Assessing Warriors’ options with Jimmy Butler out for the season

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Assessing Warriors’ options with Jimmy Butler out for the season

Kenzo Fukuda, ClutchPoints · ClutchPoints

Wed, Jan 21, 2026 ·

9 min read

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SAN FRANCISCO– It's DEFCON 1 in Golden State . The alarms have sounded, the sirens are screaming, and battle plans are being drawn up as we speak, as the Warriors scramble to find a way forward following Jimmy Butler 's season-ending ACL tear. An NBA franchise's worst-case scenario, especially for a franchise trying to balance the fragility of the final chapter of franchise-altering superstar Stephen Curry 's career.

So where do they go from here?

That's the question flooding the NBA airwaves right now, as quite literally anything and everything is on the table. Could they spring for another blockbuster trade? Will they punt on this season? What happens to Jonathan Kuminga ? How valuable are those post-Curry draft picks now? Butler takes one bad, flukey fall, and now we're living in a nexus-level event where the Warriors can proceed in too many different ways.

But to narrow Golden State 's paths forward, let's operate under one all-encompassing assumption. Whatever the Warriors decide to do, it will be to give Wardell Stephen Curry II the opportunity to remain relevant.

That has been the mantra they've operated under ever since he secured his fourth ring. That has been all that Curry has asked for ever since he could begin to see that the end was drawing near. He wants to play meaningful games on a relevant team in the hope that the stars somehow align for them to make one last Cinderella run to the top of the mountain. He's not asking for a star-studded title favorite, nor will he nudge the front office to sacrifice their future.

He wants, and the Warriors want, the hope of competing, the precise thing they lost as soon as Butler fell to ground like a falling star .

With that creed in mind, let's get into the Warriors' options.

Explore "salvage the season" types of trades

Golden State's been angling for a trade even before Butler went down. In that peachy green timeline, they were hoping to use Kuminga's $22.5 million contract to add in a playable player, ideally a three-and-D wing who could potentially elevate them from pretend contenders to frisky, if everything breaks right, contenders.

But now those kinds of trades would be simply to salvage a season in which they had kind of begun to stabilize. At 25-19, firmly in the race for the sixth seed, Golden State is in the mix. They've built a small nest egg cushion and if you ignore the glaring Butler-sized hole in their roster, they've found some real momentum with their depth as of late.

On the high-end of this scenario, the Warriors would be swinging for guys like Michael Porter Jr. and Trey Murphy III , maybe even a Lauri Markkanen , prolific scorers who may not be able to run an offense like the Navy like Butler did, but can supplement Curry and Draymond Green enough to keep the Warriors afloat.

Those post-Curry picks just got a whole lot more valuable so in some sick kind of way, the Butler trade makes acquiring these kinds of guys more likely from an asset evaluation standpoint. Do guys like Porter or Murphy move the needle for Golden State's title chances? Probably not any higher than they were with Butler. But it keeps them in the mix and gives Curry the slightest of chances to stay relevant.

Why the Warriors wouldn't go down this route: Because the low end of this scenario puts them in no-man's land. There's a world where they don't swing for guys like Porter or Murphy and go for someone like DeMar DeRozan (whom Shams Charania has already rumored him to the Warriors) or a De'Andre Hunter. In that scenario, that takes Golden State nowhere, even if it lets them preserve draft capital.

Is there a world where DeRozan recreates 75% of what Butler gave them? Maybe. But Golden State doesn't want to take back bad contracts, per NBA insider Marc Stein. And their fear with this scenario is taking on a long contract with bad money and going nowhere with it.

The nuclear option

There's a cold-blooded, unfeeling route the Warriors can go down if they have the stomach for trading Jimmy Butler . With Butler owed $54.1 million this season and $56.8 million next season, the final year of his deal, Golden State could try to swing for a superstar if they use Butler's monster contract.

