![]() ![]() Now his confidence is there and he can do whatever he wants out there.” He’s not at home kicking his feet up because he had a 52-point game or a 40-point game. But every night he’s in the gym, he’s putting the work in, and I love to see it. “The thing about him, the last few games, he’s been balling out of control. “When a guy comes in the league as a defender like he did and plays so hard,” Wade said, “and then in a short period of time turn himself into an All-Star, a 20-point-a-game scorer, you know he’s putting work in. When Wade came, it was in support of Butler, not as an older, fellow MU alum to lead or mentor him. He had some sidekick issues of his own along the way but those ended when Derrick Rose was traded to New York in June. He arrived in 2011 as the last pick of the first round, an unrecruited Marquette product with a flat trajectory on his jump shot, a stiffness to his game and an underdog backstory (homeless teen from Tomball, Texas) that fueled him.įour years later, he had worked himself into an NBA All-Star signing a five-year, $95 million contract. To expend that amount of energy on the defensive end and continue to do what he does on offense says a lot about him.”īutler is that CEO who walks his own letters down to the mail room, the artist who paints both masterpieces and the picket fence. “A lot of guys putting up huge numbers, they do it on one end and somebody else guards the other team’s best player. “You look at the two-way players in this league, and you can put Jimmy up with any of ‘em,” Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg said. That is, offensive, defensive and late in games. That’s how Westbrook rolls – a chip on one shoulder, his game unleashed from sidekick status, no mercy for the rest of the league.īutler has put himself on some MVP voters eventual 5-spot ballots not with Westbrook’s speed and perpetual motion but by the way he grinds at not just both but all ends. ![]() He has hit 15 of his 27 3-point attempts in OKC’s past two games, and he has been on everybody’s Most Valuable Player radar since former teammate Kevin Durant left to sign with Golden State. Westbrook, this season’s one-man tribute to Oscar Robertson’s triple-double specialness, picked up his 17th this season with 32 points, 17 rebounds and 11 assists against Denver on Saturday. And he’s putting himself in the category of just special.” The mentality that it takes to, even if you’re having a bad game, still be able to do that in the clutch, that’s big time. There’s a lot of things that separate guys and that’s one of them – the mentality. “So many guys in this league have talent,” Chicago’s Dwyane Wade said late Saturday, after Butler scored 42 points – 32 of them after halftime – in the Bulls’ overtime victory against Toronto. Other guys might work just as hard, but it’s safe to say that nobody outworks either of them. Bruce Springsteen might have inherited from James Brown the crown as hardest working man in show business, but the Boss is a slacker compared to the efforts given as SOP by Butler and Westbrook. If there is any star player in the league who works harder than Butler, it’s Westbrook. "Jimmy is at home not feeling well." Coach Hoiberg says Butler is a gametime decision tonight. announcement of “Gentlemen, start your engines!” That’s how high Westbrook and Butler rev in any given game, so maybe RPM is a better stat to assess them than PPG.Īnd when Butler missed the Bulls’ shootaround Monday morning, raising concerns about his availability to face OKC, it was due to a fever. It would be entirely in character, in fact, if the Thunder’s and the Bulls’ games were to begin not with a tipoff but a checkered flag, after the requisite P.A. ![]() It’s not clear if those two guys rest when the rest of the world is sleeping, never mind during the two-and-a-half hours of your typical NBA game. Chicago game at United Center Monday night would be for the official scorer’s report issued at the end of the night to show “DNP-Rest” next to both Russell Westbrook’s and Jimmy Butler’s names. The ultimate irony from the Oklahoma City vs.
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