It still wasn’t enough. Butler seemed to wear down at the end — he was only 1-for-7 in the fourth quarter, frequently getting walled off at the rim. It would be a lot to ask Butler to keep doing this for as long as Curry is out. It will be almost impossible if he’s doing this all alone, night after night.
“Man, Jimmy was incredible,” Kerr said. “He really controlled the game for us and put us in a position to win and we just couldn’t close it out. But he was brilliant all night.”
But the brightest sign for the Warriors was that there actually was one guy running alongside Butler all night. Jonathan Kuminga, who had been mostly out of the rotation this postseason, subbed in quickly on Saturday and played 36 fantastic minutes, totaling 30 points with 6 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 blocked shots — and was a team-best +5.
And after weeks of watching Kuminga look thoroughly unsuited to play with Butler, the two seemed to find something together in this game — they worked with each other and off of each other. In their almost 30 minutes of court time together, the Warriors were +9. That means in the other 18 minutes (with just Butler or just Kuminga or neither on the court), the Warriors were -14.
“Like I tell everybody, me and him can thrive together,” Butler said. “I know how to space the floor. I can tell him, ‘Hey, when I have the ball, you go here and you do this.’ We talk, we listen to one another, and then he has an incredible game like tonight, and he did so many good things out there on the floor. I know that he’s going to be a huge part of us winning on Monday.”
Big problem for the Warriors: Nobody else was able to get up to speed offensively. Hield struggled to even get off a shot until the second half — symptomatic of the Warriors’ failing to make a 3-pointer in the entire first half. With the Timberwolves’ defense tilted to Butler and Hield, Brandin Podziemski was given plenty of space to maneuver but went 1-for-10 and looked more and more exasperated as the game went on. And Draymond Green struggled through a 2-point, 2-rebound, 5-assist night — and fouled out after playing just 29 minutes.