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Ohm Youngmisuk
BEFORE STEPHEN CURRY went out for his pregame ritual workout in Utah on Feb. 5, he emerged from the visitors locker room at the Delta Center to hug Andrew Wiggins as he was coming off the floor.
Wiggins had just learned that he was being traded to the Miami Heat in a five-team blockbuster deal that would send Jimmy Butler III to Golden State. Moments later, a heavyhearted Steve Kerr closed the locker room during pregame media access to inform the team of the trade and allow players and coaches to say their emotional farewells to Wiggins, Dennis Schroder, Kyle Anderson and Lindy Waters III.
The short-handed Warriors ended the night with a 131-128 loss to the then 12-win Jazz, and were stuck at 25-25.
Curry, who had to take 31 shots to score 32 points in the loss to the hapless Jazz, returned to what was left of the Warriors’ locker room after the game. Four players were gone from a tight-knit roster. But superstar help was on its way.
An emotional Curry turned toward Draymond Green. His longest-tenured teammate noticed tears trickling from Curry’s eyes, the emotion of the moment hitting the grounded superstar.
In the same building where Michael Jordan delivered the last shot of the Chicago Bulls’ reign, Curry might have unknowingly given the final chapter of the Warriors’ dynasty a fitting title.
“This is it,” Curry told Green. “It’s our last ride.”
Curry had longed all season to play “meaningful” games again, wanting nothing more than a fifth championship ring. On Monday, Curry plays his 151st playoff game in Game 4 against the Houston Rockets. This one might stand out if Butler can be by his side.
After playing just eight minutes in Game 2 and missing Game 3 because of a deep gluteal muscle contusion, Butler hopes to return for his first playoff home game in front of an appreciative Chase Center crowd. Butler has the Warriors back in the postseason after a one-year absence and he has rejuvenated Curry and the last act of this dynastic run.
“How many more chances will we actually realistically have at chasing a championship?” Curry told ESPN in Houston ahead of Golden State’s 95-85 Game 1 upset over the Rockets. “Not saying this is the last year, this run that we’re going to have. Just focusing on what we can get out of it.
“Me and him [Green] have been through every battle for the last 13 years. Obviously, we are trying to recreate that magic.”
Kerr has already tailored his offense for the best of both worlds, fusing Curry’s motion and Butler’s methodical isolation sets. But a fifth title run, 10 years after the first of the Curry era, will depend on whether Curry and Butler can continue to maximize and mesh their incredible but contrasting offensive talents to extend the Warriors’ championship window.
“The exciting thing is Jimmy gives us the opportunity to extend this thing by a couple of years,” Kerr told ESPN. “He’s that good. He’s also the kind of athlete who’s going to age well because he’s not relying on explosive leaping ability. It’s more savvy and strength, and he’s such a smart player.
“So, I think we’re going to be really good for the next few years. But Steph’s right, these next few years are the last round.”
A LITTLE OVER a month after the Butler trade, Curry celebrated his 37th birthday at his home. By the end of the party, only three people remained into the early morning hours, playing poker and polishing off wine from Curry’s cellar and a massive bottle of Chateau Margaux that Butler brought.
Curry, Butler and Green were creating new memories and bonding off the court.
“Yeah, that’s because we’re all degenerate poker players,” Curry said jokingly. “It was a fun time. All throughout the years, you have certain moments where you get everybody together, intentionally, and have a good time.
“It was a good kind of jump-off point for the rest of the year.”
While Butler and Green have forged a tight bond over late-night games of dominoes on the road, Curry and Butler are also forming a relationship, even if their games are almost polar opposite.
While Curry operates off the ball on the perimeter, constantly moving and churning around screens to get open to hit backbreaking and breathtaking 3s in organized chaos, Butler has a more clocklike approach inside the arc with the ball, looking to create mismatches for himself or teammates. He drives to either create for a teammate, score or draw a foul, often while looking like he’s trying to use as few steps as possible.
Butler said jokingly that “opposites attract” after his first game with Curry on Feb. 8 in Chicago.
