Two games and two hardy wins with Jimmy Butler haven’t totally remade and relaunched the Warriors, but something’s going on here.Sure, the Bucks didn’t have Giannis Antetokounmpo for the Warriors’ surging 125-111 victory in Milwaukee on Monday night. Sure, the very mediocre Bulls had just traded away Zach LaVine before the Warriors beat them in Chicago on Saturday.But the Warriors absolutely have looked more purposeful, less skittery, and a whole lot tougher since Butler joined them on the court in Chicago and started hammering his shoulders into defenders and strolling to the free-throw line.The new Warriors are not invincible, of course. They lost a lot of perimeter defense by trading away Andrew Wiggins for Butler and they’ll struggle to make up for it the rest of this season. They’ll still have to work their way up the Western Conference standings — after this two-game winning streak, they’re 27-26 and in 10th place. But they were in 11th just a few days ago, they’re now just a few games from the valuable No. 6 seed (which would take them out of the play-in), and they have earned the right to start imagining how far this could go.“I think the guys feel really good about these two games, recognizing that both games were games we might’ve lost earlier in the season,” Steve Kerr told reporters in Milwaukee after the game. “I think the fact that Jimmy went to the line 15 times tonight, 13 times the other night, shows you the power of free throws and the ability to get your defense set and settle a game down when it needs settling.”In fact, the 28 combined free-throw attempts over the last two games are the most any Warrior has accumulated over a two-game span since Kevin Durant went to the line a combined 30 times in two November 2019 games. And anytime a Warrior player not named Stephen Curry can get into a sentence with Durant, that is a major accomplishment.Butler made 12 of those attempts on Monday. He scored 20 points and also had 9 rebounds, 6 assists, and 4 steals in 31 minutes. And mostly, he just was a physical and emotional force — when Curry was resting, Butler calmly took pre-eminence; when the Warriors’ offense stalled a little, Butler forced the Bucks to foul him. When he was grinding, Curry could rest easy. And when Curry got back into the game early in the fourth quarter with fresh legs, everything took off for the Warriors.That is not how it has worked for most of this season when the Warriors hoped for the same from Dennis Schroder, Wiggins, or several others. It’s just two games. It will look clunky at times in the future, almost certainly. But things are happening very quickly with Butler and the Warriors right now.“It has been absolutely seamless and that’s because of Jimmy’s IQ,” Kerr said. “He just has an incredible feel for the game. All we had to do is give him a few of our actions, terminology the last couple of days. We’re running three or four things and otherwise it’s just basketball. And he knows how to play basketball.”
As Kerr has reiterated a little disconsolately over the past few months as his team has tumbled in the standings: The Warriors don’t have players who can drive to the basket and don’t have players who can draw fouls.
Well, they do now.The Warriors don’t feel as tight now that they have Butler to bail them out when Curry isn’t going ballistic. They are more assured of what they’re doing on offense because they’re more balanced. They can slow the game down and frustrate the opponent by watching Butler march to the free-throw line.It’s not just Save Us, Steph anymore. It’s Save Us, Jimmy. But they also still have Steph.
Here are the main things that have changed swiftly for the Warriors with this trade — and how it could play out into April and maybe May.