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Weren’t we just talking about this? On Wednesday, a day before the NBA’s trade deadline, the Golden State Warriors engineered a multi-team transaction through which they acquired Miami bad boy Jimmy Butler. Butler, as you may remember, is the serial bad-breaker-upper who has left a trail of venom in his various wakes — but he just keeps on getting desired and acquired.
This is a big deal, players-wise:
—Butler to the Warriors from Miami.
—Andrew Wiggins (Golden State), P.J. Tucker (Utah) and a protected first-round pick to Miami.
—Dennis Schroder (Golden State) to Utah.
—Kyle Anderson (Golden State) to Toronto.
—Lindy Watters III (Golden State) and Josh Richardson (Miami) to Detroit.
(It took a lot of pieces to make this work.)
Butler is making $48 million this year and had a player option for $52 million next season. He is now bypassing that option, according to ESPN, and instead signing a two-year contract extension with Golden State worth $121 million. That carries Butler through the 2026-27 season.
So — yeah. Pretty big deal.
Whether this creates added wins for the Warriors is a fine question without a good answer. Andrew Wiggins, one of the guys Golden State shipped out in order to make this happen, is having a nice season and had been particularly good of late. But the Warriors were going nowhere with its roster as it was, sitting 10th in the Western Conference with a 25-24 record prior to Wednesday night’s games. They needed to shake things up, period. I mean, they charge a lot for those seats in San Francisco.
Word had filtered to the Dubs that one of their targets, Kevin Durant, wanted no part of a reunion in the Bay Area after having spent 2016-19 there. (He won two rings there.) At this late hour, Butler was one of only a few quality stars left on the market. His awful behavior in Miami, where he essentially tried to act like a large enough asshat to get himself traded, apparently is something Golden State management thinks will be tamped down by Butler’s playing alongside championship veterans Steph Curry and Draymond Green.
Either that, or between Butler and Green, the Warriors will fight every one of their remaining regular-season opponents. Still, in a week in which the Lakers acquired Luka Doncic, the Spurs added De’Aaron Fox and the Kings brought in Zach LaVine and Jonas Valanciunas, the Warriors couldn’t very well peddle the idea of doing nothing to their increasingly restless fan base.
Result: Jimmy Butler wins again. And when you consider Butler’s NBA history of lifting franchises to short- and mid-term success in exchange for rank endings to those relationships, it’s a fair gamble for a desperate lot. Watch this space.
Playoff Jimmy could be just what the Warriors need for the final two years of Steph's contract.
I thought the Warriors had enough aging, broken down and expensive players on the roster.