Before acquiring Jimmy Butler III in February, Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr considered his team ‘dead in the water.’
“I was all for it, just because we had nothing going,” Kerr said on the most recent episode of the Tom Tolbert Show. “We were at the point in the season where you could just feel it, we were dead in the water. We were below .500 and it had been a long enough stretch where it was like ‘alright, this isn’t working.”
Kerr wanted a change — and Jimmy Buckets was exactly the change he was seeking.
“Mike [Dunleavy] calls me and he goes ‘I think we’re just going to trade for Jimmy Butler, I’m going to vouch for him, I played with him for three years in Chicago. Guy is a gamer, hell of a player. I think it’s going to work.’ I said, ‘great, let’s do it.’ But more than anything, we needed a change.”
Kerr admitted that he didn’t know much about Butler’s game, but the shake-up was welcome and much needed. It also paid off, with Butler leading the Warriors to the second round of the playoffs, where they were bounced by the Timberwolves.
I didn’t know his game that well, obviously we only played Miami a couple times a year. I’ve watched him and have been impressed, but he doesn’t have the game that jumps off the screen to you skill-wise,” Kerr added. “You watch him and once you see him every other every day you realize why he’s so good.”
Butler is under contract for the Warriors through the 2026-27 season after signing an extension in February of this year. Averaging 17.5 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 5.9 assists per game at age 35, it seems like it can only be more good news from here.