When the Golden State Warriors added Jimmy Butler to the trade deadline, it felt like a proper gift for Steph Curry to at least give him the opportunity to play – as he called it – basketball that makes sense. But it felt a bit of an overselling to think that one player could dance at the lottery line and change a team that is a true blue contender.
Even when Golden State began taking victory soon after Butler’s arrival, the schedule was pretty soft. It’s not to lower the indications of encouragement that we all saw immediately. Defense has been taken up. The pressure on aggressive paint has risen. The free throw attempts have risen considerably. Butler pieced together teams that lost collective methods by their own standards of strength. Stephen Curry re-flips his superstar switch.
But until Butler turned his own Superstar Switch over – especially in the season finale with the Clippers, and once again when he won a play-in against Memphis in Golden State, we were able to see the true power of what became the best duo in the NBA. Yes, even better than LeBron James and Luka Doncic.
Curry and Butler are combined as deadly competitors, but from a stylistic perspective, it’s all that others don’t. Curry is a shooter. Butler is a driver. The curry is a bit crazy. Butler calms everything down. The complementary nature of their basketball relationship removes even a slight reduction in return from their equation.
Curry and Butler are magic together, and on Sunday they gave the Houston Rockets a 95-85 victory in Game 1 of the first round series. Curry led with 31 points. We all knew that perhaps an unparalleled defender, Amen Thompson, was trying to turn Curry’s life into hell, and he did just that. Curry was rushing through his first couple three as he had a shadow chasing you around you. However, he worked on the rhythm by reaching the basket with a cut and a drive, and the three seconds began to drop.
This was nuts that caught the shot clock at midwaypoint in the third quarter.
It raised The Warriors to 23 and felt like the game was over. But that wasn’t the case. It was just over five minutes to play in the fourth quarter, and the Rockets cut it in the four minutes with all momentum. Then the curry did this…
They are hilarious shots. He hits another fall rainbow that will make you embarrassed to try a local lunchtime run, but Curry chucks them at the biggest moments of the biggest game. Butler begins to call him Batman, but he’s not wrong. Curry, 37, remains a basketball superhero.
Butler is wrong to saddle himself in Robin’s role. He’s not Robin. Not when he’s playing the way he’s played since the Warriors officially clicked on playoff mode. They could say they were all way down the playoff hoops stretching for their dangerous postseason prospects, but this is another version of Butler.
It’s the kind of selfless selfish selfish that unfolds when Butler decides to become one of the best players on the planet. He’s not doing it for statistics. Or recognition of articles like this. He’s not a player who wants to prioritize himself, but the irony is that it’s something that teams need when they reach this time of year.
It works, but I cut down on connections (the brilliant, almost intangible elements of his game are ubiquitous). If you’re going to insist.
Butler finished with a box score packed with 25 points, seven rebounds, six assists and five steels. He committed one sales. The Warriors scored 14 points in the 42nd minute. Doing math, it’s a total point of 66 with 22/38 shooting of Curry and Butler. No one else had more than 14 (Brandin Podziemski, great). In a game where scoring was a hellish job for both sides, such efficient production from your two best guys is something that many teams can count.
But the Warriors can count on it. Even against devastating defenses like Houston, Curry and Butler are not doing anything unsustainable. This is how wonderful they are. Individually and more importantly, together.
Heading towards Game 2 of this series, despite the Warriors’ long been going on in these playoffs, this is a duo that is realistically likely to be able to stop anyone.
