We’re just about 30 hours from the tipoff of Monday night’s critical Game 4 between the Rockets and the Warriors, and the major question entering that game has still not been answered. Will Jimmy Butler, the Warriors star forward who sat out Game 3 with a badly bruised pelvis after a nasty fall in Game 2, be on the floor?
That answer is still “questionable,” which means it’s a 50-50 proposition. The Warriors got 36 points in an epic performance from Stephen Curry in the Dubs’ Game 3 win on Saturday night, but don’t want to have to lean so heavily on Curry yet again.
Of course, whether Butler plays is not the only question mark. Also looming is the possibility that he plays, but is not entirely effective or needs to be on a minutes limitation.
On Sunday afternoon in San Francisco, Warriors coach Steve Kerr addressed that question.
Anthony Slater of The Athletic raised the question on Twitter/X on Sunday, writing, “Jimmy Butler played 42 minutes in Game 1. Will his minutes/usage be limited in his return (officially questionable for G4)?”
Golden State Warriors forward Jimmy Butler
© John Hefti-Imagn Images
Kerr said, per Slater, “I asked Rick (Celebrini) that question today and he wasn’t sure. He said it’s going to depend on how he’s feeling once he’s out there.”
And so all the Warriors and their fans can do is wait, first to see whether Butler plays at all, then to see whether he is playing up to his usual standard. The hope is that having three-plus days off to rest the bruise will be enough.
But the Warriors were encouraged by their ability to come up with a win even without Butler on Saturday–especially after getting off to a decidedly shaky start.
“You can see we’re out of sorts early. With Jimmy out we changed the starting lineup. We went to some combinations that we barely played all year and it took awhile for us to find our rhythm,” Kerr said.
“I thought what kept us in the game was our defense. Got up 13 at the most. These days, 13 doesn’t feel like that big of a deficit. I thought the key to the game was the way we closed the second quarter, to pull within three and get some momentum we felt pretty good at halftime as a result.”
