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00:00I just feel like this conversation somehow came out of Prisoner of the Momentville.
00:07Like, can I start off the show by once again circling back to thank Mike Dunleavy and Jimmy Butler for being here?
00:17I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong.
00:20What a wonderful, wonderful trade.
00:22Thank God he's here.
00:23Everything he's done has been as close to perfect as sports will allow.
00:28And I am 100% behind Jimmy Butler making the decisions that he makes on a basketball court
00:37because they have largely been near perfect, near perfect since he arrived.
00:44I don't care who scores the basketball as long as they're wearing Warriors jerseys.
00:48I don't care.
00:50I don't care who scores the basketball.
00:53Okay.
00:54Are you here?
00:54I'm here.
00:55Normally you go on for much longer and normally you make a bigger point about what you're trying to say.
01:02And for me, I don't care who scores the basketball.
01:04But when you have a game where your number one scorer of the basketball is clearly not scoring,
01:10I would look to Jimmy Butler to be a little bit more impactful.
01:13And for me, seven shots, not enough.
01:15And yeah, seven for 14, seven for 14, seven for 14.
01:20That was Pods and it was GP2 and it was also Moody, I believe.
01:26No, I'm sorry, Buddy.
01:27They all went seven to 14.
01:28That's great.
01:29But I feel like if Jimmy Butler was a little bit more downhill, a little bit more impactful,
01:34trying to actually score the basketball, get to the foul line in a game that was very physical,
01:39I thought that they would have had a better chance to win.
01:41Again, it's prisoner of the moment because yes, when Buddy has been here, they're 21 and
01:46five in the games that they've played since he's been here.
01:50And that includes the game he didn't play.
01:52So 21 and four.
01:53And if you count the games where Steph and he played, it's even better than that.
01:57So I'm not trying to make this an indictment on Jimmy Butler.
02:00I look at a game like that and I think that's a time where playoff Jimmy, a guy who in Miami
02:07would shoot the ball a lot more.
02:09And I know he's not the one on this team, but in a game where Steph Curry is your one,
02:15but Steph Curry is being like legitimately taken away.
02:19Steph Curry was a non-factor because Houston decided that would be the way it would go.
02:23That's when I look for Jimmy Butler to be more impactful.
02:27That's all.
02:27Did you know that he was second in the game in terms of free throw attempts the entire
02:30game?
02:32With four, right?
02:33Yeah.
02:33Do you know how many free throw attempts there were in the entire game?
02:35For the Warriors?
02:36No, for the whole game.
02:37Oh, not many.
02:38Maybe 20?
02:3925?
02:40Yeah.
02:40Yeah.
02:40Yeah.
02:41Because they weren't blowing the whistle.
02:42It doesn't matter that it was a physical game.
02:44Okay.
02:44Refs allowed it to be a physical game.
02:46This is actually much of the conversation that we had yesterday.
02:49Much of the conversation that happened after the game was Jimmy Butler saying, I can't believe
02:53that this is the way the league treats Steph Curry.
02:56I've never seen anything like this before, and I've been around for a long time.
02:59They weren't blowing the whistle.
03:01Like, again, I'm not here to, no one's perfect.
03:06No one's perfect.
03:07So on any given possession, decisions are made, and they're not going to be right 100% of the
03:14time.
03:14You and I have this conversation a lot about Steve Kerr with his rotations, and people call
03:19in, oh, this idiot Steve.
03:21He doesn't know what he's doing out there.
03:24All those rings must be getting in his way.
03:27He can't figure out how to coach a basketball team.
03:30And you and I have given him a lot of support based on the idea that, dude, when you put
03:36someone in the game, you don't know.
03:38Like, Buddy Heald, do I know if he's going to be hitting his shot or not?
03:41I don't know.
03:41We've got to check.
03:42We've got to find out.
03:44So, Jim, same thing on a possession where the ball is in Jimmy Butler's hands.
03:48He's going to drive, and in a split moment, he has to decide.
03:51Am I going to try to get to the free throw line?
03:54I do know that the officials are not blowing those whistles tonight, or am I going to swing
03:59it around and hope to get the ball to an open three-point shooter because I got three
04:04role players tonight who are hitting their shots?
04:06And he's not always going to make the right decision, but my God, I, the fan, would love
04:13that decision to be in his hands all the time because he's really good at it, really good
04:20at it.
04:21And the only reason the Warriors have won so many games since he arrived is because
04:25he's really good at it.
04:27So, it's just surprising to me that after an absolutely sparkling week where they did
04:32enough that I had to put paint all over my face that somehow they lost one basketball
04:38game by ten points when a really, really good basketball team came in and shoved them
04:44around while they were tired, and then we're, like, we're going to spend the week asking
04:48Jimmy to be a different player?
