\
Sunday was what the NBA should have advertised as its All-Star Weekend. Grizzlies-Cavaliers, Thunder-Timberwolves, Knicks-Celtics, even the we-don’t-play-any-defense-here-either arcana of Pistons-Hawks—every game on the slate explained different chunks of the league’s true future in ways that the reconstituted Lakers cannot.
But then what to do with the Golden State Warriors? They have become an entirely new thing in their six games with Jimmy Butler—please don’t forget the III—and suddenly the tired old saying about the past being prelude to the future is ringing out in the most unexpected of places.
No league clings to its historical roots or has a greater reverence for its crowned heads in quite the same way as the NBA. It tries desperately to serve up new stars and logos, but always reverts in the end to the old faces and teams. The league and its players run like a royal house, with all the reverent talk about legacies and dynasties that implies. The last 10 years have been mostly old and famous names (Lakers, Celtics and Warriors II, III and IV) alternating titles with newbies (Warriors I, Cavaliers, Raptors, Nuggets), and the only thing keeping us from thinking that a Cleveland-Boston Eastern Conference Final is actually for the championship is the fact that Oklahoma City still looks every bit as real and threatening as either of those Eastern Conference juggernauts.
But then, we repeat, what to do with the Golden State Warriors? In their frantic search to extend the warranty on Stephen Curry for as long as possible, they have tried to go big, go young, go defensive—go anywhere and do anything that doesn’t involve moving off Draymond Green. And, at least for his six games with the team, they suddenly seem to have found a potential solution in the unlikeliest place—with Jimmy III, who was a distressed, disputatious, and declining asset just a couple of weeks ago.
Butler, whose previous season highlight involved setting the Miami Heat’s winter home on fire, has come to San Francisco and energized what had become a tired old relic marked mostly by Curry trying to keep the whole enterprise afloat. The Warriors had been loitering around the play-in line most of the season; their last day in sixth place or above was Dec. 19, a day on which they absorbed a 144-93 loss at Memphis. Golden State hadn’t won more than two games in succession since November 15, and since that day they had become the rough equivalent of the Chicago Bulls, if that’s your idea of fulfillment.
Then, after a flailing attempt to acquire Kevin Durant at the trade deadline that Durant decisively spurned to remain with the even less imposing Phoenix Suns, the Warriors decided to play one last hand and trade for Butler and then give him a new contract in hopes of getting the on-court wizardry without the off-court mess. Whether it was the new surroundings or the new deal, Butler has been downright revelatory, a truly remarkable achievement for someone who has been playing professional basketball for 14 years in three of the four time zones in the contiguous United States.
As such, the Warriors have now won five of their six games with Jimmy III, or if you prefer his basketball resume name, Jimmy V. In doing so, they look less like the hangers-on they had been and more like this year’s team you don’t want to face. They Stooge-slapped one of their prime competitors on Sunday in a 126-102 win over Dallas; it was the most lopsided game of the day. As Monday dawned, they were one-and-a-half games behind the ever-confounding Clippers for the coveted six-hole in the Western Conference. In a tight group of inconsistent clubs, the Warriors may have found in the mercurial Butler the consistency to hearken back the echoes of … well, 2022, we suppose. They have acclimated with uncommon swiftness to Butler’s presence, and look as cohesive now as they have since that still-inexplicable last championship three years back. Curry, especially, has looked particularly sprightly and is having by far his best stretch of this meh (for him) season; Green and Butler have gotten on famously despite the presumptions that they could not possibly coexist.
There is less than a third of the season left, and Golden State will not be catching or even threatening to disturb Oklahoma City, Denver, or Memphis. Even catching the Lakers and Houston, currently tied for fourth and five games north of the Warriors, seems like a lofty ask, though hardly an impossible one. But sixth looks very doable, maybe by the end of the week, and modest teams that find their groove late in the season can suddenly become profoundly irksome in April and May. That’s how Jimmy III made his bones in Miami, before it all went to ash. And only fools would bet against a happy Jimmy III.