Jimmy Butler doesn’t care about stats and he’s proving it in Minnesota

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Jimmy Butler looks frustrated. His once 24-14 Minnesota Timberwolves just took their 15th loss of the year to the Brooklyn Nets, a young team whose three best players are injured.

The last thing he wants to do is talk about scoring.

“I really don’t care how many points I average,” Butler said after the Wolves’ 98-97 loss to the Nets on Wednesday. “I just wanna win. That’s that. I don’t care about how many points I average per month, I don’t care about any of that. If we don’t do our job as a whole here and win games, it really doesn’t matter.”

Truth be told, it was Butler’s scoring that mattered when Minnesota rattled off 10 wins in 15 December games. After averaging 16 points in October and 18 points in November, Jimmy Buckets ran amok for 27 points per game in December. It was the 12th-highest scoring output in the league for the month.

Wolves head coach Tom Thibodeau attributed Butler’s scoring spike to bringing out the best in his teammates: “That was the best way for him to get everyone else comfortable. And he’s asserted himself a lot more in terms of the scoring.”

Karl-Anthony Towns agrees. “When you got a person like that who’s a walking bucket,” he says, “it’s obviously very comfortable to have.”

It might be difficult to wrap your head around the idea that Jimmy Buckets doesn’t actually care about getting buckets. But if you talk to his coach and teammates, you begin to understand that scoring is the absolute last thing on Jimmy’s mind.

“He’s never been a guy who’s seeking shots or kinda going out there playing with his own agenda,” Wolves big man Cole Aldrich tells SB Nation. “He just kinda lets the game come to him.

“He really doesn’t give a shit.”

There are just under seven minutes left in the second quarter against the Nets. Butler has the ball in his hands and is surveying the landscape. He takes a Taj Gibson screen at the top of the three-point line, splits Nik Stauskas and DeMarre Carroll and pulls up for a 13-foot jump shot.

It’s too strong and comes right off back iron.

On the very next Wolves’ possession, Butler corrects his mistake.

He runs the exact same play but from further above the three-point line, taking the same screen, blowing by another two defenders and pulling up for the same mid-range jump shot. Only this time, he pulls up from exactly the foul line, and only this time, it’s nothing but net.

He throws his hands up as if to say, “about time.”

That’s the type of night it was for Butler, who finished with 30 points on a pedestrian 7-of-17 from the field. When his shot isn’t going down, he finds other ways to make winning plays.

Butler’s shot wasn’t dropping, so he got to the line, where he shot 16-of-18 — that’s 89 percent for the students in the back. Butler’s shot wasn’t dropping, so he made critical play after critical play down the stretch of a tight game.

The Wolves were mounting a 12-point comeback and needed a stop to prevent the Nets from stealing the momentum back. Brooklyn was a fraction of a second away from DeMarre Carroll potentially hitting a three to extend the lead back to double-digits.

But Butler put his body on the line and drew a much-needed charge on Rondae Hollis-Jefferson milliseconds before he hit Carroll in the corner. For the rest of the third quarter the Wolves outscored the Nets 25-14, including a 23-7 run.

The fourth quarter is where winners win, and that’s where Butler butters his bread. Only two players — LeBron James and Kyrie Irving — have scored more points in clutch situations (game within five points with five or fewer minutes left) than Butler this season. But this time, his non-scoring plays were the difference.

With two minutes to go and Minnesota down four, Butler soared over Hollis-Jeffereson to recover a critical 50/50 loose ball.

Thirty seconds later, he comes up with a pivotal block on Hollis-Jefferson.

And right after that block, he clears Quincy Acy from helping on Tyus Jones’s game-tying layup.

Butler barely missed the biggest shot of the night: the would-be game-winner over Carroll’s arms that just clanked off the rim. His coach and teammates, though, trust him with that shot 10 times out of 10.

“I didn’t make the shot,” Butler conceded, though with a hint of optimism. “It’s OK. I’ll get another opportunity.”

Jamal Crawford’s locker is two to the left of his All-Star teammate’s. While Butler is preparing in another room, the three-time Sixth Man of the Year is holding a tablet in his lap, presumably to watch film.

Crawford has watched first-hand as Butler morphed from the new guy in Minnesota to the Timberwolves’ leader. He was one of the four higher profile veterans Thibodeau brought in during the Wolves’ roster reload over the summer, so he understood Butler needed time to get comfortable and more familiar with his new teammates.

But let Crawford tell it, his All-Star teammate started picking apart opposing defenses in early December once he started getting more aggressive in Minnesota’s offense. And coming from one of the better scorers this century, the most fun part about Butler’s midseason barrage is that he isn’t even playing to score.

“He’s not one of those guys,” Crawford told SB Nation. “He can score, but he’s not playing for that. He’s just a great all-around player, and I think how he lifts everybody else up is what’s telling about him.

“If you’re going to war, you know you want him in your foxhole,” he continued. “That’s best compliment I can pay him. Besides he gets me open shots, if I’m going into a fight or war, I know I want him in my corner. Period.”

“He just doesn’t care about stats and all that, All-Star game, he’s not concerned about that,” Aldrich added. “Which I think makes him so good in that aspect.”

Aldrich is in his eighth season in the NBA and has played for six different teams during his career. He compares Butler to Draymond Green in the sense that making winning plays matter more than any stats ever could.

“We have some younger guys on our team that want to get where he’s been and kind of what he’s been able to do with being an All-Star, and it just shows,” Aldrich tells SB Nation. “You can be a guy on a bad team and get all the stats and you still may not be an All-Star. It’s about winning and putting yourself in the best position to win.”

Winning. In order to win, a team needs a leader. Thibodeau says that’s where Butler has made the biggest strides in his game.

During his early years in Chicago, Butler didn’t need to lead. He had an electrifying Derrick Rose and a cast of vets to take him by the wing. Butler just needed to play his part. The rest would eventually come.

But eventually, Thibodeau left town, and eventually so did Rose, and so did the vets that taught him much of what he knew. It was during those years that Butler became Jimmy Buckets, the leader.

“Jimmy, the way he works is intelligence combined with his talent,” Thibodeau said. “I think the things that he does every day to help our young guys see how important everything is, whether it’s preparation when you’re getting ready to play, whether it’s practice, whether it’s in a game, not taking any possessions off, how important defense is, how important it is to play for the team, to make plays, to make winning plays...”

Thibodeau paused.

“Jimmy’s had great impact on winning. He’s changed our culture here.”

Thus a man who averaged 27 points per game in the month of December actually does not care about scoring, or rebounding, or assisting, or any other trivial, frivolous number that records an activity on a basketball court. Jimmy Butler does not care about your stats. He only cares about about one thing.

“Winning. Showing everybody how to win,” he said. “That’s a big step for me and I’ve gotta continue to get better at winning by any means, doing what my team needs me to do, and being better.”