Mediocre shooting numbers are of little concern to Butler
All-Star forward believes no one else should worry either
Considering Jimmy Butler is the reason the Miami Heat have a shot at a deep playoff run, it comes off as somewhat incongruent to note that Butler doesn’t have a shot.
Not that it is something you would want to bring up to the All-Star forward.
“If we win a championship this year,” Butler said amid the Heat’s ongoing workouts at Disney Word, “I guarantee all you won’t be talking about how bad I’ve been shooting the basketball.”
Until then, the talk already has begun, with no less than NBA.com’s John Schuhmann, the site’s senior stats analyst, offering up some telling numbers amid the league’s shutdown due to the pandemic. Such as:
Butler’s effective field-goal percentage of 33.8 on shots outside of the paint is the worst this season among the 183 NBA players what have attempted at least 200 such shots.
Butler’s 31% shooting from midrange is second-worst in the league among the 79 players with at least 100 such attempts.
Butler’s 24.8% shooting on 3-pointers is third-worst in the league among the 242 players with at least 100 such attempts.
Through it all, Butler was selected as an
The Heat’s Jimmy Butler says he isn’t worried about his subpar shooting stats.
All-Star by Eastern Conference coaches and stands poised for possible placement on one of the All-NBA teams at season’s end.
With his ability to get to the foul line — even with the aforementioned numbers — Butler also ranks 46th in the NBA in true shooting percentage among 137 players with at least 500 field-goal attempts, at 58.3 (above the league average of 56.4).
And in the open court, his 1.4 points per possession in transition is second in the league among the 101 players with at least two transition possessions per game.
So, no, Butler doesn’t want to hear about what he hasn’t done during the Heat’s 41-24 run to this point, as the team’s Aug. 1 restart looms against the Denver Nuggets at the Wide World of Sports Complex.
“I’m just fine with how my game was,” he said. “I feel like we can be better as a whole.
“But like I always say, as long as we’re winning games, nobody’s really paying attention to that.”
Even if someone on NBA-bubble “snitch” line was paying attention to the dribbling in his room amid quarantine as Butler awaited his two initial negative COVID-19 tests.
“Ah, to tell you the truth, I feel like I get a lot of knocks on my door,” he said of that visit from security. “The majority of it is from my teammates, so it never ever really surprises me.
“But to know that my work is being noticed, I guess that’s not so much of a bad thing.”
As for Butler’s next shot at competition, that comes Wednesday night against the Sacramento Kings, in the first of the Heat’s three exhibitions.
Asked of the significance of those games, he said, “Just getting comfortable hooping again, getting in a rhythm, making sure that we’re still playing for one another. And outside of everything else, just to compete.
“I think everybody on my team, on this roster, we love to play against each other. But I think whenever you’re going up against other individuals, a different team, it brings a different level of competitiveness out of it.”