“The way we play is vastly different,” Kerr told ESPN of this team compared with past championship Warriors teams. “We don’t have to generate as much off-ball movement now, and it’s an incredible luxury because playoff defenses are so locked in and we’ve had plenty of series like Oklahoma City in ’16, the Rockets with all their switching in ’17 and ’18 where teams have taken away a lot of our off-ball stuff. But with Jimmy, you don’t need off-ball stuff.
“You can just get him the ball, get spaced and when you have to have a bucket, everyone’s tired and the game’s on the line, Jimmy is, to me, as good an option as anybody in the entire league. I’m talking LeBron [James], Luka [Doncic], Giannis [Antetokounmpo], I don’t care, you name them, [Nikola] Jokic, the best players in the world. Jimmy is in that category and the fact that we can throw it to him without having to run eight different screens off ball for Steph or Klay [Thompson], it’s given us a completely different dimension.”
Butler, a big soccer fan, prides himself on taking care of the ball and always trying to get as many “shots on goal.” But he also admits he loves the chaos that comes with Golden State’s offense, even if the turnovers might frustrate Kerr and himself, sometimes.
“Sometimes, good things come out of this organized chaos that one player in particular loves and thrives in,” Butler said after Game 1. “So, you got to take the crooked with the straight, sometimes. It’s not going to be all good. It’s not going to be all bad either, but we’re fine.
“I’m great in the organized chaos. I know when I can see it coming,” Butler said. “Let’s get back just in case, but I mean [Curry’s] incredible and out of that organized chaos, I think he gets an incredible shot or he makes an incredible shot for himself or he gets it for somebody else.”
Including the regular season and playoffs, Curry has recorded a 76% effective field goal percentage directly off passes from Butler — second best among combinations to record at least 50 shots together since Feb. 8, according to GeniusIQ. And when they aren’t on the floor together, Butler has stabilized the crucial non-Curry minutes as the Warriors have a plus-17.8 net efficiency when both play in the game.
When Butler is on the bench, he watches Curry like the 18,000 other fans in the building, shaking his head in disbelief. He has become such a fan of his new teammate that he recently wore a custom No. 30 Warriors jersey with Butler III on the back during a workout.
“I think any team has a chance when I’m on the team,” Butler said after the Warriors secured the seventh seed with their 121-116 play-in win over the Memphis Grizzlies on April 15. “But I know that every team has a chance if Steph is on the team.
“So, I get to play Robin. That’s my Batman. We got all the villains over there: Two-Face, Joker, Riddler and everybody else in the Western Conference. We got a lot of games to win.”
After Curry had 36 points, 9 assists and 7 rebounds to beat the Rockets in Game 3 with Butler on the sideline, an appreciative Butler posted a picture on his Instagram of Batman’s Bat-Signal, but in place of the Batman logo was Curry’s signature Under Armour logo.
“Thanks Batman and team, excluding Buddy,” wrote Butler, who loves to give Buddy Hield a tough time.
Hield, who had perhaps his most impactful game as a Warrior with 17 points and five 3-pointers, wants his own character in the Warriors’ Dark Knight universe.
“I know Robin was out tonight, so I had to step up,” Hield said after the win. “[Just] being Alfred tonight.”
Since the trade, Curry loves what he has seen from Butler, including the custom jersey. Curry’s new star teammate is all-in for this “last ride.”
“The last 13 years, we had ‘The Splash Brothers,'” Curry told ESPN. “We had me, Draymond and Klay, which we didn’t really have a nickname per se, but we’ve been a part of lineup nicknames and all that type of stuff.
“Now, Jimmy taking the liberty to create a new nickname that he didn’t run by me, which is beautiful because that means he’s bought in, he’s here.”
SITTING AT A table in the Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad in early March, Butler is asked about his more well-known nickname, a persona that seems equipped with super powers in the postseason that makes him more than just a mere sidekick.
Butler initially downplayed “Playoff Jimmy” but left no doubt about what he is willing to do at this time of the year.
“Man, I think it’s a facade that people have created over the years,” Butler told ESPN of “Playoff Jimmy.” “I know what I’m capable of. I can tell you that. And I love it because everybody thinks I just take it up a notch and I don’t really just take it up a notch. I just might have the ball a little bit more. I might be a tad more aggressive, looking to score.
“[But] you’re talking about somebody that’s going to do anything to f—ing win. That’s some motherf—er right there. The person that they deemed as [Playoff Jimmy], he’ll die out there. He really will. It’s scary. He really will die out there.”
