March 05, 2019
Jimmy Butler is a hard guy to figure out on or off the court. He'll go through most of a game without impacting the offense, and then he seizes it in crunch time, as he did against the Orlando Magic on Tuesday. He'll join Amir Johnson at the podium and insist he doesn't want to take questions, as he did this same night, and then offer that he wants to play in the G-League just like Johnson did last week.
What isn't hard to figure out is the time of the game the Sixers need him most. When things get tight in the fourth quarter, the ball is coming his way. And to Butler, that is what he was brought here to do.
"I think I know when my number's going to get called. I'm cool with it, I understand my role," Butler said. "I think that my teammates and the coaches have a lot of confidence in me to take and make shots late. That's all I'm worried about. I hope we never ever get into that situation anyway, but if we do, I feel like a lot of the time I'm going to be called upon."
That undersells how different and perhaps difficult it is for Butler to have quarters like he did in the fourth on Tuesday night. He had just one field goal attempt at halftime. He was being outscored by Johnson — Philadelphia's fourth option at center — through most of the fourth quarter. Yet there Butler was, giving the Sixers one final push in their win over Orlando.
LATE GAME BUCKETS pic.twitter.com/GoFukhQBBB
— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) March 6, 2019
Basketball is a sport of rhythm and confidence. Turning the fourth-quarter controls of the offense over to a guy who has deferred or been uninvolved for much of the game is quite a risk in that way, and that's before you consider how a lack of engagement on offense can manifest in defensive apathy.
Butler did not have those problems on Tuesday night. It provided his head coach visions of a player he was responsible for scouting on the Lakers back in the day, when Brown was just an assistant for Gregg Popovich in San Antonio.
"I used to see Kobe [Bryant] do that all the time," Brown said. "Jimmy went through the first half and...the gym was moving, the ball was moving, people were scoring. He was a part of that. When it got to a stage of a game when we needed something a little different, more, there he was."
Just as important to the story of Tuesday night's game was Butler's help defense, which was critical with Philadelphia playing small down the stretch. With Mike Scott and/or Ben Simmons tasked with guarding Magic center Nikola Vucevic, the Sixers were at a disadvantage when Orlando dumped the ball down in the post. It was Butler, who led the game with three steals, who made the biggest difference here.
Butler's engagement level throughout the game, including in the fourth quarter, is a credit to him as an individual competitor. But as he noted after the game, life is easy when the rest of your team makes it so. The culture of unselfishness in Philadelphia has been built over years, nurtured by the sort of characters they have up and down the roster.
"Everybody's in constant communication, especially out there on the floor, but even off the floor. We like being around one another, everybody's smiling and I think that's the best part about it," said Butler. "When you got good people and everybody's happy and smiling, basketball is the easy part."
Mr. Butler is almost certainly the most interesting of those smiling faces. Even when he is dominating games in crunch time, he finds spare moments to remind you he is always marching to the beat of his own drum.
God bless Jimmy Butler pic.twitter.com/oPqJkSIOhp
— bryce Charper (@SnowmanEmbiid) March 6, 2019
Philadelphia's pursuit of stars has been wildly successful, and the trick now is maximizing their collective talent while keeping them all happy. Butler, who arrived in Philadelphia with quite a reputation, has quickly gone from the presumed "final piece" to a guy who is in the background for halves at a time, with Tobias Harris' rapid integration surprising everyone following this team.
That doesn't make him any less important to their Finals aspirations. Butler's ability to shift in and out of hero mode has saved Philadelphia quite often already this season, and mastering that switch may be the difference between an early exit and a path to greatness.
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