Mateo’s Hoop Diary: Jimmy Butler suffers season-ending injury in Golden State’s win over the Heat

Jimmy Butler tore his right ACL, coming down for a pass in Monday’s win over his former team, the Miami Heat, and will miss the remainder of the season, per ESPN. Any chance his crew had of going on a playoff run has evaporated because there’s so much heavy lifting Stephen Curry can do since Steve Kerr has abandoned trust in Jonathan Kuminga, and Draymond Green isn’t a reliable scorer.

Some solace can be taken that an ACL tear is not a career death sentence like it used to be. Yet, Butler will turn 37 in September and already has tons of mileage.

Despite all the problems in Miami or in previous stops, he was totally bought in to the Golden State Warriors. He’d been the best player on all of his teams since 2014-15, when he was age 25, until the trade, so getting over there finally gave him the luxury of being next to someone better than him in Curry.

They closed out the 2024-25 season with a 23-8 record, and defeated the second-seeded Houston Rockets in seven games of the first round. He suffered a pelvic contusion after a scary fall, seven minutes into Game 2, and was exceptional in the close-out match, logging 20 points, seven assists, and eight boards in 44 minutes.

Curry subsequently suffered a hamstring injury in round two against the Minnesota Timberwolves, ending his season, and Butler couldn’t create the same separation. They lost in five outings.

His chance at chasing a title on the Warriors is gone, barring some heist or divine intervention, considering how much of the payroll is owed to him, Green and Curry. There’s also management’s reluctance to trade Green, in large part because he is Curry’s guy, in spite of him not being the same player. Don’t forget that Kerr already said in December that they were a fading dynasty, too.

Next season is the last year on Butler’s contract, but until he’s back, the Warriors don’t have the weaponry outside of Curry to carry the team. Even if Butler re-upped with them on a significantly smaller deal for 2027-28, their margin for error would be tighter because of age.

Although he could win a title as a role player elsewhere. It wouldn’t diminish his résumé because he already stamped his Hall-of-Fame case as a playoff riser with his Miami tenure (2019-2025), leading his team to two NBA Finals and beating five higher-seeded squads between 2020 and 2023.

There’s no doubt that Butler will come back as an impactful, winning player, but this could be it for him as a top dog who gets stronger as the playoffs approach. If that’s the case, that version of him was one of the best players and overachievers of his generation.