04:51I don't get it.
04:52I don't understand why there isn't more in his, like, more emotion in his corner after
04:57what he's achieved in a short time.
04:58No, there's plenty of emotion in his corner, but I'm just looking at the games that he's
05:02played as a Warrior, and I look at when he's been less than impactful in terms of a plus-minus,
05:09and he was a minus 17 against Dallas, they lost.
05:13He was minus 7 against Orlando, they won.
05:16Minus 9 against Denver, they lost.
05:17Minus 19 against Miami, they lost.
05:19And the Miami game was one where you scratched your head because we all thought Jimmy Butler
05:24revenge game, and Jimmy went out and he was 5 of 12, and he had 11 points, and he was a
05:29minus 19, and you didn't have Steph, but we thought that maybe he would take over, and
05:35he didn't, he was a minus 1 against LA, big deal, minus 1, they won that game, and then
05:39he was a minus 18 against Houston, they lost.
05:42I look at when he is good, when he plays really well, and in the Jimmy minutes where the team
05:49does better than normal, they're going to win the game.
05:52And so I look at the Houston game, and again, small sample, not a big deal, they're right
05:56there in the playoff chase, 46-32, I get it, but I just wonder about the game against
06:02Houston where Steph was a non-factor because they took him out of the game, and Jimmy Butler
06:08didn't make that real impact to try to win the basketball game with his skills.
06:13That's all.
06:14Yeah, takeover.
06:16Can we focus on that for a second?
06:18Yeah.
06:19What's up with that?
06:21Takeover for me is you get the ball in a spot where you can score, and you score.
06:26I think that that's...
06:27Or you try to score.
06:27That's sort of like the movie script fan in us.
06:32That's not, most of the time, that's not what wins a basketball game.
06:38It might be what wins a championship.
06:40In other words, like normally, outside of the Detroit Pistons when they beat the Lakers,
06:45the Spurs to a certain degree, usually the NBA championship does ride on the absolute
06:52greats of the game being their greatest, although even they, like we can say game four Steph,
06:59and you all know exactly what I mean, because in that series where they won the championship,
07:03he did that once.
07:04It was one time.
07:05Yep.
07:06He didn't take over all the games.
07:07He took over one game.
07:09So this idea that, like, the great has to come in and take over and be the dog and show
07:16everybody who's under the thumb and that whole thing, I don't know, man.
07:20I just, I don't really buy into it.
07:21It's great if you got that going.
07:24If, like, if you're having one of those nights and you visit what we like to call the zone,
07:28then, dude, rock out.
07:31Go ahead for it.
07:32But, like, that's not, to me, that's not great basketball.
07:35That's not, like, it's the antithesis of what we've fallen in love with with warrior
07:40basketball through the years, which is the ball movement and the orchestration of the
07:45whole thing is tremendous.
07:48I am not in on the game plan being, hey, you, here's the ball.
07:54Go be God.
07:56What?
07:57Like, I just, I don't, I don't understand the desire to even go for that.
08:02That's not, that's not a good basketball plan.
08:04I mean, it's not about him being God.
08:06It's about him being more like who he has been throughout his career.
08:10And you look at his warrior career, he's averaging 11 shots a game, and he shot seven
08:16times against Houston.
08:17And when you have a game when Steph Curry is not shooting it very often, he's not shooting
08:21it very well, and you're looking for a secondary score, for me, that's the time where Jimmy
08:27Butler should be able to get to his spot and get shots and get to the foul line and try
08:32to create something for himself.
08:34And yeah, he helped create for others, as did Steph.
08:37And you had a good game from Buddy Heald.
08:39Didn't matter.
08:40You still lost.
08:41You had a good game from Moody and good game from GP2.
08:45And for me, if you're going to win a game like that, a, you know, knock down, drag out,
08:50rock fight, that's where you're going to want Jimmy Butler to try to get to the foul line
08:54and be impactful going into the basket and take more shots.
08:58Yeah, but they weren't blowing the whistle.
09:00Well, we don't know if Jimmy would have gotten more fouls if he would have attacked the basket
09:04more.
09:06Right?
09:06He attacks the basket literally every time he touches the ball.
09:09He just passes out of there a lot because that penetration and kicking is how you create
09:14an open shot most possessions in the NBA.
09:18That's usually what he does.
09:20Now, if he wants to try to, like, force that ball up and get a foul, oh, you're kind of
09:24trusting those three guys with the whistles to blow the darn thing, and they largely weren't
09:29doing it.
09:30That feels kind of strategic to me.