Scouting report on Caron Butler, anyone?

http://twitter.com/realtuffjuice
Considering he’s been so injury prone throughout his career.

That being said, he’s a solid wing (more of a SF than SG) who’ll give you 15 pts on ~44% shooting, is a middle of the road 3pt shooter (35% or so). Butler can create, but he isn’t really spectacular at it. He’s better playing off the ball. If he has the ball in his hands for extended periods, he tends to turn it over at a high rate. Butler’s a capable defender, and would definitely fit in well here in Thibodeau’s scheme.

http://www.thetwomangame.com/2011/03/the-lions-mane/

(via Rob Mahoney)

http://www.hoopdata.com/player.aspx?name=Caron%20Butler

Note the midrange FG%.

Take it with the appropriate grain of salt.

+ Volume scorer who likes to take line-drive, midrange jump shots.
+ Good build and can score in traffic. Quick release. Doesn’t see floor.
+ Good hands on defense but middling effort. Uninspired team defender.

I had felt Butler’s volume shooting style was a deterrent to Dallas offensively because it subtracted touches from more efficient players; that Dallas replaced him after his injury with three players (Peja Stojakovic, J.J. Barea and DeShawn Stevenson) who shot far less but with a greater true shooting percentage dovetailed nicely with my theory.

Nonetheless, Dallas played extremely well for the 28 full games Butler was around. He averaged a point every two minutes and showed, at the very least, that his scoring could be an effective weapon on the right team. The rest of his sheet was largely empty, however. Butler had an unusually high turnover rate for a jump shooter and rarely set up teammates (he was 60th among small forwards in assist rate). His main feat was shooting 45.3 percent on long 2s — a shot he took, on average, once every five minutes.

Butler’s defensive reputation is poor, but it appeared he tried harder in Dallas than he did in Washington. His stats in a limited sample of games last season were very strong — an opponent PER of 10.5, one of the highest ratings among small forwards by Synergy, and a 5.3 points per 100 possessions differential. Given his unimpressive results in Washington, that’s likely just a small-sample outlier, but we should keep an open mind if the same data crops up again this season. That will be more difficult, alas, as Butler tries to recover from a serious knee injury. As a jump shooter, his offense might not suffer too much, but it might be increasingly difficult for a 31-year-old with a bad wheel to defend the position.