Monday NBA Roundup: Jimmy Butler Proving What We Knew About Bulls All Along

Unconstrained by high-usage veterans or ball-dominant curmudgeons, Jimmy Butler led the Chicago Bulls to a 118-111 win over the Charlotte Hornets on Monday.

And throughout the transcendent performance, it was impossible to avoid a troubling thought: This is how it should have been all along.

Butler pumped in a season-high 52 points to go with 12 rebounds, six assists, three steals and a block. He did it all, setting the high-energy tone with hustle plays on defense and bailing out an otherwise overwhelmed offense when it needed him.

One late-game sequence typified his impact.

Following a futile Chicago offensive possession terminated by a hopeless Nikola Mirotic heave as the shot clock sounded, Butler attacked, scored and drew the foul shot that tied the game. This from a guy who should have been (and was) utterly exhausted by then.

Asking Butler to do this—take as many shots as any other two Bulls combined, absorb the contact that led to 22 free throws, defend three positions, lead the team in rebounding, etc.—is ridiculous. But it was never unreasonable to trust him in this kind of role.

Had Chicago not signed Dwyane Wade and Rajon Rondo over the summer, Butler's full-on alpha takeover could have followed its natural course. Removing Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah cleared the way, but adding another pair of vets instead of complementary floor-spacers and role-fillers actually created a worse obstruction.

Wade and Rondo have veteran clout, and they need the ball. With the former out and the latter punted from the rotation (mercifully, finally) Monday, Butler got a rare chance to show what could have been. What should have been.

K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune saw, like everyone else, that Butler looked liberated:

And it's vital to remember that this is merely a shadow of what Chicago should have constructed.

Had it devoted the money and roster spots spent on Wade and Rondo elsewhere, the Bulls could have built around their best player.

Even in the wake of that miscalculation, it's clear Chicago can fashion a roster with Butler at its center and shooters around him. Despite slow individual starts, Doug McDermott and Nikola Mirotic combined with Butler to produce a 110.6 offensive rating during the 175 minutes they'd played together before the Hornets game.

The number for Butler, Rondo and Wade is 104.8 (with a worse defensive rating, incredibly) in 483 minutes.

Butler is such a handful with the ball, so capable of working his way into the lane and drawing help, that surrounding him with more marksmen (and not more dribble-dependent guards) was always the way to go. The numbers, though far from definitive, certainly suggest it's still true.

The East remains there for the taking. Monday's win moved the Bulls back into a three-way tie for eighth in the conference. But Chicago still has to extract itself from this roster mess and hope the resulting chemistry strains don't poison the locker room.

Garrett Ellwood/Getty Images

Trading Rondo seems impossible. No team needs a point guard who must have the ball, has worn out welcomes in four NBA cities, no longer defends and possesses a locker-room reputation best described as mercurial.

The homecoming angle and reasonable production from Wade mean he's not going anywhere, but we've seen him accept a secondary role behind a superstar before. He's not one to worry about behind closed doors.

That doesn't mean things will go smoothly on the floor. Defenses ignore him on the perimeter, his defensive focus has waned for a half-decade and it's difficult to think of him as anything more than a second-unit leader.

Chicago must figure out what to do with those two, and when minimizing the negative impacts of your two biggest offseason acquisitions is a major hurdle halfway through the season, it makes confidence in correct decisions hard to come by.

Much remains muddled for the Bulls, but Monday's game made something unmistakably clear: This needs to be Butler's team.

It's just a shame everyone but the Bulls knew that six months ago.

Let's Get Weird

The Milwaukee Bucks are a bright, shiny basketball treasure not just because of Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jabari Parker doing things like this:

And this:

But also because they trot out some of the wonkiest lineups in the league.

After 11 straight Oklahoma City Thunder makes to start the game put Milwaukee into a 14-point hole, the Bucks got creative with their fivesomes, clawed back to within six points at halftime and secured one of their best results of the season, a 98-94 victory.

Two particularly strange groupings played, via Yahoo Sports' Dan Devine and SB Nation's Mike Prada:

A cautionary note for 29 other teams that have designs on getting similarly odd: Your results may vary.

