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The Minnesota Timberwolves are riding a 7-4 start to the regular season, which isn’t bad but still falls short of many people’s expectations given the glut of talent the team has.
The Timberwolves' star swingman in Jimmy Butler, who was traded to the team from the Chicago Bulls back in the summer, has a plan that he thinks would right Minnesota’s ship: take more shots. That’s not a call for the Timberwolves as a team, but to Jimmy Butler himself, according to Jerry Zgoda of The Star Tribune.
Article Continues Below“Right now, right now,” he said. “I'm going back to putting the ball in the basket. I like to put the ball in the basket. I think I've gotten really good at it over the years, so we'll see a different player from here on out.”
The All-Star forward has been noticeably more passive this season compared to last year as the Bulls' alpha. So far, he’s averaging just 14.7 points on 12.1 shot attempts per game. Before being shipped to the Twin Cities, Jimmy Butler put up 23.9 points on 16.5 field goal attempts per contest.
However, this isn’t just about Butler getting tamer than usual. The regression of his numbers can largely be attributed to him playing around a more talented cast with the likes of Andrew Wiggins, Karl-Anthony-Towns, and Jeff Teague around him. Unlike his situation in Chicago, Jimmy Butler gets fewer opportunities on offense with so many mouths to feed in Minnesota.
Butler’s comment came after the Golden State Warriors dealt the Timberwolves a 125-101 loss on Wednesday in which Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson mopped the floor with Teague and Butler, outscoring their Minnesota counterparts by a wide margin, 60-25. Jimmy Butler finished the contest with only 11 points on 5-of-12 shooting from the field.
Butler can start getting off more shots this Saturday on the road against the soft defense of the Phoenix Suns.
