SAN FRANCISCO — Steph Curry jumped up and down in front of his seat on the Warriors’ bench early in the first quarter, playfully taunting his brother for missing a technical free throw.
What’s really funny is how much the Warriors’ outlook has changed since acquiring Jimmy Butler at the trade deadline.
Had the Warriors stayed on their pre-Butler course, Tuesday’s Hornets game may have only been noteworthy because of the club’s miniature halftime ceremony for their 2015 championship team. Instead, it was the seventh game with Butler, and their sixth win.
Against a comical Hornets roster (Curry may as well have been laughing at how overmatched his hometown team was), the Warriors (31-27) cruised to a 128-92 victory. They didn’t even need to play Curry, Butler, and Draymond Green in the fourth quarter, giving the veterans the luxury of watching a 30-point blowout from the bench.
Butler has changed everything. Before him, there were no automatic wins — no matter the schedule disadvantage or talent disparity. Now they’re not just beating teams, they’re torching them; in seven games with Butler, the Warriors have now outscored opponents by a cumulative 122 points. And he hasn’t even shot the ball well at all yet as he still finds his footing.
The Warriors swarmed defensively, holding Charlotte to 53 points on 31% shooting and forcing 18 turnovers before the 16-minute garbage time.
Golden State’s stated goal of the sixth seed is well within their sights. During the All-Star break, their odds at attaining it hovered around 6%, per Basketball Reference. They’ve since roughly quadrupled. They’re now less than a game behind the Clippers for sixth and have slid past the Mavericks into eighth place in a clustered Western Conference.
The 14-win Hornets had neither their two best players, LaMelo Ball and Brandon Miller, nor rotation mainstays Grant Williams, Tidjane Salaun, Tre Mann, and Josh Okogie. They were on the second night of a back-to-back, serving a win on a platter for the Warriors.
Golden State tested out a trick 1-3-1 zone defense look they’ve rarely deployed over the years (though one that Butler’s Heat teams went to often). Nothing about the Hornets roster obviously stands out to warrant a zone, so perhaps the Warriors were just using the game as an opportunity to take the scheme for a spin.
Even though Butler didn’t shoot the ball well, he hauled in eight rebounds and dished five. He also served as their life jacket in the minutes Curry sat, giving the two-time MVP a sense of ease as he watched from the sidelines.
Gary Payton II made a nice contribution off the bench, scoring 11 points in his first 11 minutes. He and Draymond Green connected on a pair of gorgeous interior passing combinations for dunks, extending Golden State’s first-half lead to 19. A Moses Moody 3-pointer in the corner on a perfectly executed side-out-of-bounds play gave them a 56-41 lead entering halftime — at which the team honored their 2015 title squad.
Green put the Warriors back up 20 with a one-handed jam off a feed from Butler. Then he dished a bounce pass to Butler for another bucket.
Butler has given the Warriors swagger up and down the roster. He has slotted role players like Brandin Podziemski and Moses Moody into positions they can thrive in while completely invigorating Curry and Green. The big man in particular has been playing with impressive verve as he tries to make good on his championship declaration.
The Warriors started the second half on a 17-5 run. With members of the first championship team in the building, so was their patented third-quarter dominance.
Curry got sparse “M-V-P” chants as he stepped up to the foul line for a technical free throw.
Unlike his brother, he sank it. As if he needed more bragging rights over little bro.