Butler carries Bulls past Knicks
Derrick Rose stayed home Thursday because of an illness and New York's Carmelo Anthony was scratched due to a sore knee.
So it was a good night for a rising star to step forward, and Jimmy Butler put on a good show for all the potential all-star voters watching the Bulls-Knicks game on the national cable broadcast.
Butler scored a career-high 35 points and the Bulls eventually finished off the pesky Knicks 103-97 at the United Center.
“Just thank God for Jimmy Butler,” Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau said. “You can't say enough about him.”
Charles Barkley said plenty during the TNT broadcast, claiming Butler is a role player who doesn't deserve the maximum contract he'll surely get next summer. Maybe Barkley didn't notice Butler accepting the Eastern Conference player of the month award before the game.
Plenty of NBA observers, not just Barkley, look at Butler's career scoring average of 10.1 points and figure his quick start to the season is a fluke. The fourth-year forward from Marquette is bound to revert to his usual scoring level.
So far, that hasn't happened.
“My thing to him is, ‘Why put a lid on it?' Where can it go? I don't know,” Thibodeau said. “All I know is it keeps going up. So that's the way I want him to approach it. He brings great effort and great concentration every day. When you bring those things and you couple that with his talent, great things are going to happen.
It was also “Country Night” at the United Center, which is a perfect soundtrack for Butler's best NBA performance. The Texas native is the only admitted country music fan in the Bulls' locker room. After his big scoring night, he stuck to the humble hard-worker storyline.
“I don't want to be a star. I just want to be a decent role player on a really good team,” he said. “I don't care about points. I've never been a scorer in my life. I'm just always that guy that just works hard and tries to help his team win games.
“I've never been the best player on my team and probably never will be. I've always just been a hard worker who doesn't give up on himself. It's just now I play for the Bulls.”
Butler finally admitted he was the best player on his high school team, but took a back seat during his lone year at Tyler (Tex.) Junior College.
On paper, Thursday's contest looked like a mismatch for the Bulls. The Knicks came in with a 5-22 record and played without Anthony, J.R. Smith (foot), Iman Shumpert (shoulder) and Andrea Bargnani (calf).
The Knicks took a 77-75 lead early in the fourth quarter, though, on a Pablo Prigioni 3-pointer. The Bulls answered with a 12-0 run that started with an Aaron Brooks 3-pointer and ended with a Nikola Mirotic 3-pointer.
Trailing 100-97, Tim Hardaway Jr. airballed a 3-point shot with 52.9 seconds left and the Bulls finished it off at the foul line. Hardaway led New York with 23 points and the Knicks piled up a 25-8 edge in second-chance points.
Thibodeau acknowledged the Bulls (16-9) will have to play much better to have a chance Friday at Memphis (21-4). It will be the first chance for Pau Gasol to play against his younger brother, Marc, as a member of the Bulls.
“It's a little weird, but it's fun. It's special,” Pau Gasol said. “It's very special to have the opportunity to play against your brother at the highest level of basketball and we're both doing pretty well. There's a lot of pride involved. We're both competitive. We don't like losing.”
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