The Timberwolves are right to trade Jimmy Butler. They’re just doing it all wrong

The Timberwolves are right to trade Jimmy Butler. They’re just doing it all wrong

The Timberwolves are right to trade Jimmy Butler. They’re just doing it all wrong
NBA

The Timberwolves are right to trade Jimmy Butler. They’re just doing it all wrong

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Even in doing the right thing, the Timberwolves find a way to mess it up.

When Jimmy Butler told the Minnesota Timberwolves he would leave in free agency in a year, and requested a trade in the process, I wrote that the team should absolutely deal him and lock up Karl-Anthony Towns. This is precisely what Minnesota is doing now: Towns inked a max rookie extension over the weekend, and the Wolves are attempting to trade Butler before training camp officially begins on Tuesday. The Timberwolves are doing exactly what they should be doing.

But how they got to that point should be setting off alarms for everyone involved.

Tom Thibodeau, head coach and front office chief, reportedly refused to consider trading Butler, believing he could smooth everything over this season and convince the All-NBA wing to stay. He directed his general manager, Scott Layden, to decline all offers.

But Timberwolves franchise owner Glen Taylor saw the light, and declared to his colleagues that Butler would be gone by Tuesday. Taylor and his colleagues all happened to be in New York together for the preseason NBA Board of Governors meeting when the Butler kerfuffle blew up. He has been fielding offers ever since.

This is not normal.

Taylor isn’t considered a particularly adept NBA decision-maker. He’s not the reason the Wolves had a 14-year playoff drought, but he’s not not the reason. Taylor’s responsible for bringing David Kahn into our lives (thank you, Glen) and by the end of the week will likely have overseen the trades of three stars in their primes (Kevin Garnett, Kevin Love, and Butler). You’re doing it wrong if you’re trading all of your All-NBA level players in their primes.

Taylor hiring Thibodeau in 2016 was wildly celebrated, but Taylor made a crucial mistake: he gave Thibodeau personnel control. That practice is dying — in fact, Thibodeau is the last head coach with personnel oversight at this point, unless you count Gregg Popovich, who has that control in title but perhaps not in any sort of recent practice.

A recent report suggested Taylor regretted giving that power to Thibodeau. You think? It was likely the cost of landing as well-reputed a coach as Thibodeau — without granting personnel power, Taylor might have had to hire someone without Thibs’ credentials, and who knows where we’d be now? But Thibodeau’s demise, whether it happens now or in the future, should signal the end of an era. No more dual coach-GMs.

Trading for Butler was wildly celebrated at the time. But the Wolves (and those of us who celebrated the Wolves’ coup) made a crucial mistake: we didn’t consider whether Butler would stick around. For my part, listening to what Butler has always said about the importance of winning, I assumed that the Wolves — with Towns, with Andrew Wiggins, with Butler, with Thibodeau — would win 50 games in Year 1 and never look back.

Minnesota instead won 47 and bickered all the way. The shine came off Thibodeau’s defensive advantages, and the shine really came off Wiggins. Towns had a deserved All-NBA season, but people aren’t talking about him as a future MVP all that much any more. And Butler isn’t interested in sticking around after all.

I wrote that Butler is doing the Wolves a favor by sharing his plans now and allowing Minnesota to preserve value by getting something back in a trade before he splits. That will help determine just how bad this is for the Wolves. To get Butler a year ago, the Wolves gave up Kris Dunn and Zach LaVineand swapped picks, getting Justin Patton but losing Lauri Markkanen. The Finn looks like a star in the making, so if Minnesota can’t get a prospect on that level in a Butler trade, this is going to end up a net loss, even if Jimmy helped end the long, terrible playoff drought. Do you know how hard it is to lose a trade when you get back an All-NBA player in his prime? It’s pretty hard! The Wolves might have done it.

The process by which the Wolves are trading Butler is clearly broken. With the front office refusing to consider deals, Taylor has instructed fellow team owners to bring him offers if Layden and Thibodeau won’t listen. Clearly, that is not a process that will result in sound decision-making with full information. For Taylor to pursue this instead of having some semblance of control over the franchise he runs is absurd.

Butler will be gone soon, and Thibodeau will likely be gone in a year or so, if not much sooner. But Taylor will still be around, as far as we know. He’s doing the right thing by forcing a Butler trade. He’s doing it in entirely the wrong way, a fashion that shows a lack of trust in his staff, and a lack of faith in his own judge of talent.

The mess enveloping Minnesota is emblematic of Taylor’s tenure. The taint won’t disappear when Butler or Thibodeau do. It’s a part of the Timberwolves, an unwelcome sidekick so long as Taylor is around, mismanaging personalities and processes.

It reveals one of the coldest truths in American pro sports fandom: you’re almost always stuck for decades or forever with the person owns your favorite franchise. Good luck with that.