Jimmy Butler is giving the Warriors ‘the power of free throws’ — and a whole lot more

Two games and two hardy wins with Jimmy Butler haven’t totally remade and relaunched the Warriors, but something’s going on here.

Sure, the Bucks didn’t have Giannis Antetokounmpo for the Warriors’ surging 125-111 victory in Milwaukee on Monday night. Sure, the very mediocre Bulls had just traded away Zach LaVine before the Warriors beat them in Chicago on Saturday.

But the Warriors absolutely have looked more purposeful, less skittery, and a whole lot tougher since Butler joined them on the court in Chicago and started hammering his shoulders into defenders and strolling to the free-throw line.

The new Warriors are not invincible, of course. They lost a lot of perimeter defense by trading away Andrew Wiggins for Butler and they’ll struggle to make up for it the rest of this season. They’ll still have to work their way up the Western Conference standings — after this two-game winning streak, they’re 27-26 and in 10th place. But they were in 11th just a few days ago, they’re now just a few games from the valuable No. 6 seed (which would take them out of the play-in), and they have earned the right to start imagining how far this could go.

“I think the guys feel really good about these two games, recognizing that both games were games we might’ve lost earlier in the season,” Steve Kerr told reporters in Milwaukee after the game. “I think the fact that Jimmy went to the line 15 times tonight, 13 times the other night, shows you the power of free throws and the ability to get your defense set and settle a game down when it needs settling.”

In fact, the 28 combined free-throw attempts over the last two games are the most any Warrior has accumulated over a two-game span since Kevin Durant went to the line a combined 30 times in two November 2019 games. And anytime a Warrior player not named Stephen Curry can get into a sentence with Durant, that is a major accomplishment.

Butler made 12 of those attempts on Monday. He scored 20 points and also had 9 rebounds, 6 assists, and 4 steals in 31 minutes. And mostly, he just was a physical and emotional force — when Curry was resting, Butler calmly took pre-eminence; when the Warriors’ offense stalled a little, Butler forced the Bucks to foul him. When he was grinding, Curry could rest easy. And when Curry got back into the game early in the fourth quarter with fresh legs, everything took off for the Warriors.

That is not how it has worked for most of this season when the Warriors hoped for the same from Dennis Schroder, Wiggins, or several others. It’s just two games. It will look clunky at times in the future, almost certainly. But things are happening very quickly with Butler and the Warriors right now.

“It has been absolutely seamless and that’s because of Jimmy’s IQ,” Kerr said. “He just has an incredible feel for the game. All we had to do is give him a few of our actions, terminology the last couple of days. We’re running three or four things and otherwise it’s just basketball. And he knows how to play basketball.”

As Kerr has reiterated a little disconsolately over the past few months as his team has tumbled in the standings: The Warriors don’t have players who can drive to the basket and don’t have players who can draw fouls.

Well, they do now.

The Warriors don’t feel as tight now that they have Butler to bail them out when Curry isn’t going ballistic. They are more assured of what they’re doing on offense because they’re more balanced. They can slow the game down and frustrate the opponent by watching Butler march to the free-throw line.

It’s not just Save Us, Steph anymore. It’s Save Us, Jimmy. But they also still have Steph.

Here are the main things that have changed swiftly for the Warriors with this trade — and how it could play out into April and maybe May.

We all saw it every time Curry had to figure out how to score 35 points just to give the Warriors a chance against defenses determined to swarm him at all times. Curry got frustrated. He got exhausted. His shoulders drooped. He was working so hard to shoot so many difficult shots, and his teammates were not helping him out.

And now, in these two Butler games, Curry has scored 34 points against Chicago on only 19 shots and scored 38 against Milwaukee on Monday on 24 shots. No surprise Curry looked so frisky in the fourth quarter on Monday.

Just last week, Curry was putting up points, but the volume of effort was disconcerting: He scored 37 in the loss to the Lakers, but that came on 35 shots; he scored 32 in Utah on the night of the Butler trade, which came on 31 shots.

