Explain: How Jimmy Butler III made Steve Kerr evolve the Warriors Offense; plus thoughts on the end of Apricot's E1P streak
Video should be available starting 2 pm Pacific
A list of all Explain One Play articles and videos is at The new Explain One Play Search Engine.
On the end of the Explain One Play streak (skip below for the video)
Why did you stop doing Explain One Play videos?
I didn’t stop making videos. I’m in the middle of a stretch of work for the Warriors organization. I promised them three videos, and the second one is included in this article.
How I came to do some work for the Warriors organization:
Are the Warriors forcing you to stop making videos for your own channel? How much do they control the videos? Blink twice if you need help.
I decided on my own to pause making other videos. GSW have not discouraged me or prevented me from making my own videos for my own YouTube channel. But because of a coincidence of the start of the official Warriors work, plus a big work crunch, plus personal life crunch, plus perhaps the slightest whiff of burnout, I decided it was a good time to take a break and just focus on the official Warriors videos.
Yes, GSW have editorial control. It’s their channel and they’re paying me. But certainly everything in my videos is what I believe in. We just sometimes have to negotiate.
The third and final video is scheduled for roughly two weeks from now.
How long will the break last?
I don’t know. I’ll re-assess everything after I complete my contract with the Warriors. If both sides agree, I might continue doing videos for them.
I did actually do some prep work for a couple of my own E1Ps this last month (I admit those Pat Spencer games were hard to resist) but in the end, I just didn’t feel the motivation to follow through.
And, I’m getting older and it’s hard to keep up the old E1P pace. It’s a crap-ton of work and time and stress. The recent schedule of once-every-two-weeks is actually way better for life balance because I can plan the work in advance. In the E1P streak, if the Warriors won six games in a row, that was an instant work crunch, and I wouldn’t know until late the night of each game.
Without the intense work schedule, I’m finding I’m enjoying the Warriors wins in a purer way and not immediately feeling “oh crap where can I find 5 hours to knock out another video” and “how am I going to find decent celebration video”. (You wouldn’t believe how painful it is to find decent celebration footage.)
I’m not sure if I’ll pivot to a 2-3 week schedule with longer videos, or maybe I’ll do shorts where I REALLY stick to 1 play per game, perhaps with no celebration audit, or maybe I’ll experiment with YT live occasionally. I feel like I’ve become very good at my current style of video and I need some new ideas to keep it fresh and interesting for myself as a creator.
So whatever comes next, whether it’s with the Warriors organization or elsewhere, I don’t think I can go back to a classic E1P day-after-every-win pace. That was an incredible streak.
How long was the Explain One Play streak?
Since the start of the 2015-16 season, I have made either an Explain One Play article or video for every Warriors win, with occasional lapses. What a streak! I made it ten straight seasons (and part of this eleventh season).
I never meant to keep it going this long, and I wouldn’t have except that I kept on finding something new to motivate me. Here’s a walk down memory lane…
2014
The blogfather Nate P hired me to work at GoldenStateOfMind.com. I wrote massive tomes about new coach Steve Kerr’s innovative schemes.
2015
I decided Fall 2015 that I would greatly cut down on the work by just analyzing a single play from each game and I would do it only for the wins to keep the load manageable. Warriors proceeded to rip off 23 straight wins to start the season and I was exhausted right from the start. GSW then unleashed the most wins possible (73+15) in a non-championship season.
2016
I only planned to do one season, but after the Finals, NBA fan social media (and sports social media in general) endlessly crapped on Dub Nation to a level I have not seen since. The endless mob gloating (about 3-1, threes being stupid, Steph being a lousy fluke) made me so disgusted that I felt I could not stop the series there.
2018
After GSW ruined the league twice (hahahaha, the best thing was that the league was only ruined for the crappiest fans), I could finally stop. Except… I got interested in making full YouTube videos (with diagrams and captions) instead of the usual text and clips interleaved format.
2019
After all the Warriors physically collapsed from the Five Finals run, Fall 2019 seemed like a good time to stop. I was having severe motivation issues making videos about D’Angelo Russell’s foul-baiting.
At that moment, Vox Media suddenly laid off most of its writers. Yeah, I was about to quit, but now I was mad again. Nate, Duby, Daniel and I got together with Rich and we decided to launch our own web site.
2020
Then the pandemic hit. I didn’t feel like I could stop right when our site had just started. At this point, I decided to try narrating and telestrating the videos to save time, and figured out the tech that could support that. This made the videos more popular than ever and also provided me a new format to crack myself up.
