Even before Jimmy Butler went down with a torn ACL, it felt like the Golden State Warriors would try looking for a life raft between now and the Feb. 5 NBA trade deadline. You might think, then, that the front office would be scrambling to support Stephen Curry after losing his co-star, but it sounds as if they may have accepted that this season is officially lost at sea.
While there's a(n emotionless) argument to be made for using Butler's sizable salary to broker a blockbuster trade, Warriors fans shouldn't hold their breath. General manager Mike Dunleavy told reporters he can't "envision" a Butler trade, and NBA insider Marc Stein noted how Dunleavy "has a longstanding relationship with Butler after they played together in Chicago," adding "an extra human element into the equation."
Help isn't coming. Not the season-saving, course-correcting kind, at least.
If the Warriors aren't pushing for contention, then what are they doing?
Golden State has completed two contests since Butler's injury. Both felt disastrous in their own way. First, it was an 18-point home loss to the Toronto Raptors. Then, it was an eight-point loss to the sub-.500 Dallas Mavericks with the Warriors blowing a fourth-quarter lead and failing to find enough support scoring for Curry, whose 38-point gem went to waste.
Oh, and Jonathan Kuminga exited the latter tilt early with knee soreness. You know, because sometimes the basketball gods think it's prudent to add injury to...well, injury.
The Warriors have no strong reason to expect anything other than more of the same moving forward. Without Butler, Curry is essentially the only consistent self-sufficient scorer on the roster. Dip below that duo, and the next-highest scorer is Brandin Podziemski—at 12.2 points.
If this is the plan—and it sure feels like it is—then the Dubs are drawing dead. They aren't even guaranteed a play-in spot at this point, and even if they do make it some kind of postseason stage, they don't have an obvious counter-punch for when teams inevitably build a brick wall around Curry.
So, where is this going? Are they really holding out hope that they can tread water for roughly a full calendar year and then receive a mid-season boost in 2026-27 from Butler, who turns 37 in September? Can Kuminga find enough minutes in Butler's absence to at least resuscitate his trade market in time for the offseason? Is it time to start considering the ultimate doomsday option?
This is brutal. Maybe the most painful way for Curry to play out his twilight years even—seeing that he's still good enough to impact the title race, but that his club clearly isn't. There better be some kind of next-step vision here, because logging more mileage on this treadmill might meet the legal definition for cruel and unusual punishment.