With five minutes to play in the fourth quarter and the Lakers surging behind two straight 3-pointers from LeBron James and Austin Reaves, Jimmy Butler drove the lane and had a clear opportunity to attack the rim for either a foul or bucket, or perhaps both. He did neither.
Instead, Butler dumped a pass to an unsuspecting and completely stationary Jonathan Kuminga in the dunker’s spot for a no-man’s-land baseline jumper, perhaps the hardest shot in basketball. Kuminga had every right to be surprised by the pass. It was Butler’s play to make, and he passed the buck not by way of leverage, but more as an afterthought. Kuminga missed, and it felt like it could be a pivotal crossover in the Lakers’ comeback attempt.
It wasn’t. The Warriors held on to win the game, 123-116, scoring another huge victory amid their playoff push, and Butler got away with taking — at least offensively, and with the caveat that he was apparently dealing with a bit of a forearm injury — something of a scoring nap. He finished with 11 points and a couple assists on seven shots and two free throws.
Even the shots he did take felt like he was being forced to eat vegetables. Heat fans can tell you all about this, but you’d be hard pressed to find a player, let alone a superstar, who drives the ball with less intention to score than Butler when he’s not in Playoff Jimmy mode, which may be yet to come. He’s the king of jump stops and pivoting passes back out to 30 feet. He’s happy to station himself off the ball, cut and grab offensive rebounds like he’s a role player. It can be a frustrating experience.
It’s also an extremely calming one for a Warriors team that had, before Butler arrived, become too chaotic for its current talent pool to overcome. Butler stabilizes the Warriors, no doubt. He expertly walks the incredibly fine line between patience and passivity. After another huge win in Memphis on Wednesday, Steve Kerr went so far as to say Butler “saved [the Warriors’] season.”
He’s not wrong. The Warriors were sunk before that trade. Everything that was holding them back has seemingly been fixed. More pressure on the rim. More free throws. More turnovers created. From .500 in clutch games pre-trade to 10-2 since. Most impressively, the Warriors entered Thursday with an almost unbelievable plus-13.1 net rating in non-Curry minutes with Butler on the floor, per Cleaning the Glass. They were plus-eight without Curry against the Lakers. There is no way to overstate the significance of the Warriors suddenly not just surviving the non-Curry minutes, but actually winning them.
“Jimmy Butler is great. He adds a toughness to them. He adds a championship DNA type of guy,” James said after Thursday’s loss. “It’s always the same. [The Warriors] always figure it out. They always add someone that makes them dynamic.”
Still, you’re not alone if you find yourself wondering if this super-selective-scoring version of Butler will be enough in the playoffs, assuming the Warriors get there. It sounds silly to even question that with the Warriors being 19-2 when Curry and Butler pay together, especially with these last two wins over Memphis and the Lakers validating what could’ve been a deceiving stretch of success against a pretty soft schedule.
But you watch Curry scoring 52 points on 12 3-pointers, as he did against the Grizzlies, and Brandin Podziemski, a 34% 3-point shooter, going eight for 10 from beyond the arc like he did against the Lakers, and question if this is a sustainable blueprint with Butler so willingly taking a scoring backseat.
But then you check the box score and see that Butler had 27 points against Memphis largely by getting himself to the free-throw line 12 times. Even when he’s seemingly not doing much offensively, you’ll look up at the end of the game and his numbers are better than you thought possible.
Over 24 games with the Warriors, Butler is averaging 17.3 points, six rebounds, six assists and 1.5 steals. Across the full season, only three players are hitting all those marks, and two of them are Nikola Jokić and Luka Dončić. Butler is also perhaps more responsible for the massive leaps we’re watching happen in real time from the likes of Moses Moody and Podziemski than anyone. He ties a lot together. Injects a lot of comfort and confidence. The Warriors are going to need everyone, and Butler is letting that develop.
It’s a testament to Butler’s full-spectrum impact, subtle as some of it — sometimes much of it — can seem. He has another gear. We’ve all seen it. And presumably he’ll have to consistently shift into it if the Warriors are truly going to contend. But for now, he’s pushing all the right buttons by not actually pushing very much at all.
