Warriors guard Jimmy Butler tears ACL in his right knee and will miss remainder of season

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Golden State Warriors star Jimmy Butler will require surgery and miss the remainder of the season after tearing the ACL in his right knee during the third quarter of a 135-112 victory over his former Miami team.

The Warriors made the announcement Tuesday ahead of their home game against Toronto.

Butler was hurt Monday night moments after catching a pass in the paint when he went down hard and awkwardly following a collision with the Heat's Davion Mitchell — who was called for a foul. After the play, Butler was asking for two free throws, a positive sign to coach Steve Kerr that his spirits were good.

“We're all really concerned, but we'll know more after the MRI,” Kerr said, well before the results were known. “Everybody is subdued because of the injury, waiting to hear the news.”

The news was not good, and now Golden State — with about two weeks until the trade deadline — will have decisions to make about how to handle the remainder of the season without Butler.

Butler's knee buckled upon his landing and he grimaced and grabbed at the knee while down for a couple of minutes. He needed teammates Gary Payton II and Buddy Hield to escort him off the court and to the locker room after the fall on the Warriors' offensive end. When he finally got up with assistance, he was unable to put any pressure on his knee.

“It's something you hadn't seen before, usually you expect him get up and even if he can't finish the game just get off the sideline. I just told him to take his time and figure out what he needed in that moment,” Stephen Curry said. “It's kind of funny he was still cracking jokes over there while he was on the ground in true Jimmy fashion. He's always going to have a good time no matter the situation is. I do love that perspective and that part of his personality, even in the worst of moment he's still having a good time. He was trying to get to the free-throw line, he said it was two shots.”

In just under 21 minutes, Butler had 17 points on 6-for-11 shooting, four assists and three rebounds. He is Golden State's second-leading scorer behind Curry, having averaged 20.1 points, 5.6 rebounds and 4.9 assists entering the week.

“He's an alpha. He's one of those guys in the league who everybody else in the gym knows that's the guy,” Kerr said. “He has that presence but he also has that game where we can play through him possession after possession. So, assuming we'll be without him for a little bit, we're going to miss him, we've got a lot of players who can play and we're showing our depth right now.”

AP Basketball Writer Tim Reynolds in Miami contributed to this report.

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Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry, left, checks on forward Jimmy Butler III during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Miami Heat in San Francisco, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Golden State Warriors forward Jimmy Butler III, middle, is helped off the floor by teammates during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Miami Heat in San Francisco, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Golden State Warriors forward Jimmy Butler III, second from left, is helped off the floor by teammates during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Miami Heat in San Francisco, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Golden State Warriors forward Jimmy Butler III, left, reacts after contact with Miami Heat guard Davion Mitchell (45) during the second half of an NBA basketball game in San Francisco, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Golden State Warriors forward Jimmy Butler III, middle, is helped up by teammates during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Miami Heat in San Francisco, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

NEW YORK (AP) — No quick dispatching of disease investigators. No televised news conference to inform the public. No timely health alerts to doctors.

In the midst of a hantavirus outbreak that involves Americans and is making headlines around the world, the U.S. government's top public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been uncharacteristically missing in action, according to a number of experts.

To President Donald Trump, "We seem to have things under very good control," as he told reporters Friday evening.

To experts, the situation aboard a cruise ship has not spiraled because, unlike COVID-19 or measles or the flu, hantavirus does not spread easily. It has been health experts in other countries, not the United States, who have been dealing primarily with the outbreak in the past week.

“The CDC is not even a player," said Lawrence Gostin, an international public health expert at Georgetown University. “I've never seen that before.”

Not until late Friday did CDC actions accelerate.

Health officials confirmed the deployment of a team to Spain's Canary Islands, where the ship was expected to arrive early Sunday local time, to meet the Americans onboard. They said a second team will go to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska as part of a plan to evacuate American passengers from the ship to a quarantine center. Also, the CDC issued its first health alert to U.S. doctors, advising them of the possibility of imported cases.

