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00:00Who's ready to do this with me?
00:03I was wrong.
00:04I was absolutely wrong with my reaction to the Warriors' acquisition of Jimmy Butler.
00:12Now, the same way we said last week, oh, it's only been four games, it's now only been six.
00:19And so I don't mean that in a way of like, well, now it's going to be sunshine and rose
00:24petals for the next two-plus years, at least one deep playoff run, who knows, Dibbs, maybe
00:30two, maybe even three.
00:32Who knows?
00:33Like, I'm not sitting here telling you that they're now out of the woods that they've
00:38created.
00:39He's still 35.
00:41They're all still 35-plus.
00:43They have to stay healthy.
00:45They're still small.
00:46There's all of these things.
00:48And we still don't know what Cominga looks like with him.
00:51All of those things still remain.
00:54But the reason that this trade, to me, is working so, so, so well is because even if
01:02something goes wrong in the next year or two, it was still worth it.
01:08It was still worth it.
01:09This team, I underestimated the level to which they needed an energy shift.
01:15Yeah.
01:16Like, we can do all the X's and O's of why the Warriors are playing well over the last
01:20six games.
01:22I'm more interested in the way this team looks.
01:26I mean, they all look like they just got let out of jail.
01:31It's unbelievable the energy oozing out of this organization right now.
01:36And I do think that it's for two or three main reasons.
01:39One, you brought in a guy who is an energy player.
01:43He's impactful and he plays with that edge and that swagger.
01:47The other piece for me is that from a rotation standpoint, you got a lot of clarity.
01:52So you no longer have 12 or 13 guys for 10 spots.
01:56If you're Moses Moody and you lose Slo Mo and Schroeder and Lindy Waters and Wiggins,
02:02if Moses was your 11th or 12th man, and of late he was higher than that, but the point
02:08is all those other guys, they're now out of the way.
02:11So your rotation is really 10 players and then you can add in Guy or Quinton or whatever
02:18else you want to add in toward the bottom end of it.
02:20But I think that playing time clarity is a big part of it.
02:24Now when Kaminga comes back, it gets a little bit more complicated because Moody's been
02:29playing a bunch and he's been playing well at the four and Kaminga comes back and he's
02:34going to probably be your four.
02:35I don't think you want him to play the three very much because he doesn't shoot the ball
02:39great.
02:40So neither does Jimmy Butler.
02:42So you could play him at the three in spots.
02:45But I do think that playing time clarity is a big part of it.
02:49And you brought in a real OG and a real dog.
02:51And as Draymond said in the article in The Athletic, we needed another blank hole.
02:57And Jimmy's that in the best possible way.
03:00And also I think what it's done for Steph Curry is he doesn't have to go out there and
03:04shoot the ball 30 times a game anymore.
03:06He can kind of lay back in spots and the team's going to be okay.
03:10I mean that's probably the under-discussed part of us comparing Jimmy Butler to Andrew
03:15Wiggins.
03:16I heard a lot of people, like everyone would agree Jimmy Butler's a better overall player.
03:21But you're like, well he's a lot older and he's a lot more expensive and you got to tie
03:27yourself to that wagon for another couple years.
03:30And then there's the attitude thing and that scares people a little bit.
03:34But what I don't think a lot of us talked about is you traded a very passive human being
03:41for a very dynamic human being.
03:47And to me, that's what I see right now as the biggest change.
03:52I agree with everything you just said.
03:54All of that X's and O's is very, very clear.
03:57Jimmy is a smarter basketball player.
04:00He's better at the free throw line.
04:02He's more reliable night-to-night.
04:04He makes better decisions than a lot of the guys we've seen in that role.
04:08All of that's true.
04:09The biggest thing that just happened is they got a dog.
04:12They traded a cat for a dog.
04:15That's what just happened.
04:16Wow.
04:17They did.
04:18I mean, traditionally I'm more of a cat guy as a pet owner.
04:20I love both.
04:21I've had both.
04:23I don't even refer to that.
04:25That's not a criticism.
04:26No, but I get it.
04:28That's what they did.
04:29They traded somebody who wants to be in the background for someone who wants to be in
04:33the foreground.
04:34And in my homestead back in Oakland, shout out Cliff, the cat, he was not going to defend
04:39us against any possible interloper.
04:43And in fact, if a stranger came over, he's going to be under the bed for at least a day,
04:48more likely to.
04:49I'm the same way.
04:50He's a classic cat.
04:51He was not a dog.
04:52He wasn't out there barking if somebody came onto the property.
04:56And Jimmy Butler, if you look at what they've done in six games there, they as a team are
05:01plus 88 and they're coming off back to back 24 point victories.
05:06They've won three in a row for the first time since November.
05:09It feels like, yes, winning games gives you momentum.