The Warriors had their first true taste of “Playoff Jimmy” in their play-in win over the Grizzlies. If there was any doubt about what Butler can do for the Warriors at this time of the year, he delivered 38 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists and 3 steals in 40 grinding minutes.
Since Butler’s debut Feb. 8 in Chicago, the Warriors are 26-9, including the regular season, play-in and postseason. Golden State lost Game 2 after Butler was limited to eight minutes following a nasty fall after he was undercut by Amen Thompson on a defensive rebound. With him helping coach from the sideline, Curry and the Warriors gutted out Game 3 without him in uniform.
The Warriors were 10th in the West when Butler debuted and needed him to take his postseason form early, as he helped them make a furious push to climb the standings. He has helped Green lift the Warriors to the top of the league in defensive efficiency and top-three in half-court defensive efficiency, versus on-ball screens and in heavy contest rate during that span, according to ESPN Research.
“I don’t know if it’s the playoffs, I think that’s who Jimmy is,” said New York Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau, who coached Butler in Minnesota and Chicago. “Jimmy’s a fierce competitor. I always felt that that was his biggest strength — his competitiveness and his brain. … That’s what the playoffs are. You have to have the ability to think on your feet. You’re playing the same opponent oftentimes seven straight times. So, you have to be able to make adjustments and read, and that’s what he’s great at.”
Butler is one of 10 players to have higher career averages in points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks in the playoffs compared with the regular season (minimum of 100 playoff games), according to ESPN Research. Green is also on that list, so he knows something about raising it to another level in the postseason.
Out of Butler’s 16 career 40-point games, eight have come in the playoffs. He is the only player to have half of his 40-point games occur in the postseason among players with at least five career 40-point games.
“Yeah, he’s different,” Green said when asked about the “Playoff Jimmy” nickname after the play-in win. “You can just see a whole intensity level and focus. I’ve watched it on TV for years. To see it up close and personal? Like it’s a real thing. Sometimes, you get in the NBA, and these guys get these nicknames. And you’re like, ‘Man, stop it, they’re not real.’
“That one is real. And I’m happy he’s on our side.”
Kerr has seen teams try everything to slow down Curry, including Houston, which has had multiple defenders grab, tug and even hug the point guard as he often tried to get free for a shot in Games 1 and 2. But for those times when defenses smother Curry, Kerr now has a counter for physical playoff basketball.
Since joining the Warriors, Butler has averaged 11.7 isolations per 100 possessions. No player has averaged 10-plus isos per 100 possessions in a regular season and playoffs under Kerr, according to Genius IQ.
ISO Jimmy seemed perfectly suited for a slugfest like the Warriors’ Game 1 win, which Kerr likened to a playoff game from “1997.”
Kerr and Green repeatedly said Butler “calmed” everything for the Warriors in Game 1. Houston cut a 23-point deficit to three in the fourth. When the Rockets were within seven, Butler scored on a putback and then milked the clock before drilling a turning stepback jumper over Alperen Sengun. Butler scored six of his 25 points in the final 1:43 to seal the win. He finished with 25 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists and 5 steals — the third time he has had at least 25 points, 5 rebounds, 5 assists and 5 steals in a playoff game, matching Allen Iverson for the third most such games.
Without Butler for the final three quarters in Game 2, the Warriors looked a lot like the team that was 25-26 before he made his debut in Chicago. Houston loaded up on Curry and Golden State didn’t look anything like it does with Butler. While role players such as Hield and Gary Payton II (16 points) stepped up to help Curry in Game 3, Curry pointed out that the Warriors are trying to win “14 more of these. We need Jimmy to do that.”
Curry knew the trajectory of his season was changing on that February night in Utah. He and Green also felt the responsibility on their shoulders with Butler’s arrival. It’s why the two got so emotional.
The last ride is underway.
“Let’s f—ing go then!” Green told ESPN what he said back to the teary-eyed Curry in Utah. “Let’s do it!
“There’s an appreciation that we felt and feel. We were sitting there and coming to that realization we got an obligation to uphold. … They [traded for Butler] for us because they still believe in us.”
ESPN Research’s Matt Williams contributed to this report.
