LOS ANGELES – Before Jimmy Butler became a polarizing NBA superstar, he had to spend one season playing junior college basketball and three years at Marquette before being picked last in the first round of the 2011 draft.
Butler’s NBA career then began with two years coming off the bench for the Chicago Bulls ahead of becoming an everyday starter his third year in the league. The next season was his breakout, winning Most Improved Player and starting a run of four consecutive seasons averaging at least 20 points per game. Butler in his 14-year career now has put up at eight 20-point seasons, not including one where he finished at 19.9 points per game.
Now that he’s on the Warriors, Butler knows the answer to being his best self on the court.
“Pass the ball to Steph [Curry] and get out the way,” Butler said Thursday at Crypto.com Arena in his introductory press conference.
What if Curry’s being double-teamed or even triple-teamed like he currently is in the Warriors’ stale offense so often this season?
“That’s OK,” Butler said. “I saw it in the Olympics.”
Warriors coach Steve Kerr isn’t worried about how Butler will fit in on the court. Butler isn’t an automatic, seamless fit for Kerr’s motion offense. His success much of the time comes from operating out of the paint and turning back the clock from the mid-range. That doesn’t exactly sound like Warriors basketball.
Golden State Warriors
But talent wins out.
“He’s a great player,” Kerr said Thursday. “All great players figure out how to play with other great players.”
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Superstar talent or not, bringing a player in more than halfway through the season is never an easy transition. Kevin Durant needed months to figure out how to play alongside Curry. Some players need more, others never make it work.
To ease Butler in, Kerr says everything will have to be simplified. Butler is expected to make his Warriors debut Saturday against the Bulls in Chicago, and Kerr's plan is to let Butler play the way he knows best and surround him with spacing to let his game shine.
The bigger question, Kerr acknowledged, is how Butler’s arrival will change combinations. The Warriors already have used 30 different starting lineups, and that number only will increase adding Butler to the mix.
“He’ll for sure play the non-Steph minutes so we can run our offense through him when Steph’s on the bench,” Kerr said. “But we’ve got a lot of candidates to put next to him and we’ve got to figure out those rotations.”
There’s another factor to account for, too, one that was key to the Warriors believing they came out as winners at the NBA trade deadline. They were able to keep their young players, most notably Jonathan Kuminga. There were enough uncertainties coming into the season playing Kuminga and Andrew Wiggins together, and now that Wiggins is out and Butler is in, those same questions remain.
Perhaps even more, considering Wiggins is seen as a better 3-point shooter than Butler at this time in their careers. Kuminga is expected to return from his ankle injury in the coming weeks, likely after the NBA All-Star break, adding another wrinkle to this puzzle that has been full of missing pieces.
“I think that’s probably the biggest question,” Kerr said. “Jimmy’s at the 3, can we play Draymond [Green] at the 4? Or Draymond at the 5 with JK? Those three guys, it’s tantalizing. The thought of the talent, the ability to switch defensively, but we’ve got to be able to generate good offensive possessions.”
Losing Wiggins also meant the Warriors lost their most important defensive player outside of Green. Wiggins has the rare ability to guard the opponent’s best winger scorer, as well as a handful of high profile guards as well.
Butler is a five-time All-Defensive player, last receiving the honor in the 2020-21 NBA season. At 35 years old, Butler also is five years older than Wiggins.
None of those factors are going to stop Kerr from putting Butler on the other team’s top scorer.
“Jimmy is going to have to guard the opponent’s best players,” Kerr said. “We’ll miss Wiggs in that regard, in many other ways as well. Jimmy is very well suited to take on that same role.”
When it comes to the world that orbits around the Warriors, however, everything comes back to Curry. He is the offense, regardless of who’s on the floor with him. Curry is the culture. Curry is the Warriors.
And to no surprise, his newest teammate can’t wait to share the court next to him.
“Everybody knows he’s the greatest shooter in the world, greatest shooter in history,” Butler said. “Makes my job a lot easier, I probably got a lot more space out there. But more than anything, I think it’s always going to be a team effort. We all got a lot more space out there.
“Let’s see how it goes.”
Starting Saturday night in Chicago, let the Warriors’ great Jimmy Butler experiment begin.
