Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle
Scott Strazzante/S.F. Chronicle
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle
The rumors are true. The legend exists.
“To see it up close and personal, it’s a real thing,” Draymond Green said of Jimmy Butler.
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“You know sometimes you get to the NBA and these guys get nicknames and you’re like, ‘Stop it. They’re not real.’”
“That one’s real. I’m happy he’s on our side.”
Playoff Jimmy and Sublime Steph are in the postseason together, thanks to the Golden State Warriors’ first-ever “play-in” win, a dramatic 121-116 victory over the Memphis Grizzlies on Tuesday. Together they combined for 75 points: Butler shouldered the load early, with 34 points through the first three quarters. As usual, Stephen Curry flourished at game’s end, scoring the Warriors’ final ten points to put the Grizzlies to bed.
Who knows how far this dynamic duo can go?
“I think any team has a chance when I’m on the team, but I know that every team has a chance if Steph is on the team,” Butler said.
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“So I get to play Robin; that’s my Batman. We got all the villains over there — Two-Face and Joker and Riddler and everybody else in the Western Conference.”
Green is the third piece of this three-headed veteran partnership, one that has 397 playoff games between them. Alone, Green and Curry weren’t enough: the goal for the past three seasons has been to get Curry back into meaningful games, back into the postseason. But the Warriors were floundering trying to find the path. It took Butler’s arrival in February to make it happen.
Butler has changed everything. The energy and optimism. The confidence. The style of play,
“We have morphed into a different team,” Steve Kerr said. “Jimmy has completely changed everything for us since he’s been here and tonight was a great example of that.”
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Butler took a team that was flat and oddly irrelevant in January and has turned them into perhaps the scariest matchup any opponent could face in April and May.
The marriage has not only changed the Warriors’ fortunes, it also put Playoff Jimmy back in the postseason. After his season of drama and ugly divorce from Miami, he couldn’t be sure if he would be back in the playoffs, though when I suggested that to him, he arched his eyebrow and smiled.
“I did,” he said, adding that before he joined the Warriors he predicted exactly this.
“I don’t know in what manner that I can help, but we’re going to make the playoffs,” was his message to the Warriors in pre-trade conversations.
“I feel like I can give any team, for sure this one, a chance to win. They believe it. I believe it. That’s all you can ask for.”
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Butler’s fluidity, his calmness, his leadership, his play in the paint, his ability to draw the foul, are all a perfect counterpart to the flow and movement and occasional chaos of the Curry offense. The partnership clicked almost instantly and the Warriors have played with urgency the past seven weeks.
But it has only been in the past few games that Playoff Jimmy has been on full display. And though the play-in doesn’t count as the playoffs, it is the postseason and Butler is showing what to expect in the upcoming series against Houston, which opens Sunday.
“He’s turned it up completely on both sides of the ball,” Green said. “Everyone else is adjusting to it. He’s way more aggressive to score. He had not yelled at everybody since he’s been here; he’s yelling at guys now. Like it’s a totally different person.”
Butler has said one of the appeals of the Warriors is that everyone can be blunt. Tell each other what to do. Be honest. There’s no time in the heat of a playoff game to explain politely what the task is at hand.
Butler’s fire was on full display against the Grizzlies. Every time he drove the lane, made the basket and was fouled, he pumped his fists and yelled toward the crowd. Green said he was yelling to his teammates to get the ball in his hands. That he was getting on teammates for bad shots, for not hustling for loose balls.
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He was the Playoff Jimmy we’ve seen from afar.
“We’ve all watched it,” Curry said. “He was in the Eastern Conference and we are in the West and we never got to play against Playoff Jimmy. But he raises his level when it’s needed the most. That’s why the trade made so much sense for us, because he has that experience and resume.
“These last two games you see a different level of intentionality, especially scoring the basket… Playoff Jimmy will hopefully be a big unlock for us.”
Playoff Jimmy has been unlocked. Batman Curry now has a reliable partner to shoulder the load.
The dynamic duo is in the playoffs. Who knows how far they’ll soar?
