Jimmy Butler vs Klay Thompson: Who's the best two-way guard in the league?

The careers of Klay Thompson and Jimmy Butler, pretty much like the careers of Damian Lillard and Kyrie Irving, present an impressive contrast. Drafted in 2011, both of them have taken major strides in their careers and are now perennial All-Stars even in the stacked Western Conference, which houses a clear majority of the league's All-Star caliber players.

While Butler's Bulls team floundered mainly because of Derrick Rose's injury troubles and their inability to surround him with enough talent, Steph Curry and Klay's meteoric rise up the ladder of the best players in the league has made the Warriors the best-run franchise in all of American sports. As a result of which, they attract the top talent of the league in the form of Kevin Durant and DeMarcus Cousins.

Which shooting guard, in a vacuum, is the better player right now? We try to answer this question below.

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#1 On-ball offense

Butler drives past Klay Thompson

Jimmy wins this category pretty handily. He's a willing playmaker who's acted as the point forward for the Bulls and the Timberwolves and led them both to play-off berths. The Bulls' 2016-17 supporting cast, in particular, was sub-par during the season, but they scraped through to the 8th seed because of Butler's clutch gene and his ability to facilitate teammates.

Butler has been averaging nearly 5 assists per game for the last 3 seasons, and has a whole host of dribble moves, post moves and ball fakes that allow him to dominate as the primary scorer when he needs to.

Klay is an above-average player at creating offense for himself, but his lack of superior strength and below-average first step makes it difficult for him to drive to the hole with regularity.

Edge: Jimmy

#2 Off-ball offense

Klay is the preeminent 3-and-D player of the NBA

Klay Thompson is the prototypical 3-and-D player in the league today. No one in the world can score off ball in the manner that he does - he averages fewer than 3 dribbles per point scored in the league. He's got arguably the best-conditioned body in the league, and there are few moments in a Golden State play when you can find him stationary or chilling at the corners.

Early on in Jimmy Butler's career, he was tasked to be a 3-and-D guy pretty much in the same vein as Klay was, except he was used sparingly due to the depth chart the Bulls enjoyed at the time. But these days, he is primarily an on-ball player who does not pose nearly the same threat as a perimeter scorer or a cutter when off the ball.

Klay's willingness and ability to provide offense off the ball and his excellence at setting screens, initiating passing maneuvers and elite cutting instincts mark him out as a clearly better off-ball offensive player than Jimmy.

Edge: Klay

#3 On-ball defense

The primary reason why Butler saw a rise in his minutes during the expiration of his rookie deal is because he's always been a bulldog on the defensive end. Standing at 6'7" and 220 pounds, the swingman turned his potential as a lockdown defender into a reality quite early in his career, securing a starting berth during his second season in the league.

Klay has a physical profile quite similar to Butler, but he doesn't have the same foot speed or athletic ability as the latter does. Even without those attributes, however, it is a travesty that the league hasn't recognized his defensive excellence with an All-Defensive Team selection.

Butler has 4, while the likes of Patrick Beverley, Danny Green and Avery Bradley have deprived Klay of an opportunity for selection in the past couple of seasons. It would almost be a wash between the two at this point, but Butler has typically been more successful at guarding a wider variety of players effectively through the course of their careers.

Edge: Jimmy

#4 Off-ball defense

Klay and Butler in action during the 2015-16 NBA season

A big part of the Warriors' switch-heavy defensive tactics is the fact that they have players like Iguodala, Draymond and Klay who can guard players at multiple positions, and not much thrown their way turns into a mismatch because help defense is almost always available.

Klay is one of those primarily responsible for this state of affairs, seeing as he never misses rotations, is always chasing his man off the ball and is ready to bail Steph out when the player he's guarding has gotten past the Chef.

Butler is pretty much the same kind of energetic presence, though he prefers to place himself on-ball against the opposition team's best perimeter scorer rather than be relegated to playing off-ball defense.

Edge: It's a wash

Verdict

Minnesota Timberwolves v Los Angeles Lakers

Klay is an all-time great shooting guard, and anyone who says otherwise is pretty much an uninformed person at this point. There are only a handful of players in the history of the game who've ever shot better than him, and fewer still who shoot the same volume of long-range shots as him. A hot Klay Thompson is provably the most potent offensive weapon in the NBA today (37 points in a quarter, 60 points in three quarters).

He's easily one of the lowest-maintenance stars in the league - in fact, I struggle to think of better personality than his to have in your locker room. No drama, no nonsense, pure balling - those are valuable personality traits to have on your team.

But at the end of the day, he's never been the first option on a team. His lack of ability to generate offense off the dribble is the one big flaw in his game. Jimmy Butler, flawed or not as he may be as a locker room presence, is unequivocally the better basketball player, and probably has been so for five seasons now.

When there are conversations about the best players in the league (other than LeBron, who's obviously the #1 player in the world), one of the names that doesn't get thrown around but should be more often is Butler. Few things are as impressive as the turnaround that the Wolves engineered at the start of last season.