The Golden State Warriors are slowly realizing why exactly the Miami Heat grew frustrated with Jimmy Butler. While he has the potential to be a dominant star player, there are times when he's too passive or flat-out uninterested when he's on the floor.
It's one of the reasons why the Heat naturally grew apart from the idea of building around Jimmy, and part of the reason they chose not to pay him the big-money contract he was seeking.
Speaking on this season specifically, there have been too many outings in which Jimmy has been overly passive on the offensive end of the floor. Considering the Warriors are paying him like a superstar, there probably shouldn't be any occasions in which Jimmy is taking less than 10 field goal attempts per game. He has six of those instances this season, and is only averaging 11 total shots per contest overall.
The Warriors need Jimmy to be more aggressive
To put that number into context, Jonathan Kuminga and Jimmy are averaging roughly the same number of shot attempts per game. You can't imagine that sits well with Warriors fans.
But because of Jimmy's ability to get to the free-throw line, he's still averaging 19 points per contest, but you can understand the frustration with Jimmy's lack of volume and aggressiveness.
It makes even less sense when you add in the fact that the Warriors are just 13-14 on the season. So it's not just that Jimmy is often being too passive because of the other talent on the roster; it's the times that Jimmy is being too passive when the Warriors need a player to rise and take over a game.
Jimmy hasn't been that difference-maker consistently this season.
It's a frustration that drove Heat fans crazy, especially toward the latter end of his tenure in Miami.
Heat fans were begging Jimmy to be more aggressive and to take over games when they were struggling. More often than not, even on a few occasions in the playoffs, Jimmy never got to that point.
It was one of those things that Heat fans understood that Jimmy had the potential to take over any game at any given moment, but it was difficult to predict when he would do so.
Managing the Jimmy experience has been difficult for Warriors fans, as some have already decided to put the All-Star wing on the trade block. I can't imagine the Warriors would eject on this experiment less than a year into it, but it just goes to show how much Golden State is struggling at the moment.
But none of this should come as a surprise. It certainly wouldn't be for Heat fans that had to endure much of the same frustrations during their five and a half years with Jimmy.