Curry is still going to shoot plenty. But when defenses also have to worry about Butler slicing to the basket or roaming in the midrange, Curry can measure up his shots a little more carefully. And he can also pass it to Butler and let him figure something out inside the 3-point line.

Yes, Butler is the Warriors’ most dangerous 1B scorer since Jordan Poole’s good season in 2021-22, and he balances out the offense in ways that Poole couldn’t do even when he was quite excellent.

Curry also looks very comfortable now that he’s back in his old rotation — since Butler’s arrival, Curry has played most of the first and third quarters, rested at the top of the second and fourth (when Butler leads the second unit), and gotten back in for the last seven or eight minutes of each half.

That was always Curry’s rotation in the dynasty days because he prefers to play long stretches and not substitute in and out multiple times a half. Kerr went away from it this season because he wanted to shorten up Curry’s rest stints to lighten the second unit’s exposure.

But the Warriors aren’t so exposed in the non-Curry minutes now that they’ve got Butler. They were +3 and +3 in the two non-Steph stints on Monday — the “+” in those minutes about as sure an indicator of a pending Warriors victory as there’s been during the length of the dynasty.

On Saturday, the Warriors sealed up the victory by going +14 to start the fourth quarter with Butler leading the way and Curry out.

On Saturday, Podziemski noted that he, Butler, and Draymond all think about the game similarly — after Podziemski was a +26 off the bench that night and Draymond was +27. (Butler was +16 and Curry +23.) If you pass and cut on offense and fight for rebounds and loose balls, you can do some damage with the new Warriors.

Kerr obviously agrees, since he’s getting those three together in key non-Curry minutes — and they’re taking off. On Monday, while Butler was a neutral in the plus-minus (I can’t really explain that one), Podziemski was +18 and Draymond +14, essentially serving as the bridge players who can be key pieces in any Warriors unit.

Without Wiggins, the Warriors are going to have problems defending any team that has dribble penetrators who can get into the lane, draw the help defenders, then kick out to shooters on the perimeter — and that’s already shown up against Chicago (Coby White 27 points) and Milwaukee (Damian Lillard 38 points). Other than specialist Gary Payton II, the 35-year-old Butler might be the Warriors’ best perimeter defender (at least while Jonathan Kuminga is out), and if you push Butler that hard on defense, you probably lose a lot of his offense.

So Kerr started Moses Moody on Monday and tried him against Lillard. It wasn’t a great answer. The Warriors will have to do some scrambling if they end up facing Ja Morant, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, or Jalen Green in a playoff series. But they knew that when they sacrificed Wiggins to get Butler — and they weren’t exactly a shutdown defense when they had Wiggins, either. It’s worth the shot. But there will be games when they can’t stop any penetration and give up a lot of open 3s. So they’ll have to try to outscore teams. And now they have multiple ways to do it.

The Warriors announced Monday that Kuminga is making progress with his sprained ankle and might be back for the first game after the All-Star break — Feb. 21 in Sacramento.

How will Kerr fit him into the new rotation? When Kuminga is back, he can jump into the starting lineup when the Warriors go small with Draymond at center and Butler at small forward. Or Kuminga can be the sixth man when the Warriors go with Quinten Post at center (with Draymond and Butler as the forwards).

More importantly, Kuminga looks like a solid option to be the 1B scorer alongside either Curry or Butler when the other alpha dog is resting. That way, Kerr can always have at least two versatile scorers on the court at the same time, and he can close with all three on the court whenever he wants.

Kuminga will have to get used to playing with Butler, just the same as the other Warriors are getting used to it now. But I can’t think of a better model for Kuminga’s basketball development than Butler — hard-edged but under control, with a guaranteed 6 to 8 trips to the free-throw line, and not tied to the 3-point line. Kuminga is more athletic and could have a future shooting a lot of 3s. But if he just winnowed his game to what Butler is doing now, Kuminga could have the same kind of impact that Butler is having on the Warriors.

It’s only been two games, but it’s impossible not to feel it.