Jimmy Butler sounds like he's losing his joy again. That didn't take long. Butler has played 60 games with the Warriors, including last year's postseason, and already he's at his wits' end with a .500 team that leans almost entirely on Stephen Curry turning into Superman to win games.
"We're gonna have to be damn near perfect," Butler said of Golden State's chances of surviving without Curry, who is going to be out at least a week with a quad contusion. "We're not going to have the ultimate bail-out on our team."
"But even when [Curry] is on the floor, we're going to have to do our job because we make the game real difficult," Butler continued. "As great of a basketball player as he is, he has a really hard job. Every single day he's gotta be the Batman of all Batmans and save us every night. That ain't what he's here to do."
Butler was then asked to elaborate on what the Warriors do, in his estimation, to make "make the game hard" for themselves, and he rattled off a list of ills that have clearly been getting on his nerves for a while.
"We don't box out. We don't go with the scouting report. We let anybody do whatever they want. Open shots. Get into the paint. Free throws. It's just sad."
You be the judge for yourself, but this does not sound like a happy Jimmy Butler, whose, shall we say, enthusiasm for his current NBA situation has always had an expiration date.
Jimmy Butler says the Warriors are going to “have to be damn near perfect” to win without Curry if he’s out. Dissatisfied with Golden State’s play thus far.
“We don’t box out. We don’t go with the scouting report. We let anybody do whatever they want. … It’s just sad.”
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— Sam Gordon (@BySamGordon) November 27, 2025
So here's the thing: Butler isn't wrong. Curry righting all of Golden State's wrongs with nuclear scoring explosions is not a formula for sustained success. It's nice to have that ace up your sleeve, but no, you cannot be reaching for it every night. The Warriors are 10-10 and at least three of those wins are a direct result of Curry saving the day.
First he went for 42, including 35 after halftime, in an overtime victory vs. the Nuggets in the first week of the season. The Warriors had no business winning that game. Curry scored 16 straight points over a six-minute surge spanning the end of the fourth quarter and the start of overtime. All told, he outscored the Nuggets by himself, 18-15, from the 2:42 mark of the fourth forward. He had to sink this shot to get the game to overtime in the first place.
Steph Curry telling the Nuggets to take a timeout after he tied the game late
(Via @warriors)pic.twitter.com/GRxfOheML7
— Fullcourtpass (@Fullcourtpass) October 24, 2025
A couple of weeks ago, Curry basically single-handedly lifted the Warriors over Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs twice in three nights by rattling off 95 points and 15 3-pointers. Again, this is a great option to have. Any good team, let alone one aspiring to be a contender, has a superstar who needs to save the day once in a while.
But the Warriors are supposed to have two superstars. You see what I'm getting at here?
Butler is quick to call out all these things the Warriors aren't doing well, which, again, he's not wrong about, but conveniently, we're not hearing anything about Golden State's 110.3 offensive rating when Butler is on the floor without Curry, which would rank as the fifth-worst mark in the league.
I know the rebuttal to this point. The Warriors are still a net positive when Butler is on the floor without Curry because of a 90th percentile defensive rating, per Cleaning the Glass, and it's true that Curry's defense isn't what it once was in terms of staying in front of people, so as much as Curry saves the day offensively, he's at the point now where he's the one getting bailed out a lot of the time defensively.
Still, that's not the larger point. Curry going nuclear is still the only hope this team has, and it shouldn't be that way. Prior to the season, I picked the Warriors to go to the Finals, and even though that's not looking like a very good call barring a trade (which is probably going to happen for Jonathan Kuminga once he's eligible to be moved on Jan. 15), the larger point is that optimism was rooted in the idea that Butler, after acclimating himself over the last half of last season, would be willing to stretch his scoring comfort zone.