2021
Nate, Duby, Daniel and I set up DubNationHQ.com and now I didn’t feel like I could stop because we were just starting the new site… I was also trying out this new editing tech (Descript.com, which I use to this day).
2022
The channel had gotten large enough to qualify for the YouTube Partner Program. It was fun trying to grow the channel subscriber count. I had thought of YT comment sections as, frankly, the worst of humanity, but the comments on E1Ps have been 95% awesome discussion. It’s self-selecting, as E1Ps tend to be boring to trolls. I really love this 95% of the E1P audience. Their enthusiasm is without doubt the main reason I continued to do this.
2023
The DNHQ YT audience got quite big, and it definitely had its own wants which didn’t always match mine. That audience really wants celebration audits every game (it used to be just one of many absurd jokes), the same music every video, and a video after every win, and not to watch videos after a loss. But I found ways to please the regulars while still trying new things.
2024
I spun off my own EricApricot YouTube channel (please subscribe!), partly to make it easier to sign partnerships.
The NBA approached me to become a video making partner. I had been in a constant copyright battle with them for years (surely E1P is textbook “fair use” but I didn’t want to waste energy and money testing this in court). I agreed to become partners as a truce.
But it turned out to be much better than that. The NBA gave me access to a wonderful internal source with improved video quality and also seriously streamlined the making of the videos.
I explained to the NBA that my kind of video would never be very popular but those who like it tend to love it. They shouldn’t expect to make money out of our partnership, but there would be some fans understanding and loving the game a little more. They enthusiastically accepted that and the partnership has been wonderful so far.
2025
The Warriors organization (separate from the NBA) approach me to become a video making partner. And that brings us to where we started. (See the first question.)
On to the latest video for the Warriors
This video is scheduled to be available starting 2pm Pacific.
In this episode, we explore how Jimmy Butler inspired Steve Kerr to evolve his offensive system by combining their elemental basketball philosophies. The video analyzes Kerr’s “water bending” motion offense influenced by Phil Jackson’s Triangle Offense and Greg Popovich’s Spurs system, contrasted with Butler’s “earth bending” isolation style. We study in detail clips of the Head Tap play from 2017 to see how Jimmy transformed Kerr’s complex off-ball movement scheme into “Jimmy Standard Formation” - a predictable isolation play that stabilizes non-Steph minutes. The episode examines the scheme’s success and then the struggles against Minnesota’s single coverage, and analyzes clips from across history, most recently from the Nets game on 2025-12-29-GSW-BRK to see how GSW are now adding water bending elements back through cuts and off-ball movement to create a hybrid system.
Starring Jimmy Butler, Steph Curry, Draymond Green, Kevin Durant, Andrew Wiggins, Kevon Looney, Brandin Podziemski, Buddy Hield, Quinten Post, De’Anthony Melton, Moses Moody, Trayce Jackson-Davis, Brad Wanamaker, and Gui Santos, Will Richard, and Pat Spencer as himself.
With LeBron James, Zaza Pachulia, DeMar DeRozan, Domantas Sabonis, Michael Porter Jr., Cam Thomas, Danny Wolf, and Coach Jordy Fernandez, Phil Jackson, Gregg Popovich, and Steve Kerr.
The other E1Ps for the Warriors
In this episode, we highlight Steph Curry’s historic season at age 37. In the 2025-12-14 Portland-Golden State game, Steph broke multiple records including surpassing Michael Jordan in most 40-point games after turning 30. The video analyzes the teamwork and plays setting up Curry’s scoring outburst, focusing on the zipper cut. The episode concludes with a holiday version of the traditional celebration audit.
Starring Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, Trayce Jackson-Davis, Jimmy Butler, Quinten Post, Buddy Hield, Brandin Podziemski, De’Anthony Melton, Moses Moody, Seth Curry, and Pat Spencer as Magnum P.I. With Michael Jordan, Jerami Grant, Toumani Camara, Shaedon Sharpe, Kris Murray, Deni Avdija.
Some of the best content on the internet, hands down. Thanks for a solid decade!
Ha! I still remember the growing sense of dread that season where they never lost. Gratitude and looking forward to what's in store!
EA - well holy crap, do I feel like a jerk now.
This explanation of what happened, is happening, will happen, and how, in extreme detail is one of the most unnecessary, generous, and community oriented pieces of explanatory writing in the history of human written communication. Zero sarcasm here. My already high respect for you has just jumped up another level.
So: thank you. And thank you for the decade of E1Ps. And all the behind the scenes work that has gone into it. I see it now far more clearly as both the great work it is, as well as the labor of love and fun it has been for you. I'm here for any path forward, at any frequency. Plus the rest of the fun and community that has been DNHQ.
Bravo.