From Danny ChauDecember 12, 4:37 p.m. UTC • 7 mins

Steve Kerr just thought he made a good quote. “It felt like I was descending into the depths of hell,” he joked to his staff as they filed onto the crimson Toyota Center Court before the Golden State Warriors’ NBA Cup quarterfinal game in Houston shoot. “I thought I had done better in my life. I didn’t think I deserved that fate.” But the internet is endless and frighteningly iterative. Memes metastasize instantly. By the first quarter of the game on Wednesday evening, it had become a quote graphic. Kerr’s face, an almost perfect one 🙁.

By halftime, the graphics showed their true value: “Kerr in Hell” became shorthand for any brutal visual experience or terrible day at the office – the possibilities for recontextualization were almost endless. Fans who watched the Warriors get completely suffocated by the Rockets’ defense all night in a grotesque 91-90 road loss were quick to redirect the graphic’s message. Hell is not a place; It’s Golden State’s offense in 2024.

A questionable late foul that sent Jalen Green to the line for the game-winning free throws sealed the Warriors’ fate, but it was merely the culmination of a miserable final three and a half minutes for the Warriors. Golden State had a seven-point lead with 3:38 left. And then: bad passes; consecutive violations of the 24-second shot clock; one of Jonathan Kuminga’s four missed free throws on the night; an uncharacteristic misjudgment by Steph Curry, who made an ill-advised 3-point dagger attempt with 11 seconds left and the Warriors had a lead. I guess that’s hubris. Things have long been going well for the Dubs in Houston, in one of the great (but one-sided) rivalries of the era that shaped the modern game of basketball.

It’s the first time since 2020 that the Warriors have lost to the Rockets during the James Harden and Russell Westbrook experiment. The only current Houston player present at the time is Jeff Green, who played for two other teams in recent years before returning last season. Houston’s Cup win was a blast 15 games Losing streak against Golden State. Longtime Rockets reporter Jonathan Feigen caught Tari Eason in a fit of celebration after the game: “We’re free! We are free! I just want to let you know that we are free!”

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Free from what exactly? Perhaps through the curse that causes a team to miss 27 consecutive 3-point shots in a game. It’s hard to leave Wednesday night’s game without feeling a shift in the wind. It’s a familiar feeling, like we’ve been here before. Ironically, the Warriors now find themselves in a similar situation to the Rockets in 2018: They’re falling back into a competitive Western landscape – losers in seven of their last nine games – and are looking for another star to keep their window open… and I wonder if Jimmy Butler might be the answer.

Six years ago, the Rockets expressed interest in Butler, offering a package that included four future first-round picks to lure him away from Minnesota, where he had burned bridges in a way only he could. Harden, Chris Paul, Jimmy Butler. A true Big Three that fights fire with fire. There is one Sports center Clip of Kevin Negandhi relaying the details of the Rockets’ proposed trade package while co-chief executive Keith Olbermann bangs his head on his desk. (Minnesota ended up trading Butler to Philadelphia.) “Everyone is chasing Steph Curry, of course,” Negandhi said at the time. “And my advice after last night: good luck.” Negandhi’s opinion would be a little different today.

Rumors have been swirling around Butler since the offseason, when he made it clear he would not sign a contract extension with Miami even if offered, effectively giving him an expiring $48.8 million contract. The wheels were greased earlier this week with some rumors from ESPN’s Shams Charania, who reported that the Heat were open to trading Butler and that Butler’s agent Bernie Lee had a list of preferred destinations: Houston, Golden State, Dallas and Phoenix – The CBA tightrope act be damned. (For what it’s worth, Lee blasted Charania on social media for false claims, in a remarkable display of Idgaf.) In any case, there is too much noise for the rumors to be unfounded. Neither the Mavs nor the Suns have a realistic possibility of seamlessly acquiring Butler, but their inclusion highlights Butler’s win-now motivation. Houston and Golden State are more interesting to consider for opposite reasons.