The CDC's diminished role in this outbreak is an indicator the agency is no longer the force in international health or the protector of domestic health that it once was, some experts said.

The hantavirus outbreak is “a sentinel event” that speaks to “how well the country is prepared for a disease threat. And right now, I’m very sorry to say that we are not prepared,” said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, chief executive officer of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Early last month, a 70-year-old Dutch man developed a feverish illness on a cruise ship traveling from Argentina to Antarctica and some islands in the South Atlantic. He died less than a week later. More people became sick, including the man's wife and a German woman, who both died.

Hantavirus was first identified as a cause of sickness of one of the cases on May 2. The World Health Organization swung into action and by Monday was calling it an outbreak. About two dozen Americans were on the ship, including about seven who disembarked last month and 17 who remained on board.

For decades, the CDC partnered with the WHO in such situations. The CDC acted as a mainstay of any international investigation, providing staff and expertise to help unravel any outbreak mystery, develop ways to control it and communicate to the public what they should know and how they should worry.

Such actions were a large reason why the CDC developed a reputation as the world's premier public health agency.

But this time, the WHO has been center stage. It made the risk assessment that has told people the outbreak is not a pandemic threat.

“I don’t think this is a giant threat to the United States,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown University’s Pandemic Center. But how this situation has played out “just shows how empty and vapid the CDC is right now,” she said.

The current situation comes after 16 tumultuous months during which the Trump administration withdrew from the WHO, has restricted CDC scientists from talking to international counterparts at times and embarked on a plan to build its own international public health network through one-on-one agreements with individual countries.

The administration has laid off thousands of CDC scientists and public health professionals, including members of the agency's ship sanitation program.

As this was playing out, Trump's health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said he was working to “restore the CDC’s focus on infectious disease, invest in innovation, and rebuild trust through integrity and transparency.”

The CDC has not been completely silent on hantavirus.

The agency on Wednesday issued a short statement that said the risk to the American public is “extremely low,” and described the U.S. government as “the world’s leader in global health security.”

Said Nuzzo: “Not only was that not helpful, it actually does damage because a core principle of public health communications is humility.”

The CDC's acting director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, posted a message on social media that the agency was lending its expertise in coordinating with other federal agencies and international authorities. Arizona officials this week said they learned from the CDC that one of the Americans who left the ship — a person with no symptoms and not considered contagious — had already returned to the state. WHO officials said the CDC has been sharing technical information.

The CDC also is “monitoring the health status and preparing medical support for all of the American passengers on the cruise,” Bhattacharya wrote.

But federal health officials have mostly been tight-lipped, declining interview requests.

In interviews this week, some experts made a comparison with a 2020 incident involving the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship docked in Japan that became the setting of one of the first large COVID-19 outbreaks outside of China.

The CDC sent personnel to the port, helped evacuate American passengers, ran quarantines, shared genetic data on the virus, coordinated with the WHO and Japan, held public briefings and rapidly published reports “that became the world’s reference data on cruise ship COVID transmission,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, a former CDC director.

Some aspects of the international response to the Diamond Princess were criticized, and it did not halt the outbreak or stop COVID-19’s spread across the world. But some experts say it was not for the CDC's lack of trying.

“The CDC was right on top of it, very visible, very active in trying to manage and contain it,” Gostin said, while the agency's work now is delayed and subdued.

Instead of working with nearly all of the world's nations through the WHO, the Trump administration has pursued bilateral health agreements with individual nations for information sharing, public health support, and what it describes as “the introduction of innovative American technologies.” Roughly 30 agreements are currently in place.

That's not sufficient, Gostin said. “You can't possibly cover a global health crisis by doing one-on-one deals with countries here and there,” he said.

Associated Press writers Ali Swenson in New York, Darlene Superville in Washington and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Passengers on the the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, watch epidemiologists board the boat in Praia, during their voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)

Workers set up temporary shelters in the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Crew members of the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, wait their turns for a first interview with epidemiologists, during the voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)

Health workers in protective gear evacuate patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship into an ambulance at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)

A Spanish Civil Guard officer inspects the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)