Team Dreams 2K19: Minnesota Timberwolves
Jimmy Butler is gone but his trenchant criticisms of the young Wolves remain
The most memorable piece of NBA journalism I read last season was Adrian Wojnarowski’s writeup of Jimmy Butler, in the middle of a one-man labor action against the Timberwolves, coming to practice one day, acting like a monumental prick, winning the scrimmage, and leaving while taunting the general manager. It’s startling for two reasons: the first, of course, is that it’s a crazy story about a maniac keeping a bunch of millionaires hostage, acting like an asshole because his wiring demands that he does so.
The second reason is that Woj, uhh, just kind of takes Butler’s side, implying that this tornado of dickishness “energized” most of the players, and that Butler was showing everyone what it takes to be a true competitor, or whatever. It honestly shouldn’t be all that surprising that Woj would lean this way — he’s been legendary dickhead Kobe Bryant’s guy in the press for decades, and his own well known propensity for holding grudges would imply that he, himself, sees sports as a kind of interchange of wills, and that soft wills are broken while the strong will inspires everyone to success, even if it chafes. This is nonsense, of course. Some of the greats were performative dickheads, for sure, but just as many were measured, neurotic, dweeby, relaxed—every kind of personality trait you can imagine.
“Am I being tough on him? Yeah, that’s who I am,” Butler said. “I’m not the most talented player on the team. Who is the most talented player on our team — KAT. Who is the most God-gifted player on our team — Wiggs. Who plays the hardest? Me! I play hard. I put my body [on the line] every day in practice, every day in games. That’s my passion. Everybody leads in different ways. That’s how I show I’m here for you.”
Butler doesn’t really have the, uhh, track record to be called one of the Greats. He’s just a weird, performative jerkoff whose psychotic internal drive to succeed has taken him so far above his station that you have to tip your hat to him, even if you would prefer that he stay a million fucking miles away from your team. I am fairly sure that leadership doesn’t involve sitting around, getting fucking madder and madder about people on your team playing Fortnite too much. Probably has more to do with, like, communication? Stuff like that? But in watching him spread his personal meltdown to the entire Minnesota Timberwolves organization, boiling over with rage about his big school, high draft pick teammates, we see that he did end up speaking some harsh, brutal truths about the youth movement Minny has cobbled together over the last few years.
But in his war against the shiftless losers surrounding him in Minny, he sees the full manifestation of the terrors of millennial culture, and the antidote, the Mayor Pete of hoop, in Jimmy Butler. I honestly wish there was no truth to it, but, well, here we are, for yet another year of this bullshit.
Slam magazine published an issue this week with Towns, D’Angelo Russell, and Devin Booker wearing vintage jerseys from their current teams, on their cover. Russell, I dunno, whatever. Tim Hardaway is a perfectly reasonable thing for him to project. Devin Booker wearing a Barkley jersey is obscene, revolting, offensive. Barkley was a madman who could have flown through a solid fucking brick wall if one was presented to him, and Booker is a guy who gets mad when someone double teams him in a pickup game.
Towns, on the other hand, is wearing Garnett’s jersey. It’s less absurd than Booker, for sure. He’s actually very good. Shit, he even PLAYED with KG for a second there. But in that time, he just has never come even close to taking on ANY of KG’s energy on the court. He just looks tired, irritable. I remember watching him post up against Tyson Chandler and just getting absolutely beasted by an older man, so embarrassing that even the look on his face expressed a kind of pained squinting, like he was shitting his pants because he father leaped out at him from a broom closet.
KG, on the other hand, was a genuine madman. Not even in the Butler mold, where he chafed against everyone. He was positive, kind—just, like, weirdly intense. You know he put a hole in his wall while watching Making the Band, once? Towns just caught, like, NONE of that from his time with The Big Ticket. He has a perfect body and skillset for the modern NBA, but he just keeps farting along, year after year, waiting for… I honestly don’t know. Seeing him in that jersey is… I mean it’s true, from a structural, economic perspective. He has all the tools KG had, just none of the madness.
Wiggins is even weirder. You could tell me anything about that dude and I would believe it. Just a perfect basketball frame with no viable skillset to speak of. I watched Wiggins destroy a Nike Hoop Summit when he was 17. It wasn’t even close. He looked like fucking Kevin Durant or something. But when he got to Kansas and the NBA he just… stalled out, seventeen forever. He reached the mountaintop and then he proceeded to take a nap.
That’s what made this Butler story so bizarre. Jimmy was such a huge asshole that there was no way you could say, “Well, Jimmy’s in THE RIGHT,” because he was just thrashing around in a personal red room and dragging in everyone he possibly could with him. But also, he’s right: his young teammates are special boys who love Fortnite and naps, and there’s no reason to think they’re every going to snap out of it. The Wolves are going to slog their way through another bullshit season until Towns and, maybe, if you can gift someone, Wiggins get traded. They’re going to tank, get new players, and hope these ones are less contented with merely being excellent NBA players. It’s a savage cycle, the main problem with building through the draft like Minny and so many other small market teams have to do: you just don’t fucking know where a 19-year-old person’s head is at.
