Kawakami: Looking ahead to Warriors playoffs, starting with the Draymond–Butler sync-up

Jimmy Butler prefers to do his postgame media sessions in the locker room right after he’s showered and changed, when he walks about 12 feet over to the white-board wall and answers every question that can fit into about five or six minutes.

About halfway into Butler’s sessions, Draymond Green navigates his way to his nearby locker through the media crowd, occasionally with a concurring thought or two as he listens to Butler, before Draymond heads up to the podium for his own media turn.

After that usually comes Stephen Curry, the Warriors’ closer on and off the court.

So yes, the Warriors’ triumvirate of headliners are looking about as synchronized after games as they are playing during this 15-2 run with Butler in the lineup. It’s quite the power procession when you step back and think about it. Of course, Curry didn’t hold a presser after Tuesday’s victory over Milwaukee because he was given the night off to rest. But that only highlighted the scope of the Draymond-Butler dynamic and everything more that is possible for the Warriors over the stretch run and into the playoffs.

We’ll get to Butler’s offensive contributions in a bit. But if you sensed a strong alignment with Butler and Draymond as they moved and reacted together in a scintillating defensive effort on Tuesday — Draymond all but silencing Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Butler sprinting around helping to cover everybody else — you weren’t alone.

“It’s so easy to add him in because he is like me,” Draymond said of Butler. “He thinks like me. He sees the floor like me or better. … It makes me all the more comfortable to know that I can be aggressive. That I can take some chances and know that at the end of the day there’s going to be Jimmy on the backside to cover up any mistakes that anyone makes. That’s usually me in that position, covering up mistakes.”

Easy, you say, Draymond? Here’s what Butler said about five minutes earlier when I asked him the same question about blending in with Draymond on defense: “It’s easy. I get to gamble a lot more for steals.”

It makes sense that these two hard-nosed, big-personality, playoff-proven veterans would play and speak like kindred spirits. But you never know until you see and hear it. Butler and Draymond probably didn’t know for sure until it started happening. Seventeen games into this, the Warriors have the second-best team defensive rating in the league over this period (surging Detroit is first) — and that’s after trading their best on-ball defender, Andrew Wiggins, in the package to get Butler.

This group will go through tougher times at some point. Maybe during the sprint to the regular-season finish line. Definitely in the playoffs, if and when they get there. But for now, adding Butler to Draymond probably has the rest of the league thinking: Wait, they’ve got two of these guys now?

“That’s kind of a match made in heaven,” Draymond said with a big grin.

When it’s time, Butler said a few days ago, he’ll score as much as necessary. He still can be Playoff Jimmy, the guy who carried the Heat to two Finals trips. It’s still there.

And on Tuesday, with Curry out and the Warriors flailing a bit in the third quarter, we saw it when Butler scored a flurry of points in all manner of ways — free throws, tough drives, and a rare 3-pointer — to trigger a 16-0 run that turned the game. He still only took 13 shots overall, but there was a different kind of aggressiveness from him with the ball. Butler was 11-for-11 from the line, scored 24 essential points, had 10 assists, and was +14.

Jimmy, was this your time?

“Maybe a little bit,” Butler said. “I’m glad that we won. That’s all I really care about. Pass the ball when guys are open. I got to shoot a little bit more tonight. But as long as it all leads to a ‘W,’ I’m good with whatever role I get to play.”

Just to run through some Butler career stats: He’s averaged 18.3 points on 12.6 shots per game in the regular season; he’s averaged 21.3 points on 15.6 shots per game in the playoffs.

And in his last two postseasons with Miami, Butler averaged 27.4 points on 19.3 shots per game in 2021-22 when the Heat got to the Eastern Conference Finals and 26.9 points on 20.1 shots per game in 2022-23 when the Heat got all the way to the Finals.

So far, in 17 games with the Warriors, Butler is averaging 17.2 points and taking 11.4 shots per game.

There’s more coming, probably, and the Warriors are going to need it.

Everything remains jumbled in the Western Conference standings — only four wins separate the 2-seed Rockets from the 8-seed Clippers — and the Warriors are right in the middle of it. They’re currently sitting in the sixth slot at 40-29, a half-game ahead of Minnesota to stay out of the play-in and three games behind No. 5 Memphis.

But there’s a narrowing focus for the Warriors. Obviously, they absolutely don’t want to drop to the 7 seed and have to go through the play-in. That would be problematic for the three veterans who need as much rest as possible before a potential long playoff run. And realistically, the 5 seed is the Warriors’ ceiling. The Lakers are in fourth now, relatively unreachable because they’re three games ahead of the Warriors and hold the tiebreaker edge. The Warriors have a shot to pass Memphis (5-5 over the last 10 games), but only if they win in Memphis on April 1 to take the season series.

The general goal is probably to get to 50 or 51 wins, which is usually about the low cutoff for any real shot at the Finals and would likely mean they’d finish no lower than sixth. Dallas won 50 games last season on its way to the Finals as a 5 seed. In the Warriors’ four championship runs of this era, their lowest regular-season win total was 53, which came in 2022, when they were the West’s 3 seed.

To get to 50 this season, the Warriors would need go 10-3 from here. It’s possible. They’ve got a pretty easy schedule remaining. Only five of the 13 opponents currently have winning records but four of them come in a row — at Memphis April 1 and at the Lakers April 3 to close the upcoming five-game road trip, then home games against Denver on April 4 and Houston on April 6.

Just FYI, the only Finals team in the last eight full-schedule seasons not to win 50 games was Butler’s 2023 Heat, which won 44, got through the play-In as the 7 seed, then won three more rounds.

A quick run-through of potential West playoff matchups and how the Warriors have fared in these meetings so far this season (granted, most of these games happened before Butler’s arrival and also whatever changes the other teams have gone through):

As mentioned, the Warriors can clinch the season series over Memphis with one more win. They can do no worse than tie the series because they’re up 2-1. I think the Warriors wouldn’t mind a possible 3-6 matchup with Memphis at all.

The Warriors won the season series over Houston and Minnesota, two other teams they seem to match up very well against.

In comparison, the Warriors lost the season series to Denver 0-2 and now have lost nine in a row to the Nuggets over several regular seasons, with one more meeting April 4 at Chase Center. The Warriors also have lost the season series decisively to both the Lakers and the Clippers (who they both play one more time).

I don’t think anybody is looking forward to a playoff matchup with the 1-seed Thunder, but the Warriors won the season series, 2-1.

On Tuesday, five Warriors players 24 years old or younger played 113 minutes combined: Brandin Podziemski 29 minutes, Moses Moody 25, Jonathan Kuminga 24, Quinten Post 23, Gui Santos 8, and Trayce-Jackson Davis 4.

That almost beat the combined total from the Warriors’ 30-and-older-crowd: 114 minutes combined from Butler (37 minutes), Draymond (36), Buddy Hield (24), and Gary Payton II (17).

That’s the closest the comparable count has been in a competitive or non-injury-blighted game I can remember, going back at least for a few years. Of course, this count was also a little non-normal because it was without Curry’s usual 35 minutes. But this still seems like a significant shift.

Comparably, in last season’s blowout loss to the Kings in the play-in game, 30-and-overs played 121 minutes. And 24-and-unders played 78, not including some garbage time when Kerr emptied the bench.

Look at the age balance in the Warriors’ new 10-man rotation: The three mid-30s stalwarts, three mid-career role players (Kevon Looney, GP2, Hield), and four or five key youngsters (Podziemski, Kuminga, Moody, and Post, with Santos getting minutes here or there).