Evaluating the Warriors’ options with Jimmy Butler for the season

SAN FRANCISCO– DEFCON 1 is in the Golden State. Alarms have gone off, sirens are screaming, and battle plans are being drawn up as we speak, as the Warriors struggle to find a way forward. Jimmy Butler’s season-ending tear. Worst-case scenario for an NBA franchise, especially one trying to balance the fragility of a franchise-changing superstar’s final chapter Stephen Curry‘s career.

So where do they go from here?

That’s the question that’s flooding the NBA airwaves right now, because literally anything and everything is on the table. Could they be embarking on another blockbuster replacement? Will it be a hit this season? What’s going on with Jonathan Cummings? How much are those post-Curry draft picks worth now? Butler has one bad, random fall, and now we’re living in a tie-level event where the Warriors can proceed in too many different ways.

But to narrow down Golden State’s paths forward, let’s work under one overarching assumption. Whatever the Warriors decide to do, it will be to give Wardell Stephen Curry II a chance to stay relevant.

That was the mantra they operated under since he secured his fourth ring. It was all Curry had been asking for since he started to see the end coming. He wants to play meaningful games in a relevant team in the hope that the stars will somehow align to make Cinderella make another run to the mountaintop. He’s not looking for a star-studded title favorite, nor will he push the front office to sacrifice his future.

He wants, and the Warriors want, hope to compete, the exact thing they lost as soon as Butler fell to earth like a shooting star.

With that in mind, let’s move on to the Warrior’s options.

Explore the types of “season saving” crafts.

Golden State was looking for a replacement even before Butler went down. In that peachy green timeline, they hoped to use Cummings’ $22.5 million contract to add a playable player, ideally a three-and-D wing that could potentially elevate them from mock contenders to hotshots if everything breaks right.

But right now, those kinds of trades would simply be salvaging a season where they’ve kind of started to stabilize. At 25-19, firmly in the race for the sixth seed, Golden State is in the mix. They’ve built a little egg cushion and if you ignore the glaring Butler-sized hole on their roster, they’ve found some real momentum in their depth lately.

At the height of this scenario, the Warriors would be swinging for guys like Michael Porter Jr. and Trey Murphy III, maybe even Lauri Markkanenprolific scorers who may not be able to carry the offense like Navy did like Butler, but can complement Curry and Draymond Green enough to keep the Warriors afloat.

Those post-Curry guys just got a lot more valuable, so in some sick way, the Butler trade makes acquiring guys like that more likely from an asset valuation standpoint. Do guys like Porter or Murphy move the needle on Golden State’s title chances? Probably no more than they were with Butler. But it keeps them in the mix and gives Curry the slimmest chance to stay relevant.

Why the Warriors shouldn’t go this route: Because the bottom end of this scenario puts them in no man’s land. There’s a world where they don’t swing for guys like Porter or Murphy and go for someone like DeMar DeRozan (who Shams Charania has already talked about with the Warriors) or De’Andre Hunter. In that scenario, it doesn’t get Golden State anywhere, even if it allows them to preserve liquid capital.

Is there a world where DeRozan recreates 75% of what Butler gave them? Maybe. But Golden State doesn’t want to pay back bad contracts, according to NBA insider Marc Stein. And their fear of this scenario is that they are signing a long contract with bad money and going nowhere with it.

The nuclear option

There is a cold-blooded, callous route the Warriors can go down if they have the stomach to trade Jimmy Butler. With Butler owed $54.1 million this season and $56.8 million next season, the final year of his contract, Golden State could try to land a superstar if they use Butler’s monster contract.

Golden State has done a version of this in the past, on a much lower scale, when they used De’Anthony Melton’s exceptional mid-level contract after he tore his own ACL to trade him to Brooklyn for Dennis Schroeder (who was later added in the Butler trade). But dealing Butler would be seismic on a whole other level given how much the team, fans and city like him.

Candidates in this scenario include Anthony Davis ($54.1 million), Domantas Sabonis ($42.3 million), Lauri Markkanen ($46.3 million) and maybe even the great Giannis Antetokounmpo ($54.1 million), stars whose circumstances could force their teams to deal them. Butler’s injury unlocks this path because of his salary and because his absence raises the value of their picks. And in cases like Davis or Sabonis, you may not have to sacrifice valuable draft capital, given how their value has begun to depreciate.

It would be ruthless, expensive and difficult to pull off during the season, but really the only way for the Warriors to be just as good, if not better, than before his injury.

Why the Warriors shouldn’t go this route: It’s too ruthless. The NBA is not NBA 2K. These are real people with real relationships and real emotions. And usually trades of that level or ruthlessness come back to haunt someone. Not just in a sports curse way, future free agents are hesitant to join Golden State because they remember how they treated Butler in some ways.

It is also difficult to perform in season. Injuries happen. Teams start winning, teams start losing. The stars change their minds. You’re subject to the whims of superstars in this scenario, and most of them aren’t as accommodating as Curry.

The path of least resistance (the boring one…)

This is the “Luigi wins by doing absolutely nothing” route.

The Warriors aren’t turning the keys and trading Butler. They don’t swing for the break like Porter, Murphy or DeRozan. And they don’t even hold a fire sale and try to get high (they’ll never do that with Curry on the team). They’re standing pat, holding Kuminga, hoping to acclimate him back into the rotation (again) and waiting for the summer.

It’s an annoying option, which will further frustrate an already frustrated fan base. But the process behind this option is this: No trade will save their season. Why waste resources on hopeless trades that don’t move the needle? Those post-Curry guys are all they’ll have to rebuild once he’s gone. If the season is already over, don’t operate under the sunk cost delusion.

Let this team try to make a run without Butler. Try to offset Kuminga’s value by playing him, developing Brandin Podziemski and Moses Moody and keeping those draft picks. It may sound defeatist and lukewarm to do nothing to address Butler’s injury. But the thinking behind this option is not the present, but the future. Franchisees have the right to see the writing on the wall and plan accordingly.

Why the Warriors shouldn’t go this route: Try selling that plan to Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Steve Kerr, the guys who brought you four titles in a decade. When you have Curry on your team, you owe it to him to try to build a competitive team around him. In this plan, the team would barely be competitive, and that’s if everything goes wrong.

Then again, the Warriors will get as much as they can out of Curry’s final years. They were already on the clock before Butler left. The level of urgency is as high as ever, and even if the logic of prioritizing the future is sound and smart, that logic is never right when #30 is on your team.

Where does that leave the Warriors?

The Warriors have two weeks before the trade deadline to decide what they want to do. They have more flexibility than you think to save this situation, but a lot also depends on what the market tells them.

Whatever they decide will be the last and perhaps most important decision of the Curry era. They were already in a fragile position to begin with, but the Butler injury clearly shattered their safety glass. What the Warriors have to ask themselves is simple – what do they owe Stephen Curry and what are they willing to do to pay off that debt?

Their decision will determine how the final chapters of Curry’s career will be written. Will he end his time in Golden State like Kobe Bryant? A farewell tour in a team with no chance of competition. Or will he be like Tim Duncan? About a team fighting for the title in important playoff games. Maybe somewhere in the middle – on the verge of a fight, but with a glimmer of hope things can go right.

In another timeline, this was a connection point a little further into the future, always imminent, but still far away. Unfortunately for Golden State, that inevitable meeting has been postponed, and it’s up to them to decide how they want to proceed.