This is a public service announcement for the national basketball media. You are allowed to talk about Rasual Butler. No, seriously. I officially give you permission.
I’ve been mulling over this post in my mind for some time, thinking, “Damn, we should really do a post on the resurgence of ‘Sual this year,” but the moment it leapt to the forefront of our priority list was when I was watching the NBA on TNT last week. I’ve already ranted a bit on Charles Barkley’s rather uninformed comments about the team, but what really got me was how dismissive he was of Butler. Actually, he didn’t even seem to know that he was starting for the Hornets. And never mind the disparaging snarky comments I’ve heard from several different announcing teams, “Well, I guess you have to wonder with the Hornets how far you’re going to get when you have Rasual Butler starting, ho ho ho.”
OK, freeze. Rewind.
Last season around this time was when Byron Scott finally gave up on Butler. Hornets fans breathed a sigh of relief. Finally we could stop cringing as #45 launched up brick after brick. It was almost inexplicable, how a player’s shot could so thoroughly desert him. It was like Devin Brown in November/December of this season, but worse. (If you want a full perspective on how bad I am talking about, at one point Brown was shooting 15% from three. So we are talking bad.) Butler didn’t even suit up for the playoffs. He only played in 51 games, for an average of 17 minutes per game, most of those minutes in the beginning of the season before it became apparent how brutally awful of a year he was having. He averaged 4.9 points per game over the course of his truncated season. Add an offseason gun arrest into the mix, and Hornets fans were left wondering if there was a way to trade a guy who had zero value and made $3.6 million.
OK, stop. Fast forward.
In 2008-09 the man Hornets fans have begun to refer to as “The Phoenix” is starting for the Hornets. (Helpful hint to the national media, who seem to be having trouble locating him: He is the dude out in the corner who is not Chris Paul, David West, Tyson Chandler, or Peja Stojakovic.) He plays a career high 30 minutes a game and averages 11.2 points. The fact is, Rasual Butler is doing a better job than Morris Peterson (8.0 PPG) ever did last season. And in 2009, he has absolutely been lighting it up.
Check this: Over the Hornets’ last 10 games, ‘Sual Bop is averaging 18.2 points per game on .496 shooting. Your resident fact checka is here to inform you that that’s a better percentage than Kobe Bryant and Ray Allen are currently shooting over the same 10 game split.
So he’s not one of the top shooting guards in the league. Like, whoo. Who does your team start at the 2? OK, don’t answer that question. I realize the Hornets have a different situation than many NBA teams. The fact is that not every team has a Chris Paul, whereas there are many dominant shooting guards in the league. Of course if you’ve got one, the offense is going to be run through him. So when you go to evaluate a guy like Rasual Butler, who effectively plays the role of the 4th or 5th wheel on the Hornets, as opposed to other 2 guards who are a bigger part of the offense, you will need to make some adjustments. At the Hive has done the numbers on this, analyzing where Butler fits in with other shooting guards when you adjust for usage rate. (The answer is 2nd in the league, behind Utah’s Ronnie Brewer, making ‘Sual a pretty efficient dude for the touches he gets.)
Too bad he’s like the Invisible Man over here.
I’m not asking you to proclaim him the next big star or anything like that. I’m just asking you to recognize that here’s a guy who, at the age of 29, is quietly playing the best basketball of his life. But you know, maybe it’s OK that everyone’s not talking about Rasual Butler. You just go right ahead and leave him open to swish shots over your head. Maybe it’s enough that Hornets fans recognize and appreciate him. And honestly, we might understand him a little more, and on a little deeper level, than the average NBA observer anyway. His success this year, while uplifting, means more to us than to you.
In New Orleans, we know a little something about rising from the ashes.
Opinionated
He is the best basketball player that no one talks about.
I suppose the point is that a lot of teams could do worse than have Rasual Butler as their fifth option offensively, right?
Correct. But the point is also that this is all coming from a guy who was pretty much left for dead last season and didn’t even get out of a suit the last 3-4 months of the season. He deserves a little props!
The point at which I thought Sual Bop was a starter instead of a thief of Mo Pete’s minutes came in December 17, 2008 in the 3rd Quarter versus the Spurs. Roger Mason was on a fast break headed for a layup when Butler came up from behind him and deflected the payup off the glass into Tony Parker’s hands. Butler then knocked the ball out of Parker’s hands, ran after it and saved it from going out of bounds by chucking it to Posey. As soon as he was inbounds, Posey threw it BACK to Butler who ran down the court and made a 2. 10 seconds of pure hustle and probably the only single play all year I could tell you all the above details without having to check them out. It was that damn impressive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okzplsgRL1Y
Awesomeness occurs between 1:21 and 1:31.
R/B is really picking up, especially in recent games. I hope he will keep doing this after Peja is back, It will make CP3 life easier
@ Matt– I couldn’t remember what game that was in! Thanks. It was one of the Best. Sequences. Ever.
