It’s a Thursday in January. It’s cold outside. The Bulls are iffy. Water is wet. Jimmy Butler is an All-Star. These are all facts.
It isn’t a secret that Butler is one of the best wings in the Eastern Conference, but even in the middle of a season where he continues to improve, astonishingly doing so at the age of 27, his still gets overshadowed by players like Paul George who is overwhelming winning in the court of public opinion.
Both players are fantastic and have their own ways of contributing to their teams. Butler is having a career year and he is an All-Star. Let’s take a moment to do exactly what being named an All-Star is supposed to do, and praise the feats of Jimmy this season.
We could go ahead and start with the obvious – his 52-point Herculean performance against the Charlotte Hornets on January 2nd. It was an incredible game. He shot 21-for-22 at the free throw line and 62.5 percent from the field. It was the best scoring on that few shot attempts since 1994. When the rest of Chicago’s team was about ready to fold, Butler willed them to a much-needed win.
How about his game against the short-handed Cleveland Cavaliers. He struggled for most of the first half, showing fatigue from the amount of work he’s being asked to do. He finished with 20 points, eight assists and six rebounds while leading a rag-tag Bulls squad back to .500 at the road against LeBron and a guy named DeAndre Liggins. Chicago might have won against an unimpressive Cleveland team, but without Butler they lose that game.
Now let’s back it out and look at some of his season totals in comparison to the rest of the East at the forward position.
Jimmy is second in scoring behind LeBron, trailing the best basketballer on the planet by just 0.6 points. He’s the best free throw shooter of any players attempting five or more attempts and he’s getting the most attempts in the conference, taking almost two full attempts per game more than the next closest player, Giannis Antetokounmpo. He’s 11th in rebounding, trailing mostly paint/post players. He’s third in assists, trailing just LeBron and Giannis. He’s tied for third in steals. And he’s 8th in plus-minus. And that’s the most impressive stat. He has the best plus-minus of any team in the conference that is .500 or worse. Everyone ahead of him plays for Cleveland, Toronto, Boston or is the Greek Freak – who is also a phenomenal talent on a team that is two games over .500.
And he’s essentially reaching his peak as a player. As noted earlier, it’s almost unheard of for a player to continue to improve so markedly at such a late age.
He’s shooting a career-high 9.5 free throws per game, a jump of 2.4 over last season. He’s shooting 88 percent at the line, a 4.8 percent improvement over last season and is his career-best mark by far. He’s averaging 25.2 points, a jump of 4.3 points over his career-high of last season. His 4.5 assists is just 0.3 short of his best season. His 1.7 steals is just 0.2 shy of his best.
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The point is that Butler is carrying an albatross of a team around his neck and he’s got to be feeling as worn down as the Ancient Mariner himself. And yet, he’s still grinding it out and playing the best basketball of his entire life.
The NBA released their first round of fan voting results today and they account for 50 percent of the weight for who gets in:
NBA All-Star fan voting, first returns: pic.twitter.com/xdIRVm9F8V
— Howard Beck (@HowardBeck) January 5, 2017
Jimmy is currently 6th among frontcourt players. He should be at least 3rd, cases for LeBron and Giannis as the top two options probably hold up well enough. It holds true that this year is Jimmy’s year as much as any other year could have been. It’s time that the 30th pick in the 2011 draft gets his due as one of the best wings in the game. So don’t forget to jump on social media and get out the #NBAVOTE for Jimmy.
