inevitable conclusion. No one knows who said behind closed doors

Paxson got demoted. He’s friendly with ownership, so they allowed him to say he “stepped down” & bow out “gracefully”, but he didn’t step down. He essentially got fired from his previous position but gets to keep collecting a small paycheck, and his partner was fired altogether

You can bet there was a ton of infighting within the Bulls brass over the past 5 years, and probably several different warring collectives/camps (Michael vs Jerry/Jon, Gar vs Jon, etc who the hell knows), but ultimately, if we’re just going off of actual events that have taken place, it seems like Jerry gave PaxGar one final shot at building something worthwhile & proving themselves, and they blew it, which lead to Michael R going “see?? I told you, they have no idea what they’re doing, we need to burn it down & hire professionals, we are destroying this franchise & people aren’t coming to games anymore”

Michael seems to be running ownership duties completely now, and wasted no time in firing everyone & burning the entire thing to the ground. The FO wasn’t rebuilt from the ground up because “Pax decided to step down” lol. They were flirting with the point of no return

[dice]

just prior to jimmy's breakout season:

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1340923

[dice]

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.

Butler will always be attached to the Bulls, forever. He became a folk hero there, and a living testament to hard work & dedication. He embodied everything the Bulls are (were) about. And I’m sure he wishes he could have done this in Chicago, it would’ve meant an infinite amount more to do it as a Bull than on an expansion team in Florida lol

the heat organization has been around for 32 years. if you still consider them an "expansion team" at this point, particularly given that this is their third distinct contending team, then the bulls are also still an expansion team

i think it's unlikely...probably very unlikely, that jimmy ever plays for the bulls again. and the way things are headed, i think he'd get inducted to the HOF as a member of the heat if that's the way things were done. but players don't get inducted as a member of a particular team

it'll be interesting to see if the bulls retire jimmy's number...particularly given that the heat strangely retired MJ's number

[PaKii94]

just prior to jimmy's breakout season:

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1340923

Code: Select all

Player   Best Year   Best WS/48   Combined Best
Butler    7.1   0.158       9
Stevenson   7.4   0.13       7.4
Hayward   5.4   0.123       5.7
Parsons   7.6   0.131       7.6
Deng          11.3   0.176    11.3
Allen           5.1   0.152       6.1
Leonard   7.7   0.193       7.7
Iguodala   9.6   0.158       10

Winshares wise. All of them got paid. Jimmy will be the next.

should have gotten paid the supermax

[TheJordanRule]

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.

Piggy backing off your point-- Jimmy took a backseat to Goran freakin Dragic this whole season and for the majority of the playoffs. He's incredibly unselfish, even with his alpha mindset.

[johnnyvann840]

just prior to jimmy's breakout season:

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1340923

This was just prior to that season during the preseason... most people didn't think Jimmy was the answer and most didn't even think he had the ball skills to play the 2.

viewtopic.php?p=41342110#p41342110

[TheStig]

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.

The early 80's 76ers would certainly disagree with that one. But I agree otherwise.

[PhilLeotardo]

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.

The early 80's 76ers would certainly disagree with that one. But I agree otherwise.

Lol he/she was obviously referring to the current post-Hinkie squad

Also, otherwise what? The Sixers went to the dang Finals in 2001

[TeamMan]

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

Will try to respond to all of your points without breaking your post into pieces...

After the Bulls missed the playoffs (following trading JB) there was a press release that came out saying that JR was shocked at how much revenue that it cost the team (even though he'd been warned) and his only goal was to get back to the playoffs again.

So, it appeared, that in his evaluation, making it to the playoffs (even if it was only the 1st round) would have justified paying JB. The Bulls had been doing it (off and on) for most of the years since the end of the dynasty, and JR appeared to be completely happy with it (the profit).

Now, in the aftermath of all of the firings, it also appears that Gar/Pax were indeed given that ultimatum that so many people refused to believe. So, it was not the "organization's decision", it was a Gar/Pax decision that cost them their jobs. And JR had been talked into it (missing the playoffs), but afterward felt that he'd been mislead on the revenue/profit loss that was going to happen.

So, IMO JR looked at what happened when JB got to the T-Wolves, and thought "They are getting the revenue that I could have had if we'd kept him and went to the playoffs another year".

As far as rebuilding around JB, what the Heat did (in terms of rebuilding) was easily achievable by most of the teams in the NBA (including the Bulls).

The difference was that the Heat had Riley and Spoelstra.

So, JR made (the correct ) decision that Gar/Pax had to go, simply because they had allowed themselves to slip further and further into making "bad decisions" that (looking back) can now be judged as mistakes. And that they were wrapped up in their egos instead of thanking the stars for getting Rose and JB.

The truth is, they got lucky with both Rose and JB, because their talent evaluation skills had nothing to do with picking those two players. JB was simply the best player available at the end of the 1st round, after virtually every other team in the league had already passed on him.

No one expected Jimmy to turn into a 2-way all star.

But once they had him, they didn't appreciate their luck and thought, "We're so smart that we can just do it again". So, they deserved to be fired.

[Ice Man]

The early 80's 76ers would certainly disagree with that one. But I agree otherwise.

Ha! Well, I wrote in shorthand.

Moses Malone has gotta be just about the best player that the younger generation (frequently) does not know about. I had to tell my son who he was. I said, "The guy who swept Magic and Kareem by averaging 26/18." He said, "Whaaaat?"

[chrispatrick]

just prior to jimmy's breakout season:

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1340923

Ha, I remember how frustrating that thread (and the April Fools thread pretending he got $8M a year as of that was too much) was.

Advanced stats have pretty much always said Jimmy is really good and that’s before he was scoring too.