Golden State's done a version of this in the past, on a much lower scale, when they used De'Anthony Melton's mid-level exception-level of contract after he tore his own ACL to flip him to Brooklyn for Dennis Schröder (who was later added to a trade for Butler). But dealing Butler would be on a whole other level seismically given how much he's ingratiated himself to the team, the fans, and the city.

Candidates in this scenario include Anthony Davis ($54.1 mil), Domantas Sabonis ($42.3 mil), Lauri Markkanen ($46.3 mil), and maybe even the great Giannis Antetokounmpo ($54.1 mil), stars whose circumstances could make their teams willing to deal them. Butler's injury unlocks this path because of his salary and because his absence raises the value of their picks. And in cases like Davis or Sabonis, you might not even have to sacrifice precious draft capital, given how their value has begun to depreciate.

It would be ruthless, pricey, and difficult to pull off in-season, but really the only path for the Warriors actually being as good, if not better than before his injury.

Why the Warriors wouldn't go down this route: It's too ruthless. The NBA is not NBA 2K. These are real people with real relationships and real emotions. And usually trades of that level or ruthlessness come back to haunt someone. Not just in a sports curse way, in a future free agents hesitate to join Golden State because they remember how they treated Butler kind of way.

It's also hard to pull off in-season. Injuries happen. Teams start winning, teams start losing. Stars change their minds. You put yourself at the whims of a superstar in this scenario, and most of them aren't as accommodating as Curry.

Path of least resistance (the boring one…)

This is the "Luigi Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing" path.

The Warriors don't turn the keys and trade Butler. They don't swing for a stopgap like Porter, Murphy, or DeRozan. And they don't even hold a fire sale and try to tank (they'll never do that with Curry on the team). They stand pat, keep Kuminga, hope they can reacclimate him back into the rotation (again), and wait for the summer.

It's a boring option, one bound to further frustrate an already frustrated fanbase. But the process behind this option is this: no trade is going to save their season. Why waste assets on hopeless trades that don't move the needle? Those post-Curry picks are all they'll have to rebuild once he's gone. If the season is already cooked, don't operate under the sunk cost fallacy.

Let this team try to muster up a run without Butler. Try to recoup Kuminga's value by playing him, develop Brandin Podziemski and Moses Moody , and keep those draft picks. It may sound defeatist and tepid to do nothing to address Butler's injury. But the thinking behind this option isn't the present, it's the future. Franchises are well within their rights to see the writing on the wall and plan accordingly.

Why the Warriors wouldn't go down this route: Try selling that plan to Stephen Curry, Draymond Green , and Steve Kerr, the guys who got you four titles in one decade. When you have Curry on your team, you owe it to him to try and form a competitive team around him. In this plan, the team would only barely be competitive, and that's if everything breaks right.

And again, the Warriors are going to squeeze as much out of Curry's final years as they can. They were already on the clock before Butler went down. The urgency level is as high as ever, and even if the logic of prioritizing the future is reasonable and smart, that logic is never correct when No. 30 is on your team.

Where does that leave the Warriors?

The Warriors have two weeks before the trade deadline to decide what they want to do. They do have more flexibility than you'd think to salvage this situation but a lot also depends on what the market is telling them.

Whatever they decide to do will be the last and maybe most important decision of the Curry-era. They were already in a fragile position to begin with but the Butler injury has obviously shattered their safety glass. What the Warriors have to ask themselves is simple– what do they owe to Stephen Curry, and what are they willing to do to repay that debt?

Their decision will decide how the final chapters of Curry's career are written. Will he finish his time in Golden State like Kobe Bryant ? A farewell tour on a team with no chance of competition. Or will it be like Tim Duncan ? On a team contending for a title in meaningful playoff games. Maybe somewhere in the middle– at the edge of contention but with the glimmer of hope things can break right.

In another timeline, this was a nexus point a little further in the future, always inevitable but still a ways away. Unfortunately for Golden State, that inevitable appointment has been moved up, and it's on them to decide how they want to proceed.

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