The Jimmy Butler Dilemma

The Bulls failed to reach an agreement on a contract extension with Jimmy Butler before the deadline. Now, Butler has severely outplayed expectations.  Will the Bulls bite the tax bullet and give him the max he deserves?

by Austin Peters



October 31st is the deadline for rookies to sign an extension to their rookie scale contracts.  Each year, speculation and rumors swirl throughout the month of October on extensions.  Which players are going to sign an extensions? Which players are going to take a bet on themselves and test the waters next summer? Which teams are going to extend their guys? How much is this player going to get?

The tricky thing about extending guys in the age range of 22-24 is you are not only paying them for what they have accomplished, but you have to factor in their potential as well.  Guys at that age, if they haven't already flamed out of the league, will improve to some degree.  How much they improve is very tricky to guess.

Such is the case with the Bulls' Jimmy Butler.  Butler had always been viewed by people in basketball circles as a super role player. Jimmy Butler even felt this way himself. "I’m not a star,’’ Butler told Joe Cowley of the Chicago Sun Times. “I’m a good role player on a really, really good team, a really, really deep team. I like being a role player. Star has never been next to Jimmy Butler’s name. It never will be. I’ll always be an under-the-radar dawg." It seems that the Bulls felt this way as well, offering Jimmy a four year, $40 million extension that Butler and his party promptly turned down.  Butler has always had nagging injuries, and his numbers also suggested that maybe he is more suited to be a role guy and get paid like one as well. That's why the Bulls offered him $10 a year instead of the near max that Klay Thompson got for his extension with the Warriors.

2012-13 was when Jimmy first got noticed.  He didn't play much his rookie year because Tom Thibodeau apparently has something against playing rookies. But in his sophomore season, in just 26 minutes a game, Butler shot 47% from the field, 38% from three, and a league average PER of 15.26.  Not bad for a guy playing in his first real season in the league.

Butler regressed by a considerable margin in 13-14, however.  He played more, averaging almost 39 minutes a game, but showed that the increased playing time and role might have been too much for him.  His per 40 minute numbers dropped as well as his true shooting percentage and PER.  With an increased usage rate, his TS% plummeted from 57.4 to 52.2 and his PER was below league average at 13.57.  ESPN's projections for Butler in the 14-15 season looked a lot similar to his numbers that he put up in 13-14.  Jimmy showed that maybe he couldn't handle a bigger role, needing to be a fourth or fifth option instead of number one or two.

Much to the surprise of many, even Bulls fans I'm sure, Jimmy has been sensational this season.  With injuries to Derrick Rose keeping him out of the lineup here and there, Butler has shouldered a ton of the scoring burden for the Bulls.  In just over 40 minutes per game, Butler is tenth in the league in scoring, has a red hot TS% of 60%, and has a PER of 22.49.  This all came with Butler's usage rising to 20.9 possessions per 40 minutes.  Butler isn't anywhere near the top of the league in usage rate, which is a testament to how efficient he is when he does have the ball.  When Butler goes to the bench, the Chicago offensive rating drops near a whopping seven points per 100 possessions.  

His three point shot still needs work.  Butler is only shooting 33.7% from long range.  Where Butler has done some serious damage, however, is in the mid range.  From 10 feet out to the three point line, Jimmy is shooting 45.6%.  Late in games, you'll see the Bulls run some sort of cross screen action for Butler on the baseline into a post up on the other side so Jimmy can take his guy one on one.  This just goes to show how much the respect and trust has grown between Thibs and Butler throughout his time in Chicago.

We all know about Jimmy's defensive impact, even if on/off numbers don't show it too much.  Butler plays 40 minutes per game, the highest amount of minutes for anyone in the league. The Bulls defense currently ranks in the top ten in defensive efficiency.  With Butler playing nearly every single minute of every Bulls game, it is probably a safe assumption to say that Butler's defense is a huge part of the Bulls' success.

But therein lies one of the biggest problems that the Bulls could possibly face with Jimmy going forward.  Back when Luol Deng played for the Bulls, it seemed like every season Deng was dealing with one nagging injury after another.  Like Butler now, Deng was being playing an insane amount of minutes each game.  The more you play, the more tired you get, and the increase in injury goes up the more tired you become throughout the course of a game.  It got to a point where Deng would butt heads with Bulls management about his minutes and the amount of over usage he felt.

The fear here is that the Butler storyline is leaning eerily towards the same one that the Bulls just went through with Loul Deng that ended in them trading him to the Cleveland Cavaliers.  The Bulls might already be on Butler's bad side in refusing to meet his contract terms before the October 31st deadline.  Now, when Butler hits the restricted free agent market in the summer, the Bulls have almost no leverage in the negotiations.  Butler, at this point, is no doubt a max contract player and anything less than that is going to seem like a slap in the face to Jimmy.  With how fast and how high the salary cap is rising, you can bet that there will be several teams that won't hesitate to give him a max deal if they get a whiff of friction within the Bulls brain trust.

The Bulls will most certainly go deep into it the tax next year with Butler's max contract.  Jerry Reinsdorf has showed hesitation in the past with paying the tax, making this next Jimmy contract a bit of an elephant in the room for the Bulls.  They are enjoying solid play as of late; Butler is crawling into the MVP conversation, Pau is atop the league in All Star votes, and D Rose looks like D Rose again.  As of right now, the Butler question is on hold.  But don't think that the issue will go away, and at some point, the Bulls will have to revisit the Butler dilemma.