The Golden State Warriors had one pathway, and one pathway alone, to staying in their second-round series vs. Minnesota long enough for Stephen Curry to get back with a realistic chance to make a difference: Jimmy Butler had to step out of this so-called Robin role that he has so enthusiastically embraced and actually put his Batman suit back on.
With 14 afterthought points (which actually doesn’t even do justice to how invisible he was in taking nine shots), it’s suffice it to say he didn’t do it in the Warriors’ Game 4 loss that saw the Minnesota Timberwolves take a 3-1 series lead. And in the absence of the one guy capable of dictating consistent scoring and overall offense in Curry’s absence, the Warriors looked increasingly helpless as Game 4 rolled toward a seven-point Timberwolves victory that felt like the series sealer.
Officially, it’s not over. The Wolves are up 3-1 with a chance to close it out at home on Wednesday. Curry has not yet been officially ruled out for Game 5, but a potential return has always seemed much likelier for a Game 6 on Sunday.
But that only happens if the Warriors can win Game 5, on the road, likely without Curry. They couldn’t get it done in Games 2, 3 or 4. And what’s the only way it could happen? Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Butler has to come out attacking as a scorer and play that way the whole game. It really is that simple.
He finally did it with 33 points in Game 3, and, not coincidentally, that was the one game Golden State had a chance to win with Curry out. It didn’t happen as Butler failed to score over the final eight minutes, but at least the guy tried to step outside his comfort zone and give his suffocating offense a fighting chance to survive.
Two straight aggressive games was apparently too much to ask as Butler went right back to his jarringly passive ways in Game 4, taking five shots in the first half and just four in a third quarter that saw Golden State go from having a two-point halftime lead to a 20-point deficit.
There was so much at stake in that third quarter. The Warriors were right there with a chance to not just tie this series and perhaps even take control of it with Curry’s return looming, but more than that, to stay in a race to win another championship that has suddenly broken wide open. The Celtics and Cavaliers, both down 3-1, are about to get eliminated, meaning, barring an unlikely turn of events, whoever makes it to the Finals out of the West is going to be the favorite to win the whole thing against the Knicks or Pacers.
And even it the West, the best team, Oklahoma City, is tied 2-2 with Denver. They might be gone, too. And even if they get through the Nuggets, they are clearly beatable. This was all right there for the Warriors in that third quarter. It was the moment that Playoff Jimmy, whom everyone has been waiting on for months, had to show up. He made two shots.
Hell, forget the made shots. Butler didn’t even take a shot, not a single one, from the 6:23 mark of the second quarter to the 8:04 mark of the third. Steve Kerr sat him for the final four minutes of the first half, presumably trying to rest him for a big second half, but it actually worked in the old-fashioned way of sitting a guy in that Golden State was better without him, turning a four-point deficit into a two-point lead at halftime as Butler went on to finish the game as a team-worst minus-30.
Butler, as has become frustratingly familiar, setting his teammates up for failure under the guise of setting them up, asking the likes of Buddy Hield and Draymond Green and Brandin Podziemski to win one-on-one matchups off zero leverage, often late in the shot clock, by deferring time and again. Passing isn’t always unselfish. In this case it certainly feels like an actual selfish act.
Butler looks far more concerned with looking bad and maybe turning the ball over, or having a shot blocked, or heaven forbid even contested, than he is with stepping outside his too-careful conscience and at least trying to flip the scoring switch in the interest of giving his team a chance.
And it has been, through this fear of failure that Butler has, in fact, failed the Warriors when they needed him most. That’s going to sound harsh, and it is. Again, the Warriors had one chance to stay in this series, and it wasn’t some big secret. Everyone knew it. Butler had to step up. He didn’t.
This is not a one-game thing, either. Butler has been playing this way, save for a few exceptions, his entire time in Golden State — jump-stopping in the lane and pivot-passing back out, forgoing literal layups to throw it out to a non-shooter late in the shot clock, handing off to a far-less-capable creator in cramped quarters.
Our Colin Ward-Henninger wrote about this barely a month into Butler’s Golden State tenure. “When it’s my time,” Butler said back then, “you’ll know.” This was his time, and he didn’t even try to seize it. Trying would be 20-25 shots, forcing his way to the free-throw line, playing with some actual pace and forcing his way downhill.
Had Butler done that, he could’ve ended up with the same 14 points and everyone would’ve lived with it. Just wasn’t his night. It happens. But to take nine shots while passing up at least that many, to have his coach rest him over the final four minutes of the first half so he could come out firing in the third quarter only to watch him put up four points on four shots, to manage just two free-throw attempts, the supposed backbone of his game, during the competitive portions of the game, is unacceptable, plain and simple.
This is a guy who sells himself as being afraid of nothing, of being a maniacal competitor, and he has been all too happy to serve as support staff for far too long. He got away with it, even celebrated for his connective tissue as Golden State rolled through a soft closing schedule to a No. 7 seed, when Curry was doing the heavy lifting. But this time, when it was Curry that needed to be picked up, Butler didn’t just drop the ball, he refused to even pick it up in the first place. Let alone actually shoot the thing.