{"id":413056,"date":"2026-01-14T20:31:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T20:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/413056\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T20:31:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T20:31:10","slug":"warriors-dominate-trail-blazers-with-help-from-jimmy-butlers-impactful-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/413056\/","title":{"rendered":"Warriors dominate Trail Blazers with help from Jimmy Butler\u2019s impactful play"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dean Oliver\u2019s Four Factors have been a staple of advanced NBA analysis for as long as this author can remember. While not the be-all-end-all determinants of a team\u2019s success in a single game, let alone for an entire season, it can paint a telling picture of a team or player\u2019s effectiveness in the aggregate.<\/p>\n

The four factors are as follows<\/p>\n

Effective Field Goal Percentage (eFG%)Turnover Percentage (TOV%)Offensive Rebound Percentage (ORB%)Free Throw Rate (FTr)<\/p>\n

Furthermore, these four factors can be divided further into offensive and defensive categories.<\/p>\n

Offensive eFG% measures a team\u2019s shooting efficiency, taking into account the fact that threes are worth more than twos. Defensive eFG% is a measure of how teams can coax opponents into inefficient shooting.Offensive TOV% measures a team\u2019s ability to take care of the ball, while defensive TOV% measures how effective a team is at forcing opponents to turn the ball over.Offensive ORB% measures how often a team can rebound their own misses and prolong possessions, while defensive ORB% measures a team\u2019s effectiveness at defensive rebounds and preventing opponents from rebounding their own misses.Offensive FTr measures how often a team can get to the free-throw line, while defensive FTr measures how disciplined a defense is with regard to fouling.<\/p>\n

An informative thread by analyst David Lee on X (formerly Twitter) made use of the four factors to determine which players are currently the \u201cmost influential.\u201d Of course, this analysis by doesn\u2019t take into account \u201cgeneral\u201d influence that someone like Steph Curry would have, in the sense that as the spark of the three-point revolution, the modern NBA is now based on shooting and spacing principles that Curry and the Golden State Warriors once monopolized.<\/p>\n

Rather, this analysis breaks influence down into two main categories: possession influence and shooting influence:<\/p>\n

Lee, in painstaking detail, explains his methodology via his thread, which is a great read and something worth checking out<\/a>. To expedite toward crux of the matter, when taking into account the composite four-factors influence among players who have played a minimum of 500 minutes this season, the player who is at the top of the list is a Warrior \u2014 not named Steph Curry:<\/p>\n

Jimmy Butler has been a four-factors darling this season, but one who is intimately knowledgeable about Butler\u2019s game shouldn\u2019t be surprised. Butler has been a boost in terms of the Warriors\u2019 ability to control the possession game and their ability to generate efficient shots.<\/p>\n

In terms of the possession factor, Butler has been touted as one of the league\u2019s best low-turnover, high-usage stalwarts. With the ball in hands, one can be assured of a possession that ends in a shot attempt, rather than a wasted pass that ends up in the opponent\u2019s hands. Per Cleaning the Glass, the Warriors\u2019 TOV% improves by three percentage points \u2014 from 17.4 percent (fifth percentile) to 14.4 percent (57th percentile) \u2014 whenever Butler\u2019s on the floor. Butler\u2019s ability to keep possession is enough of an influential trait to offset the miniscule effect he has had in forcing opponents to cough up possessions.<\/p>\n

But that is just one half of the equation. Butler\u2019s ability to influence the possession game is aided by his ability to influence the shooting game. While Butler himself isn\u2019t considered a shooter by all means \u2014 he\u2019s a career 33 percent from beyond the arc, while his 38.3 percent mark this season is on extremely low volume (2.3 attempts) \u2014 it\u2019s his ability to create open shots for his teammates that ranks him high on the shooting influence category, per Lee\u2019s analysis.<\/p>\n

Butler averages 10.9 potential assists per game, 26th among 199 players who have played a minimum 25 games this season and average at least 20 minutes per game. For people attuned to the manner through which Curry creates advantages, it can be jarring to watch the difference in the way Butler creates advantages, in the sense that he does so mostly with the ball in his hands (as opposed to Curry, who employs a blend of on-ball advantage creation through ball screens and off-ball advantage creation through his constant movement).<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve already written countless examples of how the nature of the Warriors\u2019 offense changes with Butler as the sole advantage creator on the floor<\/a>. Suffice to say, Butler performs his job extremely well \u2014 despite the prevailing criticism of him being that his contract isn\u2019t worth his perceived production (which, in most cases, is just a long-winded way of saying that he isn\u2019t providing enough raw scoring to justify his large contract).<\/p>\n

While Butler does indeed have to score when the situation calls for it, he performs the connective tasks at such a high level that it boosts the Warriors\u2019 collective offensive attack:<\/p>\n

Furthermore, another aspect that greatly boosts his four-factors influence is his stratospheric free-throw rate of 64.5 percent, all while making 86.6 percent of his free throws. Per Cleaning the Glass, his shooting-fouled percentage \u2014 that is, the percentage of shot attempts a player is fouled on \u2014 is 24.3 percent, 100th percentile among forwards in the NBA. An expert at luring defenders into illegal guarding positions and creating contact, Butler\u2019s gift for the grift has created extra points for the Warriors aplenty.<\/p>\n

Which is why Butler has been misconstrued as a player based on his box-score numbers. Across a number of metrics \u2014 including the four-factors analysis by Lee above, as well as Estimated Plus-Minus (in which Butler is a plus-4.2, ranking 15th) \u2014 he is rated highly despite having relatively \u201cpedestrian\u201d averages of 19.8 points, 5.6 rebounds, and 4.9 assists, with a shooting split consisting of 54.3 percent on twos, 38.3 percent on threes, and 86.6 percent on free throws.<\/p>\n

The value he brings in the things that matter toward winning, however, have been overt in the many subtle ways through which he impacts the game \u2014 and that has been enough justification for his contributions to this team, despite their middling record and mediocre performance so far this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dean Oliver\u2019s Four Factors have been a staple of advanced NBA analysis for as long as this author…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85,76227],"class_list":["post-413056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports","tag-warriors-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}