05:11But just watching this team, they're out there playing with force and swagger and an edge.
05:18And I don't know where this whole thing's going to end, but where it is right now is
05:21a whole lot better than it was.
05:23If you want to go back to Wednesday, February 5th, when you lost to Utah by three and that
05:30was the day of the deadline and there was a lot of emotions because four guys were gone
05:35before the game even started and he gave up a buck 31 to the hapless jazz and you lost.
05:40Since then, you've been amazing.
05:42Yeah.
05:43I mean, look, this feels really good.
05:49And I mean that more so not just as a fan.
05:52I mean that based on what what you're all watching or listening to or however you take
05:57in warrior games or just listen to them talk.
06:00And we'll play a bunch of this for you here throughout the day.
06:03By the way, Steve Kerr is on the show at five, Anthony Slater is on the show at three forty
06:07five.
06:08We're all over the Warriors all afternoon and we'll play a lot of what they're they're
06:12all saying.
06:13But like everybody is gushing, everyone is gushing.
06:20Like we sound like we're at a retirement party every day.
06:24You hear what Iguodala sounded like yesterday.
06:27None of this happens without you, Steph.
06:29I mean, like everybody is just gushing over everyone.
06:33But that's what it sounds like on the day to day.
06:35Now, be real.
06:36These things don't last.
06:38They are not going to be this lovey dovey for three years.
06:42They will not.
06:43Well, even for twenty five.
06:44I don't even know if they will be by next Monday.
06:47But that's where they are now.
06:50And that energy shift that took place with the Warriors, my goodness, way, way more pronounced
06:56than I thought it would be.
06:58Right.
06:59If you remember where we were, we were a splash physically, but where we were mentally the
07:04day this all went down, I had all kinds of concerns about the X's and O's of the deal
07:09and the finances of the deal.
07:12But my thought was it better than no deal.
07:15But I'm surprised that that's the deal.
07:17I'm really surprised that that's the deal.
07:19I had no idea that the timing of it was this much of a necessity.
07:25Again, knew they needed to do something, but I didn't like for one person to come in and
07:30change the energy.
07:32Forget the room like a city, a building, multiple buildings, franchise organization.
07:38The whole thing is different because of the arrival of one person.
07:43And now you wonder why someone like that asks for $55 million.
07:48Dude, it's worth more than that.
07:51But do you understand what that's worth?
07:54If someone has that ability to walk into an entire billion dollar organization, snap his
08:00fingers and have everything doing about face, dude, what he's done is already worth $55
08:07million and it's been a week and a half.
08:09Here's a unique guy to where he comes in and I don't think that he thinks about anything
08:14other than I'm Jimmy Butler.
08:16I'm good at what I do.
08:17And either you join me, I join you, of course, but either you roll with me and how I do things
08:24or maybe I'm not in the right spot.
08:27But I want to admit that I also was wrong, not about Jimmy Butler, because my concern
08:32was about the contract.
08:33And once that got signed, I was all in on it.
08:36I was wrong about Steph Curry.
08:38And what I said for the past month or two months is Steph Curry cannot do it every night.
08:44He could do it every now and again.
08:45He could do it maybe one of three, two of four.
08:50It is like last night, for example, 12 of 20, 30 points in three quarters.
08:56And he was the game and Jimmy's great.
08:59Draymond was great.
09:00Everyone was great.
09:01But Steph Curry, if you look at his last six games since Jimmy's been here, he's averaging
09:0629 a game.
09:07He's shooting 40 percent from three.
09:09He's almost a 50-40-90 guy again over the last six games.
09:14And it's consistency.
09:16I thought that he was at a point where he couldn't do it every night.
09:20Well, it turns out now with Jimmy Butler, and I know it's a small sample, but 34-38-25-27-20-30,
09:28he's averaging 29 a game.
09:30He is doing it every game.
09:32So I was wrong thinking that maybe he was slowing down more than he is.
09:37What he needed was somebody else to take some of the pressure off and take some of the double
09:42teams off and take some of the heat off him.
09:46He doesn't need to shoot it 35 times a game when you got Jimmy Butler.
09:50Yeah.
09:51This whole thing, it's crazy.
09:52It's surprising to me, man.
09:54They are swaggering all over people right now.
09:59They're just walking into buildings, looking at each other like, what?
10:03What are you going to do about all this?
10:06And the only person who has an answer one time was Kyrie Irving, who absolutely lost
10:11his mind and went crazy.
10:13And it's still only one by four points.
10:15So yeah, man, it's super optimistic.
10:18Let's go.
10:19Who wants to do this with us?
10:20I was wrong.
10:23This was absolutely the right move at the right time, even if it goes south from here.
10:27I still think right move, right time based on the energy shift that's taken place.