The Whiteboard: Jimmy Butler is making every tough shot

In today’s NBA news, Jimmy Butler hit a historic playoff mark with his hot shooting and Ime Udoka is the new head coach of the Rockets.

It’s not entirely surprising that Jimmy Butler has been the best player on the floor in the Miami Heat’s first-round series against the Milwaukee Bucks — Giannis Antetokounmpo only played 11 minutes in Game 1 after leaving with a back injury and missed Games 2 and 3.

What has been remarkable is that Butler’s excellence hasn’t been about his usual all-around, two-way versatility. He’s been an absolutely unstoppable perimeter force against one of the best defenses in the league and one with multiple high-level wing defenders to throw at him.

The Bucks tried everything that could in Game 4 but still watched Butler pour in 56 and push Miami to a 3-1 lead.

Why can’t the Milwaukee Bucks stop Jimmy Butler?

A lot of things have to go right for a player to score 56 points in a single game. You have to get and make at least some easy, open shots, although those opportunities are likely to dwindle as the game goes on and the defense keys in on your historic scoring trajectory. Jimmy Butler definitely made his easy ones last night, shooting 7-of-12 on shots that were classified as open (closest defender 4-6 feet away) or wide open (closest defender at least 6 feet away) by the NBA’s play-tracking statistics.

But to put up the best postseason scoring performance in franchise history and the fourth-best of all time, you have to make your tough shots too. And, again, Butler checked that box hitting an eye-popping 12-of-16 on shots that were tightly or very tightly guarded.

He was calmly draining contested jumpers with guys like Bobby Portis, who has a 7-foot-2 wingspan and a three-inch height advantage on Butler, right in his face.

Butler has been absolutely astounding in this series, shooting 65.2 percent on 2-pointers, 52.9 percent on 3-pointers, going to the free-throw line an average of 9.8 times per game and making them at a 74.4 percent clip. He is making the impossible look easy.

We associate impossible shot-making with certain elite scorers — it’s a hallmark of Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Kawhi Leonard. But, typically, for all his offensive strengths, it’s not an attribute we usually associate with Butler.

The graph below shows the 59 players who have attempted at least 40 shots in these playoffs. They are marked by their actual effective field goal percentage and their shot quality, a measure from PBPStats.com which can be interpreted as expected effective field goal percentage, given the location of a player’s shots, how the possession started, how deep into the shot clock the attempt occurred and a few other factors like score and period.

You can see that Butler is overperforming his expected field goal percentage by a dramatic degree and it’s a huge departure from his regular-season marks.

Any player above the dotted line is shooting better than we would expect, given their shot selection. The farther from the dotted line, the greater their overperformance.

For reference, those two players clustered right next to Butler are Derrick White and Rui Hachimure, who have attempted 95 shots combined in the postseason, compared to 86 for Butler. So if we factor volume and offensive primacy into our evaluation here, it’s safe to say Butler is really on an island by himself.

It’s hard to imagine that he’ll be able to continue making difficult shots at this rate through an extended playoff run. But, unfortunately for the Bucks, he only needs to do it one more time to knock off the No. 1 seed in the East.

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Rockets replace Stephen Silas with Ime Udoka

The Houston Rockets head coaching vacancy lasted just a few weeks and despite rumors linking them to Nick Nurse and Kenny Atkinson, they have reportedly decided on former Celtics coach Ime Udoka. As you may remember, Udoka began this year serving a season-long suspension for inappropriate relationships with another member of the Celtics staff. It was clear that the Celtics weren’t really interested in having him back and he’s been mentioned as a potential candidate for a few jobs during the season, including the Brooklyn Nets after they fired Steve Nash.

We still don’t know all the details behind his suspension from the Celtics but the circumstances and franchise response seem to imply there was some ugliness involved beyond just poor decision-making with choosing romantic partners.

Udoka did a great job in his one full season with the Celtics and helped lead them to the NBA Finals. He has demonstrated his tactical acumen and ability to build cohesion and chemistry. The problem is how much his currently tarnished reputation may affect his ability to build respect and rapport with his new team.

The young Rockets desperately need structure and accountability. They need a shared vision and a leader who can have them all pulling in the same direction, sacrificing egos for the greater good and figuring out how to become more than just the sum of their parts. Does Udoka still have the credibility to be a leader on those fronts? How can he demand accountability when he failed himself and his last team so spectacularly?

I guess we’re going to find out…

Today’s NBA Trivia:

Jimmy Butler became the first player in Miami Heat franchise history to score 50 or more in a playoff game. How many of the 11 other Heat players to score 30 or more in a playoff game can you mention?

The answer for yesterday’s trivia question: Donovan Mitchell, Jamal Murray and Damian Lillard are the only three players with multiple 50-point postseason games in the past decade.