Жимми Батлер дасгалжуулагчийн хувиар талбайд гарч Стефен Каррид дамжуулахыг зөвлөжээ

When Steve Kerr led the Golden State Warriors out onto the court against the New Orleans Pelicans on Monday night, he did so with a slightly larger coaching staff than usual. The new addition had to be the highest-paid end-of-bench assistant in NBA history.

That’s right: Jimmy Butler, still in the midst of his ongoing rehabilitation following surgery to repair the torn right ACL that ended his 2025-26 season, decided to come out for Monday’s matchup decked out in something different than designer duds. This time around, the six-time All-Star opted for something a little more muted: an assistant coach’s pullover. (That sound you heard might have been Fred Hoiberg, Tom Thibodeau, Brett Brown and Erik Spoelstra all spitting out their Big Face Coffee at the notion of Coach Jimmy Butler.)

“It was funny, because I don’t know how this happened, but I told [assistant coach] Khalid [Robinson] about five minutes before the game […] ‘One of these days, we should have Jimmy dress up like us,’ because he’s always got some great outfit on and something fashionable, and we wear our quarter-zips and sweaters,” Kerr later told reporters. “I said, ‘We should really get him to dress like a coach one day,’ and then he walks out, and he’s dressed like us. I turned to Khalid, I said, ‘Did you tell him to do that?’ and he goes, ‘No.'”

“During the first time out, I’m walking by, and I’m going to ask [assistant] coach Frank [Vogel] a question, and then, I see Jimmy,” Warriors rookie Yaxel Lendeborg told reporters. “And I’m like, ‘What are you wearing?'”

“It was, I guess, mental telepathy or something,” Kerr said. “We were on the same page on that. He was enjoying himself.”

But not, of course, at the expense of shirking his assistant-ly duties.

“He said all the right things, you know,” Kerr said. “Team fouls, you know — how many team fouls we had. Like, he was really acting the part.”

Up to and including toting around a clipboard during timeouts …

… and even, with the Warriors holding a huge lead in the third quarter, diagramming a real honey of an Xs-and-Os play and sending it in from the bench:

“PASS TO STEPH.” Clearly, Jimmy’s learned a thing or two about how to create quality offense over the years.

“He was on the bench the whole time, grabbing [De’Anthony Melton] by his jersey, talking about, ‘Give the ball to Steph,'” Lendeborg said.

Asked about Jimmy’s clipboard call-out in the Warriors locker room, Stephen Curry simply replied, “That’s good coaching.”

Even so, Melton didn’t feel like he needed that particular bit of guidance.

“He need to go home,” a laughing Melton said after the game. “Next time he do something like that, he need to go back home or do something else, because he tripping.”

“I didn’t like his advice,” Lendeborg deadpanned after the game. “I didn’t like him out there.”

Be that as it may, Yaxel, you simply can’t argue with the results.

In Butler’s first game as a properly uniformed assistant, the Warriors annihilated a short-handed Pelicans squad playing on the second night of a back-to-back and without starters Zion Williamson and Trey Murphy III. Golden State led for nearly the entirety of what settled as a 138-87 rout — the fourth-largest win in Warriors franchise history, and the second-most-lopsided defeat ever for the Pels.

Stephen Curry scored 25 points in 20 minutes, continuing the remarkable start to the season that has seen him join the scorching Luka Dončić and Victor Wembanyama as the only players averaging more than a point per minute of play. Brandin Podziemski added 25 while rookie phenom Lendeborg chipped in 23 for the Warriors, who have now won eight in a row. That’s Golden State’s longest winning streak since midway through the 2021-22 season — which, as you might remember, is the last time the Dubs won the NBA title.

As impressively as they performed with Butler on the sideline, though, the Warriors would certainly prefer to have him trading in that pullover for a uniform.

When Butler arrived at the 2025 trade deadline, he gave the club precisely the jolt it needed to return to contention, helping the Warriors finish the 2024-25 campaign on a tear, win their opening-round playoff series against the Houston Rockets, and take a 1-0 lead on the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Western Conference semifinals before Curry suffered a hamstring injury that effectively submarined their chances. He was playing at an All-NBA level last season, too, before suffering the knee injury that ended his season. Golden State went 12-26 after he went down, and entered this season picked by many pundits to remain mired in play-in contention without his services.

The Warriors’ stellar start to the season, though — 8-3, with the NBA’s No. 6 offense and No. 10 defense, buoyed by Curry’s brilliance and the instant impact of first-round pick Lendeborg — has changed that perception, allowing for a more optimistic view of what might be possible in the Bay.

“I’m almost looking at this like this could be the exact opposite of last season,” Kerr told ESPN’s Anthony Slater during the preseason. “We get Jimmy back around February instead of losing him in February. So, what’s our job? Lay the best foundation, best platform for success before that, that can put us in a good position where we’ve got momentum, and all of a sudden, we’re adding him with the playoffs coming a couple months later. I think the plan is there.”

All that’s left, then, is to execute it. And if you can trust anybody to nail the execution, it’s someone, like Butler, who is cerebral enough to call the “PASS TO STEPH” play.