Jimmy Butler sounds like he’s losing his joy again. That didn’t take long. Butler has played 60 games with the Warriors, including last year’s postseason, and already he’s at his wits’ end with a .500 team that leans almost entirely on Stephen Curry turning into Superman to win games.
“We’re gonna have to be damn near perfect,” Butler said of Golden State’s chances of surviving without Curry, who is going to be out at least a week with a quad contusion. “We’re not going to have the ultimate bail-out on our team.”
“But even when [Curry] is on the floor, we’re going to have to do our job because we make the game real difficult,” Butler continued. “As great of a basketball player as he is, he has a really hard job. Every single day he’s gotta be the Batman of all Batmans and save us every night. That ain’t what he’s here to do.”
Butler was then asked to elaborate on what the Warriors do, in his estimation, to make “make the game hard” for themselves, and he rattled off a list of ills that have clearly been getting on his nerves for a while.
“We don’t box out. We don’t go with the scouting report. We let anybody do whatever they want. Open shots. Get into the paint. Free throws. It’s just sad.”
You be the judge for yourself, but this does not sound like a happy Jimmy Butler, whose, shall we say, enthusiasm for his current NBA situation has always had an expiration date.
So here’s the thing: Butler isn’t wrong. Curry righting all of Golden State’s wrongs with nuclear scoring explosions is not a formula for sustained success. It’s nice to have that ace up your sleeve, but no, you cannot be reaching for it every night. The Warriors are 10-10 and at least three of those wins are a direct result of Curry saving the day.
First he went for 42, including 35 after halftime, in an overtime victory vs. the Nuggets in the first week of the season. The Warriors had no business winning that game. Curry scored 16 straight points over a six-minute surge spanning the end of the fourth quarter and the start of overtime. All told,…
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