Buddy Hield and the Golden State Warriors are well aware of the impact Jimmy Butler has had since arriving in the Bay Area via trade.
Jimmy Butler has been a revelation for a Golden State Warriors team dead in the water pre-trade deadline. A team once flirting with the 10th seed of the play-in tournament, Butler and the Warriors have surged to sixth in the West and only three games behind the Houston Rockets, winning nine of their last 10 games.
Draymond Green’s already promised twice that the Warriors are going to win the NBA Championship this season, but that sentiment and confidence Jimmy Butler has injected into the Warriors has begun to spread to the rest of the Golden State locker room.
After the 130-120 win over the Portland Trail Blazers, Buddy Hield revealed how Butler’s reinvigorated the guys in the locker room.
“No disrespect to everybody who’s been here [Wiggs, Kyle, Melton, Lindy, Schröder], I feel like we had it clicking earlier [during the 12-3 start]. But after that, it woke the league up again. We just hit a wall,” Hield said. “We couldn’t get back into that flow. Jimmy came here and sold us back in, putting in that championship/winning mindset he’s always known for… he just settles us down. He does a lot of things for us and you can see why he’s here. You see that spark on both ends.”
Though Butler’s scoring has been down with the Warriors for his standards, he’s “another guy who demands a lot of attention,” as Gary Payton II puts it. Since the Jimmy Butler trade, Curry has looked close to peak MVP form. He's averaging 29.9 ppg, 6.1 apg, and 4.1 rpg on 68.9 TS%. The Warriors are 12-2 in that stretch.
But Buddy Hield’s not the only Warriors role-player raving about Butler. Moses Moody, who’s been on a heater of his own since the trade deadline, talked about being around a player of Butler’s caliber.
“He affects winning and winning effects everything else. When we’re playing good, it’s a lot easier to be cool off the court,” Moody said. “He is who he is, he has a big presence, he’s authentic to himself… he definitely has a presence in the locker room. He is a real dude, real dudes are contagious. That’s a cool thing to be around all the time.”
Top to bottom, Butler’s improving the play of his new teammates, which will need to continue in a crowded Western Conference playoff race. Golden State is sitting snug in sixth but the Rockets, Timberwolves, Clippers, and Kings are all working on win streaks of their own.
Buddy Hield understands the assignment:
“Guys like me, [Podziemski, Moody, Santos, and Looney] we go to come and do our job at a high level and make the right read, the right defensive play, or the right shot and trust [Curry, Butler, and Green] to take us to the promised land.”
The Warriors are back in action on Thursday against the Sacramento Kings as they look to extend their five-game winning streak.
