Dwyane Wade has been super critical of Jimmy Butler and the way he played in the Warriors second round loss to the Timberwolves.
Wade, (in a podcast episode that was recorded after the Warriors lost Game 4 but before they were eliminated), blasted Butler’s Game 4 performance while comparing it to his 2023 NBA Finals appearance with the Heat.
“I didn’t like…the way he just approached the game,” Wade said, via Time Out with Dwyane Wade on the WY Network. “I know Jimmy is a pass-first guy. I know he’s about getting his teammates the ball and wanting to see them shine. But it’s a point where…this ain’t working. You gotta go. He wouldn’t look at the basket, and I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen it in a Heat jersey. And so, in a sense, when Pat [Riley] come out, Pat say, ‘We ain’t wanna give you the extension,’ it’s not always because of injuries. Sometimes it’s, ‘I need to see what you gonna do in every moment, not just in one moment.’
“We saw Jimmy in the bubble. He was a dog. I saw Jimmy in another Finals too against the Denver Nuggets, and he did the exact same thing he did the other night. He did not look at the basket. I don’t wanna see that. Jimmy Butler is too good of a basketball player to not have his imprint on the game, and sorry, sir, when it’s time for you to take over, you just have to. And even if you can’t do it from a standpoint of you ain’t making no shots, I don’t care. Shoot. It’s bad offense if you’re not shooting. To get too close in that paint and not putting that ball up to that basket, that’s bad offense when your team needs you to do it.”
As we know, the Warriors went on to drop Game 5 without Curry, while Butler took just 11 shots and finished with 17 points.
It’s hard to critique Jimmy too much, as he was dealing with an apparent illness, as well as contusions from when he took a hard fall in the first round.
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