The Jimmy Butler injury update arrived about 24 hours after he landed hard on his tailbone Wednesday night, and it’s a good news, bad news situation for the Golden State Warriors. The good news, according to ESPN, is Butler’s MRI revealed no fracture or structural damage but rather a “deep glute muscle contusion,” which is another way of saying a really bad butt bruise.
The bad news is a bruise like this is a lot more painful and potentially physically restrictive that that seemingly innocuous wording would suggest, and it has Butler’s Game 3 status reportedly “in serious jeopardy,” per ESPN.
Butler suffered the injury on the play below, where he went up for a rebound and was unintentionally undercut by Amen Thompson. You can see how hard Butler came down on the floor. This could’ve been a lot worse.
Stephen Curry suffered a similar injury toward the end of the regular season and it kept him out for two games, and when he returned he did so with extra padding and was clearly still uncomfortable for a while. If this was a regular-season situation, Butler would almost certainly miss a few games at least. But this is the playoffs and in what is a highly competitive 1-1 series against an extremely physical Rockets team, you know he’s going to do everything in his power to play.
That doesn’t mean he’ll be able to go. The Warriors are fortunate that they’ll get a second day off before Game 3 on Saturday. That’s a bit of scheduling luck after they also had two days off between Games 1 and 2. Every hour that Butler is able to rest and receive treatment is significant.
If Butler can’t play in Game 3, or certainly if he’s out any longer than that (Game 4 is scheduled for Monday), the Warriors are in serious trouble vs. Houston. They might be in serious trouble anyway.
Even before Butler got hurt, the Warriors were being taken completely out of their game by Houston’s physicality on both ends. The officials are really letting these teams play — not just in this series but across the playoffs — and it is allowing a team like Houston to really rough up the Warriors, who are plenty tough in their own right but lack the athleticism that can make it a little easier to create space and get downhill against tight pressure.
Butler is really the only guy who can loosen some of this pressure, which, in the absence of a second star, falls entirely on Curry in the form of two and three defenders more or less trying to rip his limbs off. You can’t ever discount a crazy Curry performance, but barring something crazy, Houston’s defense is probably too physical and disruptive for the Warriors to overcome without Butler.
Best-case scenario for the Warriors is Butler being able to not just play, but play effectively, in Game 3. If he can’t do that, and the Warriors lose, he would almost certainly have to come back by Game 4 for Golden State to have any realistic shot and winning the series.
