‘PASS TO STEPH’: Jimmy Butler moonlights as assistant coach during Warriors’ rout of Pelicans

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.)

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“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.

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“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…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/pass-to-steph-jimmy-butler-moonlights-as-assistant-coach-during-warriors-rout-of-pelicans-142350838.html

Author : Dan Devine

Publish date : 2026-11-10 14:22:00

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