Is Jimmy Butler a Flopper?

There’s been a lot of change to Chicago basketball over the past two years. A new coach, the departure of three of the most recognizable names on the roster, and the arrival of two equally famous, or infamous, names around the league. Through it all, Jimmy Butler has continued to emerge as not just the leader of the Chicago Bulls, but also among the best players in the entire NBA.

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There are several things that make Butler an elite talent. He is young enough, still multiple seasons away from hitting age 30. He’s on a contract that becomes more and more team friendly which each passing season and raise in the salary cap. He’s an incredible athlete. He has survived Tom Thibodeau and now he’s strong enough to absorb contact and finish shots. He’s also learning the finer points of the game. The kind of things that star players all need to develop – the art of getting the call.

There’s a fine line between generating contact and the terrible ‘F’ word. When Steph Curry falls to the floor after an opponent runs through one of his 35-foot shot attempts, that he somehow makes, and just barely cuts under him and he sprawls out to draw the whistle, it’s the art of generating contact. Players like Kobe Bryant, Kyle Lowry, and dozens of shooters around the league use this technique.

When LeBron James is racing upcourt and a linebacker-sized forward appears out of seemingly nowhere to foul him and he acts like he just got tagged with the Golden Gun in GoldenEye 007, he is employing intelligence. The foul was already going to happen. Now, James has crossed into the world of the ‘F’ word – flopping.

Chris Paul does this regularly, too. Often, he acts as if he’s received a Taser directly to the face. James Harden has also employed this practice to great effect. It isn’t particularly uncommon, though it is silly, frustrating and both fans and players generally look down on that type of behavior.

But, back to Jimmy. During his ascension in Chicago, Butler has learned how to draw the whistle. This has led to an interesting phenomenon among a certain pocket of fans. This group of fans presumably lives in the underground caves abandoned by the creature Gollum-Smeagol when he went in pursuit of his Precious. It’s a mixture of fans from teams who were rumored to be interested in trading for Butler and the last vestiges of the Derrick Rose Hive that once thrived in Bulls Nation.

I’m going to look at five games that Butler has played this season and looking at the video, we will attempt to determine if Butler is indeed, a flopper.

It is worth noting now, before we get into each game, that Butler is averaging 9.7 free throw attempts per game. That number is a career-high mark for him, and is also good for third in the entire league, tied with DeMarcus Cousins, trailing just Russell Westbrook and Harden. Butler is also shooting his highest career percentage from the charity stripe by more than three percent over his previous best numbers, up to 86.6 percent for the year.

Butler had another great night on Tuesday, when the Bulls hosted the Dallas Mavericks. He come up just one rebound shy of a triple-double and was generally well above average. Unfortunately, Chicago came up just short thanks to a terrible play call by Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg. Buried under that disappointment and almost 3×10 was another astonishing night at the line for Butler, shooting 14-for-16 at the line.

If Butler is a flopper, we’re about to find out. I’m going through the five games this season that have produced the highest number of free throws for Jimmy in effort to answer the question that Derrick Rose Hive and other dark corners of the internet assert – Is Jimmy Butler a Flopper?

First up, November 30 against the Los Angeles Lakers.