Back at the start of the NBA season, it was generally taken as a given that Chicago's year rested on the health of Derrick Rose.
The 2011 MVP, who missed almost all of the last two years with injuries, has held up, as it turns out. And the Bulls, at 24-10, have the seventh-best record in basketball.
But correlation does not imply causation.
No knock meant on Rose, who has played good defence while slowly rediscovering his once-explosive offensive game. He’s been pretty good, all things considered.
The real reason though, as anyone following the league already knows, the Bulls are as much in the mix as anybody to represent the East in the NBA Finals is Jimmy Butler.
The 25-year-old fourth-year swingman out of Marquette University has become a top-10 player by pretty much any measure – certainly by any advanced statistic and also by plain old scoring, in which he’s 10th in the league with 21.9 points per game.
Last season Butler took a step forward as a hounding defender on the wings, using his length and strength to shut down opponents as a one-on-one stopper.
This year he’s made his offensive game more efficient and rounded into the total package.
Butler wasn’t necessarily a bad offensive player last season, his first as a starter in Chicago. He just had some bad habits – namely, he was trigger-happy from three and often deferred to other, lesser teammates.
Carlos Boozer, gone to LA, led the Bulls in field goal attempts per game last year. He was followed, bafflingly, by DJ Augustin, himself exiled to Detroit.
Butler shared similar usage rates with the likes of Joakim Noah, Kirk Hinrich and Mike Dunleavy, none of them dynamic offensive players.
The new and improved Butler is taking the rock himself. And he’s taking it to the hoop.
First, he’s attempting over four more shots per game this year than he was last season. His usage rate, 22.0, is up from 16.8 last season and while it could still probably stand for an increase, at least he isn’t leaving possessions to be wasted by the likes of Boozer and Augustin anymore.
Butler has taken 43 per cent of his attempts near the basket this season, and he’s hitting 57.7 per cent of them. That’s produced a 48.3 overall percentage that compares favourably with fellow high-volume scorers James Harden (44.3) and LeBron James (48.8). Last year he took just 36.3 per cent of his attempts in the area closest to the hoop, instead tossing up 3.6 threes a game that he hit at just a 28.3 per cent clip.
Butler is making better use of his skills this season, particularly the fact that he’s a wrecking ball inside. Perhaps only Harden is as good at rampaging into the key, where nearly half (47 per cent) of his shots have come from. Against stronger defenders, he’s just as good at weaving a path into the lane or carving an opening off the ball. But there aren’t many defenders strong enough to keep him from simply imposing his will.
It’s turned him into a ruthlessly efficient scorer. His ability to force contact and draw a foul has earned him the second-most free throw attempts in the league this year (behind Harden), and he’s dropping them at an 83.3 per cent rate, a top-40 mark in the NBA.
He’s still not a great shooter, though at 43 per cent his midrange shot isn’t terrible. His 33.7 three point percentage could stand also to improve, but it’s a world better than the 28.3 per cent mark he hit last year when he was blindly chucking from distance.
The Bulls as a team are scoring 105.9 points per 100 possessions, eighth in the league. With Butler on the court that figure is 107.6, and their heaviest-used five-minute unit – with Butler joined by Rose, Pau Gasol, Noah and Dunleavy – scores 109.1 points per 100. Chicago’s combined five-man units without Butler have scored just 100.6 points per 100, all per NBA.com.
One game doesn’t tell a whole season’s story, but it’s still worth noting that with Butler out on bereavement leave on Saturday night, the Bulls played to a 99-99 tie through four quarters with lowly Boston before going to overtime, where they won.
Rose played 35 minutes. Gasol, Nikola Mirotic, Noah, Hinrich and Gibson all played heavy minutes.
The missing ingredient was Butler.
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