A case of a star and too much power
So Jimmy Butler really walked into a Minnesota Timberwolves practice and did all that. You know the guys who are the third-stringers during NBA preseason before being stashed at the end of the bench or sent to explore the wilderness of the lower leagues? The ones who will experience motels in Fort Wayne, Ind., or Frisco, Texas, or Des Moines? Jimmy grabbed those guys. He wanted to play the starters.
Let’s back up: Butler is a really good player who can be a pain, because he is ornery and brutally honest and demanding. He was traded from Chicago to Minnesota, and he clashed with young Timberwolves stars like Karl-Anthony Towns and Canada’s Andrew Wiggins, because he is a ball-dominant cactus of a man who saw them as too soft, too sensitive. He wanted to either be traded or be adored by Minnesota, which signed those two kids to gigantic contract extensions. So Jimmy held out.
But Minnesota had spent a couple weeks dithering around, driving other teams nuts with strong trade demands. With the pre-season coming to an end, nothing was imminent.
So Butler showed up at practice Wednesday and took those third-stringers — guys like end-of-the-road vet Luol Deng and James Nunnally, who is 28 and has played in 13 NBA games, and Jared Terrell, who has never played in any — and played Minnesota’s starters, and then the second unit. And he beat them. He beat them and he howled and trash-talked and left.
Luckily, ESPN’s Rachel Nichols, the league’s pre-eminent anchor and interviewer, happened to be in the building with a camera crew.
“I love the game, and I don’t do it for any other reason except for to compete and go up against the best to try to prove that I can hang. So all my emotion came out at one time,” Butler said to Nichols, while confirming many of the details of his practice blow-up were true. “Was it the right way to do it? No. But I can’t control that when I’m out there competing. That’s my love of the game.”
“That’s raw me,” Butler went on. “Me at my finest, me at my purest. That’s what you’re going to get inside the lines.”
The Timberwolves literally cancelled practice the next day, and told the media to stay home. Butler beat his own team so bad they didn’t show up the next day.
It was all a work, as they say in the pro wrestling business. Tom Thibodeau, Minnesota’s hardass coach, may even have approved, unless he has lost control. But the show was planned.
“I’m not the most talented player on the team,” Butler said to Nichols. “Who is the most talented player on our team? KAT. Who is the most Godgifted player on our team? Wigs. Who plays the hardest? Me. I play hard.”
Now, you can argue about this as a negotiating strategy. But from an entertainment standpoint, it fits in perfectly with the modern NBA.
Players have the most power and freedom to express personality of any pro league, so Butler can come in and make more talented younger teammates look like chumps, then stalk out of the gym to talk to ESPN about it.
But whatever the outcome, it’s a byproduct of the NBA’s central thesis: The league is about stars. There are maybe seven players who can truly lift a franchise, and another five who aren’t that far away, and another 10 who you can market as stars if the buying public isn’t too sharp.
But the stars you have are the ones you have to work with, and they are what matters. You can find late-draft gems, nurture and develop talent, max out your surrounding cast. The Toronto Raptors are one of the league’s best franchises at this. The Raptors will rely on the explosiveness and growth of wings like Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby, the length and in-between knack of Delon Wright, the brute force of Jonas Valanciunas and whatever is left of Serge Ibaka. They will feature the late prime of Kyle Lowry, and the pre-prime of Fred VanVleet. Add shooters in Danny Green and C.J. Miles, and they’ll be good.
Put it all around a top-seven superstar like Kawhi Leonard, and they have a real chance to be elite. But that’s the real lesson of the Butler explosion. He could grab anybody in the gym and make them winners. He could go at the soft overpaid talent, be tougher and compete harder, and he could walk out of the gym triumphant.
And maybe Butler left the Timberwolves in ruins behind him; a team that can’t handle him, that has to move on, with stars who can’t handle the fire. Maybe Butler gets traded, and goes to war with someone else. But Wednesday, he was the king.
Now they might hit free agency at the same time next summer, but Leonard isn’t Butler. So far, Leonard has been as low-maintenance as Butler has been a pain; Toronto’s superstar is still working himself into real basketball shape after months away, but he has been everything they could ask for.
But how the Raptors adjust to their star, and how that star feels about it, will be the story of the season, and likely some seasons beyond that. It’s just the rules.
When you have a star, that guy can lift you up or send you crashing into obscurity. Or both.