How Jimmy Butler fits with Steph Curry, Warriors’ surprising violation – NBC Sports Bay Area & California

Los Angeles -Before Jimmy Butler became a polarizing NBA Super Star, he had to spend a season of playing Junior College Basketball and three years at Marquette before being elected at the end of the first round of the 2011 draft.

Butler’s NBA career then began with two years that came out of the bench for Chicago Bulls before becoming an everyday starts his third year in the league. The next season was Hans Breakout, who won the most improved player and started a race of four consecutive seasons on average at least 20 points per year. Match. Butler in his 14-year-old career has now set up at eight 20-point seasons, not with one where he finished at 19.9 points per year. Match.

Now that he is at Warriors, Butler knows the answer to being his best self on the field.

“Go past the ball to Steph (Curry) and go out of the way,” Butler said on Thursday at Crypto.com Arena at his initial press conference.

What if Curry becomes the double team or even the triple team, as if he is currently in Warriors’ stale violation so often this season?

“It’s ok,” Butler said. “I saw it in the Olympics.”

Warrior’s coach Steve Kerr is not worried about how Butler will fit in on the field. Butler is not an automatic, trouble -free fit for Kerr’s movement of movement. His success much of the time comes from operating out of the paint and turning the clock back from mid-range. It doesn’t sound exactly like Warrior’s basketball.

But talent wins.

“He’s an amazing player,” Kerr said Thursday. “All good players find out how to play with other good players.”

Superstar talent or not, bringing a player more than halfway through the season is never an easy transition. Kevin Durant needed months to find out how to play with Curry. Some players need more, others never make it work.

To ease butler, Kerr says everything must be simplified. Butler is expected to make his warriors on Saturday against Bulls in Chicago, and Kerr’s plan is to let Butler play as he knows best and surround him with a distance to let his game shine.

The bigger question, recognized Kerr, is how Butler’s arrival will change combinations. Warriors have already used 30 different starting lineups and this number will only increase the addition of butler to the mixture.

“He will definitely play the non-step minutes so we can run our violation through him when Steph is on the bench,” Kerr said. “But we have a lot of candidates to place next to him and we have to figure out these rotations.”

There is another factor to also explain someone who was the key to Warriors who thought they came out as winners at the NBA trading deadline. They were able to keep their young players, especially Jonathan Kuminga. There were probably uncertainties coming into the season playing Kuminga and Andrew Wiggins together, and now Wiggins are out and butler are in, the same questions are back.

Maybe even more, given that Wiggins is seen as a better 3-point shooter than Butler at this time in their careers. Kuminga is expected to return from her ankle injury in the coming weeks, probably after the NBA All-Star break, adding another wrinkle to this puzzle that has been full of missing pieces.

“I think that’s probably the biggest question,” Kerr said. “Jimmy is at 3, can we play Daymond (Green) at 4? Or draymond of 5 with jk? These three guys, it’s tempting. The idea of ​​the talent, the ability to change defensively, but we have to be able to generate good offensive possessions. ”

Losing Wiggins also meant that Warriors lost their most important defensive player outside the green. Wiggins have the rare ability to protect the left’s best wing scores as well as a handful of high -profile guards as well.

Butler is a five-time all-defensive player who last receives the honor of the NBA season 2020-21. At 35 years old, Butler is also five years older than Wiggins.

None of these factors will prevent Kerr from putting Butler on the second team’s top scorer.

“Jimmy will have to protect the opponent’s best players,” Kerr said. “We will miss wiggs in this respect in many other ways as well. Jimmy is very suitable for taking on the same role. ”

However, when it comes to the world orbiting the warriors, everything comes back to Curry. He is the offense, no matter who is on the floor with him. Curry is the culture. Curry is Warriors.

And to no surprise, his newest teammate can’t wait to share the court next to him.

“Everyone knows he’s the biggest shooting game in the world, biggest shooting games in history,” Butler said. “Make my job much easier, I probably have a lot more space out there. But more than anything else, I think it will always be a team effort. We all got a lot more space out there.

“Let’s see how it’s going.”

From Saturday night in Chicago, let Warriors’ big Jimmy Butler Experiment begin.

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