[Ice Man]

just prior to jimmy's breakout season:

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1340923

I didn't find any of my posts in that thread. Thanks the Lord. I'm sure they would have been silly. I never paid much Butler much attention until he broke out. I probably would have written that the was the new Thabo, let him walk.

[Michael Jackson]

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

He’s also constantly referred to Bam as the heart and soul and most important player on the team. Did so with Embiid as well. He also is super unselfish on the floor.

This idea from some that Jimmy as an alpha like someone like Kobe misguided.

Can't remember, but wasn't the 3 alpha stuff more media driven?

Yeah it was and it had everything to do with Hoiberg being the wrong coach to hire which most everyone saw from a mile away. The team wasn’t bad by any means, while not a contender they if healthy could have gone deeper in the playoffs. Wade and Jimmy could have turned around the recruiting to Chicago a lot. It went ugly because Hoiberg sucked imho and everyone turned sour. Everyone says Wade was just taking the money and running (which is what happened) but I truly don’t think he wanted it to play out that way when he signed. I do believe for his ego he wanted to bring success to Chicago. It was a terrible relationship all the way around so wade acted like wade and cut and ran. Managed better from the top down though that could have been a biter situation all the way to this day. Look guys w got Jimmy and AD and now Giannis wants to come here. Instead well.... we have a complete overhaul and spare parts.

[RedBulls23]

just prior to jimmy's breakout season:

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1340923

Jimmy really had one of those unreal breakout seasons that upcoming season.

Everyone undervalued him in that thread because he ended being worth the max and not the 8-10 people were mentioning.

[TheSuzerain]

The biggest factor that doesn't get talked about with regard to the initial Jimmy extension is the looming cap explosion. It really wasn't on fans' radar understandably.

But I have to think GarPax and the Bulls FO had a pretty good idea of where the salary cap was going. Which makes it kind of ridiculous that they didn't "overpay" to get a deal done with Butler that summer knowing the deal will almost immediately become a way below-market deal in the span of a year.

[Mech Engineer]

The great part about Jimmy now for Miami is he has shown he can be a top option during clutch time against multiple superstars like Giannis, LeBron etc...or a combination of young stars like the Boston guys. This makes it easy to fill in the gaps and get that release valve option similar to Dragic. Even if he wasn't he is now, it still was easy to get another all-star and make it a damn good team which is a constant contender. That's the floor of a Jimmy's team. That was all we wanted the Bulls management to do and that wasn't something of a unknown.

[dice]

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

Will try to respond to all of your points without breaking your post into pieces...

After the Bulls missed the playoffs (following trading JB) there was a press release that came out saying that JR was shocked at how much revenue that it cost the team (even though he'd been warned) and his only goal was to get back to the playoffs again.

So, it appeared, that in his evaluation, making it to the playoffs (even if it was only the 1st round) would have justified paying JB. The Bulls had been doing it (off and on) for most of the years since the end of the dynasty, and JR appeared to be completely happy with it (the profit).

Now, in the aftermath of all of the firings, it also appears that Gar/Pax were indeed given that ultimatum that so many people refused to believe. So, it was not the "organization's decision", it was a Gar/Pax decision that cost them their jobs. And JR had been talked into it (missing the playoffs), but afterward felt that he'd been mislead on the revenue/profit loss that was going to happen.

So, IMO JR looked at what happened when JB got to the T-Wolves, and thought "They are getting the revenue that I could have had if we'd kept him and went to the playoffs another year".

all "playoff revenue" is not equal. squeaking into the playoffs and getting the revenue from 2-3 home playoff games is wildly different from the revenue that comes from a deep run. and the deep run has additional financial benefits that go beyond ticket sales (nobody buys a 'bulls 2021 playoff qualifier' t-shirt, for example). i find it hard to believe that jerry reinsdorf, whose team won six damn championships and sold out games for many YEARS after it despite fielding many garbage teams, doesn't know the difference

As far as rebuilding around JB, what the Heat did (in terms of rebuilding) was easily achievable by most of the teams in the NBA (including the Bulls).

The difference was that the Heat had Riley and Spoelstra.

So, JR made (the correct ) decision that Gar/Pax had to go

you make it sound like duplicating the heat culture is easy. it isn't. neither is hitting on all the personnel moves that the heat did. ironically, john paxson was one of the few that has accomplished something similar. early in his executive career he fielded a team that was missing only a guy like jimmy butler. and then he drafted jimmy butler!

The truth is, they got lucky with both Rose and JB, because their talent evaluation skills had nothing to do with picking those two players. JB was simply the best player available at the end of the 1st round, after virtually every other team in the league had already passed on him.

this is mostly false. first of all, derrick was not a slam dunk pick. some were advocating for beasley. secondly, derrick ended up costing the bulls wins in the long-term because of his injury and huge contract. at the end of the day, derrick gave us a lot of hope, but really only delivered 2 outstanding regular seasons. then he blew a huge 5 year hole in our cap space just as jimmy was coming into his own. terrible luck. finally, jimmy was widely projected in the 2nd round. go back and look at the draft thread - absolutely nobody here was pining for jimmy butler. nothing like "well, guess we've gotta take jimmy since he's fallen to #30"

But once they had him, they didn't appreciate their luck and thought, "We're so smart that we can just do it again"

they surely didn't think this after so many misses AFTER drafting jimmy. it was a clear case of them not thinking that he could earn a supermax contract from age 30-34, so might as well trade him rather than "lose him for nothing"

So, they deserved to be fired.

they should never have been permitted to make the decision to trade jimmy and rebuild in the first place...because of the lack of success for years after drafting jimmy. they should have been let go and someone else could have made the decision on how to proceed