As the Golden State Warriors have turned their season around, now sitting in solid contention for a bona-fide playoff berth, no player has played a larger role than trade deadline acquisition Jimmy Butler.
Butler, who was shipped to the Warriors from the Miami Heat, has seemed to provide a sort of completeness to this iteration of the team. He has used his aggressiveness at the rim and in the paint to provide spacing for lethal shooter Stephen Curry, and his defensive intensity has provided staunch and dynamic help for Golden State's veteran anchor Draymond Green.
Yet his apparent unwillingness to shoot contested layups unless he can draw a foul is a major issue for the Warriors, who especially in the playoffs will rely on Butler heavily as a consistent and aggressive interior scorer.
Jimmy Butler needs to shoot more contested layups
Butler has certainly been magnificent thus far with Golden State, averaging 16.4 points, 5.7 rebounds and 5.9 assists through 14 games with the team.
Moreover, Butler's transformation of Golden State's performance at the free-throw line has been remarkable. One of the worst teams in the NBA at drawing and making free throws for most of the season, the Warriors, since Butler's arrival, sit fourth in the league in free-throw attempts and first in made free-throws.
This has been a massive part of the team's formula for recent success, and Butler deserves the largest credit for this transformation. Yet the numbers show that Butler's aggressiveness might be almost too dependent on his ability to draw fouls.
So far 44.8% of Butler's field goal attempts have been layups, and he's shooting an efficient 56% on these shots. Yet only 10% of these have been contested, suggesting an unwillingness to take on the type of high-difficulty layups that could boost his scoring and make him an even more impactful player for this team.
On the one hand, this is a natural symptom of Butler's tendency to draw fouls; his eye for creating contact and feel for pressuring the rim are part of what makes him such a great player. Yet, despite all of his successes with Golden State so far, his 16.4 points per game is his lowest mark since his 2013-14 season with the Chicago Bulls: the year before he won Most Improved Player and leaped into prominence in the NBA.
Much of the Warriors' struggles during the first half of the season were a result of inconsistent scoring throughout the rotation, even from their superstar in Curry. As the team eyes a playoff run, Butler's ability to score without necessarily getting to the free throw line will be of increasing importance.