For the Rockets, the mere mention is an encouraging sign of progress. Our own Michael Pina explained before the season why Houston is listed as a candidate for any blockbuster trade opportunity for the foreseeable future: There are few teams in the league that have such a deep inventory of promising young talent and future first-rounders. Houston is exceeding expectations due to the strength of its overwhelming defense, but the Cup quarterfinals put things into perspective. His offense lacks clarity and organization. A star like Butler could serve as a solution, but for how long and at what cost?

For Houston, the reckoning is straightforward, as it has several high-paid players in 2023 thanks to its calculated offseason spending spree that are priced overall in line with Butler’s contract. The Rockets have a perfectly fried trade chip in Dillon Brooks’ contract that was made just for a moment like this. It’s still a difficult decision. In addition to being one of the team’s most versatile defenders, staying tough both on the perimeter and in transition to big players, Brooks was also the team’s best volume 3-point shooter this season. Can one of the worst shooting teams in the league afford to lose one of its precious few deep release valves? Does it even make sense to capitalize on a player who is more than a decade older than most of the Rockets’ core figures? Probably not. The Rockets could follow the Thunder’s model of remaining patient with their nest egg and relying on internal development. As OKC has shown in recent years, simply occupying space on the trade market as a looming threat is its own soft power.

“Will I listen to other teams? Of course I will, that’s my job,” Rockets GM Rafael Stone said on SiriusXM on Tuesday, addressing the speculation. “But again, there is no part of me, no part of our decision-making process that suggests we have anything big planned now or in the near future. We definitely want this group to be as good as it can be this year and then we’ll evaluate things at the end of the year. But we really hope that this core group can take us where we want to go and that from a transactional perspective we are largely finished.”

The Rockets have time on their side. Not the Warriors. By the end of their loss in Houston, a sense of desperation had risen to the surface. Something has to change. “Believe it or not, one of the most important players in the league to watch right now is Jonathan Kuminga,” ESPN’s Brian Windhorst said Wednesday morning Stand upHours before the quarterfinals. “The Warriors have been sniffing around making a star player transaction for almost a year. Right now they are essentially doing the final analysis of Jonathan Kuminga. Are they going to keep him or are they going to move him?”

It would be forgivable to interpret Kuminga’s minutes from Wednesday evening as some kind of audition. Golden State employed him as a handler and screener in the pick-and-roll, giving him multiple runways to generate pressure at the rim through his impeccable first step and vertical strength. He is and always has been a stunning athlete – a rare dimension to the Warriors’ offense that the team has yet to fully utilize since he was drafted seventh overall in 2021. But he’s also always been a poor fit in an offense where the hive mentality takes precedence over silo mentality attacks. His defense waxes and wanes, as does his playmaking potential – he hasn’t recorded more than two assists in a game in almost a month; Pat Spencer, Golden State’s 11th man in Houston on Wednesday, recorded two assists in less than three and a half minutes.

Can Kuminga be the star the Warriors need right now? If not, then what’s the point of holding out? Signing Butler in his age-35 season without any assurance that he would stay beyond that season is enough to make any team uneasy, let alone one that would have to give up its wing strength in Kuminga and Andrew Wiggins. to achieve this. It’s disturbingly easy to buy into Butler’s fit with the Warriors: He’s a fellow adult in the room; a clever and instinctive off-ball cutter; a player who knows how to distribute his energy and take over when needed; A threat that has terrorized the Celtics like no one ever has, just in case all goes well on the road. Curry turns 37 in March. The Warriors can’t afford to take the risk; You can’t afford not to do it.

Golden State is at an interesting point marked by major decisions made and not made – Jordan Poole, Chris Paul, the 2020 and 2021 drafts, the failed Paul George courtship and the Lauri Markkanen mirage . The 2022 championship was proof that the embers of a dynasty remain, but for years the Warriors have tried to embrace a future that is incompatible with what remains of their glorious past. After nearly a decade as the league’s shining fulcrum, the Warriors have exhausted their influence – and it’s terribly difficult to negotiate from a position of desperation. If Butler isn’t the answer, there must be another. Hell doesn’t see red, and neither do other people. It’s the procession of what-ifs that haunts you to the point of paralysis – the ghosts of what could be blocking your way forward and out.

Danny Chau

Chau writes about the NBA and the pleasures of taste, among other things. He is the host of “Shift Meal.” He lives in Toronto.