<\/p>\n
Warriors forward Jimmy Butler detailed his rehab from his January knee injury\u00a0to reporters at Chase Center on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Florence Shen\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
Warriors forward Jimmy Butler speaks to reporters during a news conference Thursday at Chase Center announcing a uniform\u00a0jersey patch sponsorship with AI cloud provider Iren.<\/p>\n
Lea Suzuki\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
Jimmy Butler<\/a> limped as he walked on stage as one of four panelists, including majority owner Joe Lacob, to speak at the Golden State Warriors<\/a>\u2019 new jersey patch announcement with AI company\u00a0Iren.\u00a0<\/p>\n Frustrated but optimistic five months after tearing his right ACL, Butler said it would be at least one and a half months until he was back running on the court.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m in the thick of it,\u201d Butler said on Thursday. \u201cGlad to be up here in the Bay Area, not even going to stunt. This is my home away from home now. This rehab is tough, not even going to lie. You\u2019re doing so much work knowing you have so much more work to do to get back to where you want to be. The process is a grind. It\u2019s nothing new, but at the same time it\u2019s very new.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Butler said his rehab has been tedious and his days since the season ended this spring have been filled with his pastimes. He\u2019s fully immersed in the World Cup, playing dominoes with his friends and spending time with his kids. He thinks he could dunk a basketball\u00a0\u2014 but only if he jumped and landed on his non-surgically repaired left leg.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI can sit in a chair and beat (former NBA player) Adam Harrington at HORSE,\u201d he said. \u201cI can dribble. I can actually shoot a three sitting down in the chair and I get to watch my kids \u2026 it\u2019s not all bad.<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \u201cNot harder than I thought. Tedious, yes. Mentally frustrating, very much so. Definitely not harder than I thought. It\u2019s just that life is different right now, there are things I used to be able to do that I can\u2019t do right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Butler\u2019s frustration served as a reminder of how everything changed in Warriors land during that January game against Miami when his knee buckled while collecting an overhead pass and he crumpled to a heap.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the weeks leading up to that moment, it felt as if Butler would be just the right-hand man Stephen Curry<\/a> needed to make another deep playoff run.\u00a0<\/p>\n After Butler fell, all those fears about this veteran-heavy team became reality. Could two stars in their late-30s rule the league? With Curry on the court, anything was possible. But health did not permit it. Butler\u2019s season-ending surgery paired with Curry\u2019s two-month knee injury led to a play-in round exit.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now the Warriors are building around the expectation that Butler will return midseason in 2026-27 and they\u2019ll go at it again with their veteran core that also includes 36-year-old Draymond Green<\/a>. Center\u00a0Al Horford<\/a>, 40, opted out of the last year of his previous contract to sign a two-year, $14 million deal with the Warriors on Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Warriors will be in the market for another rotation player when free agency begins next week. Yaxel Lendeborg, their 11th overall pick, fits the mold of a player who can fill some of the gaps created by Butler and guard Moses Moody, who is recovering from a torn patellar tendon. The 23-year-old is a front-court connector and playmaker who was key to Michigan\u2019s national championship run.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Moments before Commissioner Adam Silver announced Lendeborg\u2019s selection on Tuesday, ESPN cut to Golden State\u2019s war room, where cameras caught a lively interaction between general manager Mike Dunleavy and Lacob.<\/p>\n \u201cI was very fired up,\u201d Lacob said when asked about it on the\u00a0Iren panel. \u201cIt couldn\u2019t have gone any better. We got the guy we were looking to get. He\u2019s a game changer, and Jimmy is going to love playing with him. Good day in Warriors history.\u201d<\/p>\n Historic sponsorship: The Warriors, Golden State Valkyries and Santa Cruz Warriors will be wearing a green Iren patch where the Rakuten one used to live on players\u2019 right shoulder straps.\u00a0<\/p>\n The new partnership between Golden State and Iren\u00a0\u2014 an artificial intelligence cloud provider based in Australia\u00a0\u2014 is worth a record-breaking $50 million. It\u2019s a multiyear contract that is the richest sponsorship deal in North American sports, according to Sportico. The site also has the Warriors as the second most valuable sports franchise in the world at $11.33 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Golden State\u2019s value and brand begins with Curry, and next season is built on a belief that, even as he\u2019ll turn 39 in March, they can win whenever he\u2019s on the court. Butler said that\u2019s driving him most during the tedious days.<\/p>\n \u201cWe got Steph on our team,\u201d Butler said on the panel. \u201cI\u2019m a firm believer that Steph is one of the greatest players to ever play this game because his talent is game changing alone. You legitimately always have a chance when\u00a0Steph is on the court.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warriors forward Jimmy Butler detailed his rehab from his January knee injury\u00a0to reporters at Chase Center on Thursday.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":760404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,5552,7902,590,85,3198],"class_list":["post-760403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-jimmy-butler","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-warriors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>
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