@ Ben Q Rock: I’m fairly confident that while true, that was not the point of this post. It’s recognition of a talented guy playing out of he mind, and contributing at an efficiency that most teams without Kobe or Roy would salivate over. It’s also about renewal and resurgence and enduring, something which, as TT6 points out, New Orleans can empathize with and appreciate. Thank you, Phoenix.
Bradford Doolittle has your proprs right here:
http://www.basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=588
According to his metric, Butler is the league’s 6th-most improved player, behind Dwyane Wade, Nene, Pau Gasol, Mo Williams, and Mike Bibby. The five guys ahead of him were already pretty good, so I suppose according to him, Butler should be the favorite…?
@ Ben– Nice! I honestly hadn’t even thought of comparing him to MIPs on a league-wide level. He had a pretty good season in 06-07. Not as good as 08-09, but it’s more like he was all right, then terrible, then back to solid. There is no doubt he’s absolutely crazily improved since last year.
Who started calling him the phoenix? He is very awesome.
Butler is the new West.
@ jay cool: I believe Ryan over at hornets247.com started it.
UPDATE on the Phoenix statline: 21 points on 7-18 shoot, 6-13 from deep, 3 boards, 2 dimes, 1 block, 1 steal, and a fiery trail of redemption. Nice job, Rasual.
I think it was Ryan too.
Whoa. The Right Guard commercial where the dude puts guacamole on his deodorant to make it look like a “power strip,” Hornets in the background on TV. First thing you hear: “Butler for three.” Watch and listen carefully next time.
I gotta get my own props for this SuBop praise. I think I started up talking about Butler as MIP over at H24/7, at the tail end of a long thread, oh maybe a month ago. We talked about various players, and it seems stupid for some commentators to want to give it to Kevin Durant. The kid is a burgeoning supernova in his 2nd year — that’s not the place for Most Improved Player of the Year award.
The most telling stat is that when Butler gets 10+ pts, the Hornets have a spectacular winning percentage. He’s now hitting big shots at key moments of the game — tonight’s was his bomb seconds after Caron Butler’s tough And 1 shot that brought the Wiz back to only a 6 pt deficit. When SuBop nailed his 3, Chandler raised a fist of “that’s how we roll!” domination, and the game wasn’t really in doubt after one more good defensive stop.
Rasual might not win it; truthfully, Nene has been a beast and after his cancer scare, I wouldn’t complain a bit. But to posit a whole bunch of dudes without recognizing The Phoenix, The Invisible Assassin, Fiyo on the Bayou, ladies and gentlemen, Rasual Butler of the New Orleans Hornets!
Not to recognize, now that would be criminal NBA insanity….
If you watch our second unit I think they’ll do better with peja, pose, and pete as daniels runs a lot of plays for three point shooters. Then with marks playing cleanup and daniels taking jump shots or making layups could start to fall together. Imagine being up two and then our second unit comes in, three after three making the other teams starters start to sweat a little it’s a beautiful thing.
It’s pretty much killing me that Mo Pete says he’s good to go, and yet can’t get out there. What did he DO to Byron Scott? Does Byron have a daughter that he slept with or something? The team could use his shooting from the bench in a crazy way.
Rasual is picking up his game at the right time. His confidence is amazingly elevated. He is starting to add some signature moves that are adding to his effectiveness. For the whole season his stats aren’t any better than Mo gave us last year, but I don’t think Mo ever had a sustained run of high performance like Rasual’s last 10-15 games. If he continues this into the playoffs he will get the recognition.
l’d like to see Mo get minutes by trying Rasual out in place of Peja or running a 3-guard set with him on the floor with Rasual, Peja, Paul and 1 big when Peja gets back (pun intended).
to be honest I hope we find a way to drop peja and mo petes salaries, prefer that over tyson being traded we could always find cheaper alternatives off the bench but that’s just me.
It’s odd we are fifth in the standings on nba.com but have a better winning percentage than utah……..oh and once again to the loser who runs race2mvp……..the hatred i have for you could not be measured you goofy bastard(who slightly resembles a certain baby ruth eating character from the goonies) may you be crossing the street when the New Orleans Hornets bus’s breaks fail next time they are in cleveland, or miami, or L.A. depends on whose balls are in your mouth at the time…….sorry had to vent SERIOUSLY NUMBER FIVE AND YOU BUMP DWAYNE WADE TO SECOND BECAUSE HE BARELY BEATS THE FREAKIN’ BULLS AHHHHHHH
True that. CP is no lower than 3rd.
Well I think our rebounding has been getting better and Dwest has even seemingly made it his priority even over scoring lately to clean the glass. Hell last night our front court out rebounded the other team, so Wright, West, Chandler = 30 and the bucks = 30 now if we can just keep up this intensity against better opponents
On this article I was reading they said that tyson dunked the ball when cp3 dribbled through jason terry’s legs, but actually it was rasual. The article is “Olympic Experience Makes Paul Better.”