Life without Jimmy Butler begins as Warriors experiment with Jonathan Kuminga, lineups

SAN FRANCISCO– Things change fast in the NBA, but rarely do they change at the sheer supersonic speed it has for the Golden State Warriors in the last 24 hours. Golden State fell to the Toronto Raptors 145-127 in a game that felt secondary to the fallout of Jimmy Butler’s season-ending ACL tear.

It was a night for the Warriors to mourn their losses; a night for them to assess where to go in the short term and, eventually, the long term. A night for tinkering and experimentation after it had just felt like they’d found some stability. And in that mourning, assessing, and experimenting came the return of Jonathan Kuminga after 16 straight games of DNP-CDs.

Kuminga finished with 20 points on 7-of-10 shooting and led the second unit in a comeback attempt that fell short once Steve Kerr pulled the plug on the starters after the Warriors fell behind by 30. Along with Buddy Hield’s 25 points on 6-of-6 from deep, Kuminga looked sharp in his return, presenting a potential option to supplement the loss of Butler moving forward.

“I thought JK [Kuminga] was really good,” Kerr said after the game. “It’s a great sign. With Jimmy out, obviously, there’s a hole at that spot on our roster. So JK is going to factor in here again. And really pleased with the way he stayed ready and stayed prepared and got his opportunity and played really well.”

Golden State’s steps on-court moving forward

With Kuminga’s return, a precarious period of righting the ship begins as the franchise evaluates its next steps. What those next steps will be remains up in the air, but for now, the Warriors are setting their focus on finding answers on the court.

“The first order of business is trying to figure it out,” Draymond Green said in his brief postgame presser. “To think that one person is going to fix it, or we’re going to fix it in one day– it’s not realistic. That would be kind of lessening the value of what Jimmy brings.”

So how are the Warriors gonna fix the product on the court?

To dig for silver in a pile of trash from tonight, Kerr did like the showing from the second unit. But Kerr maintained that anything and everything is on the table.

“Everything’s a possibility right now,” Kerr said. When you have an injury to not only one of your best players, but one of the best players in the league, it just changes. Everything. The puzzle completely changes. And so we will definitely experiment with some different lineups and combinations. One guy affects the other four.”

Before the game, Kerr pointed to the depth of their roster to supplement Butler’s loss, specifically De’Anthony Melton and Al Horford. But as Kerr said, they have a new puzzle to solve, and while a trade could present itself, the solution for now is going have to come from in-house.

Golden State will close a successful 6-2 eight-game homestand without Butler. They have two weeks till the trade deadline to figure out their next steps.

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