{"id":125401,"date":"2025-02-24T12:26:31","date_gmt":"2025-02-24T17:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=125401"},"modified":"2025-02-24T12:26:31","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T17:26:31","slug":"warriors-draymond-green-jimmy-butler-critics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/02\/24\/warriors-draymond-green-jimmy-butler-critics\/","title":{"rendered":"Warriors Champion Rips Jimmy Butler Critics"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Golden State Warriors traded for\u00a0<\/span>Jimmy Butler<\/span><\/a>, many, especially in the NBA media, didn’t seem overconfident that it would drastically change the trajectory of the Warriors season. The playoffs are still several weeks away, but the Warriors have gone 5-1 since Butler’s arrival. Suffice it to say, it’s\u00a0<\/span>proved to be a good start with Butler in uniform<\/span><\/a>. Yet, however successful Butler and the Warriors become as a unit, it might not be enough to keep the detractors and criticizers at bay. Butler carries a track record\u2014a persona of sorts. Coming to his defense,\u00a0<\/span>Draymond Green<\/span><\/a> recently bluntly threw\u00a0<\/span>Butler’s critics<\/span><\/a> overboard with his own harsh critiqu<\/span>e.<\/span><\/p>\n

Warriors Champion Rips Jimmy Butler Critics<\/h2>\n

Warriors’ Draymond Green Calls Those Frustrated With Jimmy Butler’s Persona ‘Losers’<\/h3>\n

Green calls them “losers” in the only way and fashion that Green can\u2014bluntly and adamantly. Since Butler’s arrival in The Bay, several Warriors personnel have come to the controversial superstar’s defense.\u00a0<\/span>Steve Kerr<\/span><\/a>\u00a0has only spoken glowingly of Butler, as has\u00a0<\/span>Steph Curry<\/span><\/a>. However, no one has been louder in their support for Butler than Green. Say what you want about Green’s manner of speech, which took center stage during\u00a0<\/span>TNT’s coverage of the All-Star game<\/span><\/a>, but he knows how to ruffle feathers. He did it again when speaking to those around and in the NBA, fellow players included, who get frustrated or fed up with Butler.\u00a0<\/span>Green took to his podcast,\u00a0<\/span><\/a>The Draymond Green Show<\/span><\/a><\/em> [6:00 mark], over the weekend to further support Butler but chastise those with issues with the former Miami Heat star.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll be honest with you. I can see how people can get tired of Jimmy.\u00a0If you\u2019re not a basketball head, if you don\u2019t love this ____, and you don\u2019t over-communicate like Jimmy, dot every i and cross every t, losers would get frustrated with that. If you don\u2019t love, eat, breathe this ____, and most importantly winning, you can get frustrated with that. I can see in two weeks, three weeks however it\u2019s been, how some people would get frustrated with Jimmy. Because some people aren\u2019t winners.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Green also went in on the rest of the league for being the opposite of Butler and why many aren’t and don’t want to be like him.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor somebody who got one foot in, one foot out, because thats 70 per cent of the league, that don\u2019t really care if they win or they lose, I can see how you would be shell shocked to be afraid of that.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Taking It With A Grain of Salt<\/h3>\n

Whether Green’s claim that 70% of the league essentially doesn’t care is debatable. He’s not totally wrong in that there absolutely are players in the current NBA who come to a job every day and go home, and that’s all basketball will ever be to them. Is that necessarily wrong? Are they hurting the game by wanting to make money rather than compete for championships? That’s another debate entirely.<\/p>\n

What Green gets right about this is the Butler element. There aren’t many players today like Butler who match his uber-competitive nature, stingy work ethic, or confronting personality. Coincidently, Green is a mirror image of Butler, minus the talent and skillset, of course. That being said, Butler has left organizations before in a disgruntled fashion. Green has clashed with fellow superstar teammates in the past.\u00a0<\/span>Kevin Durant<\/span><\/a>\u00a0eventually had enough of Green. Is a similar situation inevitable between Green and Butler? Or will this relationship work for the long haul? As for the present, Green is solely in Butler’s corner, and the Warriors are pushing to climb back up the Western Conference standings. Critics aside, Butler is changing Golden State for the better. As for the rest of the 70%, they can sit back and watch it happen.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a9 John Hefti-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the Golden State Warriors traded for\u00a0Jimmy Butler, many, especially in the NBA media, didn’t seem overconfident that it would drastically change the trajectory of the Warriors season. The playoffs are still several weeks away, but the Warriors have gone 5-1 since Butler’s arrival. Suffice it to say, it’s\u00a0proved to be a good start with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5081,"featured_media":125402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25,1608,62],"tags":[409,142,69,48,528],"class_list":["post-125401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-warriors","category-basketball","category-nba","tag-draymond-green","tag-jimmy-butler","tag-kevin-durant","tag-stephen-curry","tag-steve-kerr"],"modified_by":"Aaron J Zacharias","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5081"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125401"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125411,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125401\/revisions\/125411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}