Unless you've got a 6'11" monster made of gum rubber who defends the rim and handles the ball and a highly explosive combo forward who can't be stopped in transition, you'll find it hard to duplicate Milwaukee's success. Antetokounmpo (he's the 6'11" monster, in case that was unclear) finished with 26 points, 10 rebounds, five assists a steal and a block, along with too many highlights to list here.

Parker, the other guy, chipped in 19 points.

Stay weird, Bucks.

What's Wrong Is Right

The Cleveland Cavaliers would probably prefer not to need 39 minutes from LeBron James to beat the New Orleans Pelicans 90-82 at home. (Though with head coach Tyronn Lue's penchant for running his best player into the ground, who knows?).

But at least heavy playing-time demands give us more chances to see LBJ subvert basketball norms. For example, you probably thought a 1-on-3 fast break was a no-go, a disadvantage for the offense.

Incorrect.

Perhaps you believed a shooting specialist like Channing Frye, playing center, compromises rim defense.

Wrong again.

New Orleans had a chance to steal this one. Kyrie Irving didn't suit up, and the Cavaliers couldn't buy a three-pointer all night, finishing 6-of-31 from deep. But James manufactured a game-high 26 points, while Anthony Davis needed 27 shots to get his 20 points.

The Pels saw their four-game winning streak snapped, but as Justin Verrier of ESPN.com noted, New Orleans' competitiveness and overall improved play change the feel of this defeat:

The Wrong Kind of Turning Point

Jesse D. Garrabrant/Getty Images

If the New York Knicks were going to stabilize this tailspin, if they were going to end a four-game losing streak and reclaim the faith of a fanbase and the respect of the rest of the league, they had to beat the Orlando Magic at home.

So they lost 115-103, surrendering bucket after bucket to a squad with one of the league's five worst offenses.

The Knicks were playing without Kristaps Porzingis, who may or may not have done much to stem the tide on D. But Carmelo Anthony and Derrick Rose certainly didn't show much commitment on that end, and in a surprising turn, the Knicks' broadcasters actually pointed it out, via Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News:

Afterward, head coach Jeff Hornacek knew the reason for his team's fifth straight loss, per Ian Begley of ESPN.com:

New York now ranks 25th in defensive efficiency. With the Bucks and their No. 8 offense on deck for a home-and-home, the Knicks had better conjure some renewed focus or fresh personnel in a hurry.

A Triple the Harden Way

Look, we're all dummies for triple-doubles. We love the round numbers, the digital cleanliness of three categories with at least 10 of something. If we're honest with ourselves, we know 10, 10 and 10 isn't any better than 11, 8 and 12.

But it's best not to dwell on the details and...Hey! Everyone look! James Harden did that 10-10-10 thing for the third game in a row, logging 23 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists in a 101-91 victory against the Washington Wizards, which is a big deal and impressive!

And check this out:

Arbitrary as the triple-double can seem, doing anything Hakeem Olajuwon never did is pretty cool.

Potentially unpopular opinion: Harden's numbers this year, taken on the whole, are right there with Russell Westbrook's—even if the triple-double count (nine to 16) favors Russ significantly.

The beard is shooting it better from the field, three-point range and the foul line. He's also averaging more assists and secondary assists.

Just sayin'.

Did Nikola Jokic Dribble Behind His Back On a Coast-to-Coast Dunk?

Yep.

This play—turned in by Nikola Jokic, who had 21 points, 13 rebounds and five assists during the Denver Nuggets' 127-119 loss to the Golden State Warriors—probably doesn't rank in his top 10 from the last week alone.

Please note: He does this often.

But that says more about Jokic's development into the most enjoyable big-man facilitator/trickster/delight than it does about this particular sequence, which was terrific by any less interesting player's standards.

Monday's Final Scores

• Houston Rockets 101, Washington Wizards 91
• Chicago Bulls 118, Charlotte Hornets 111
• Orlando Magic 115, New York Knicks 103
• Utah Jazz 101, Brooklyn Nets 89
• Cleveland Cavaliers 90, New Orleans Pelicans 82
• Milwaukee Bucks 98, Oklahoma City Thunder 94
• Los Angeles Clippers 109, Phoenix Suns 98
• Golden State Warriors 127, Denver Nuggets 119

Follow Grant on Twitter @gt_hughes and Facebook.

Stats courtesy of NBA.com and Basketball-Reference.com unless otherwise indicated. Accurate through games played Monday, Jan 2.