The Timberwolves canceled practice on Thursday after the circus that was Jimmy Butler’s return to the team on Wednesday. Butler made a brief appearance at practice, beating the starters with third-stringers, antagonizing Karl-Anthony Towns, GM Scott Layden, and others, and then did a lengthy sitdown interview with ESPN’s Rachel Nichols.
Butler’s “tour de force” as Adrian Wojnarowski called it on Wednesday seemed like a power play from the star to force the Wolves into kicking trade talks into a higher gear. Butler doesn’t feel like the issues with the franchise can be fixed, as he told Nichols, and still has issues with Towns and Andrew Wiggins over effort.
However, on Thursday, despite practice being canceled, Butler still found his way to continue the news-cycle as he reportedly held a players only meeting where he laid out his issues with the team and management but insisted he wanted to compete with them until he’s dealt. Butler even confirmed that meeting took place to Nichols, as ESPN tweeted.
Jimmy Butler confirmed to @Rachel__Nichols that he held a players-only meeting with Timberwolves players on Thursday, a day after he reported to the team for his first practice. pic.twitter.com/I90SyC1LdL
— NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) October 11, 2018
Still, some are denying the original report, as Jeff Teague tweeted at The Athletic’s Shams Charania, who initially reported the meeting, to say there wasn’t a players meeting and use the dreaded “fake news” phrase.
@ShamsCharania it wasn’t no players meeting you just made that up bro y’all gotta relax with this fake news
— Jeff Teague (@Teague0) October 11, 2018
The juxtaposition of the two tweets, in such close proximity, is hilarious.
What a time to be alive pic.twitter.com/I1rHsBOwxp
— Kyle Goon (@kylegoon) October 11, 2018
Wolves player development coach John Lucas also had questions about the report, as did Darius Johnson-Odom.
https://twitter.com/Luke1luk/status/1050469052945195009
https://twitter.com/KingMe_DJ1/status/1050468750116483073
And so, the latest NBA soap opera continues to play out with the dumbest controversy ever: whether players actually met. Teague has had Butler’s back throughout this, explaining yesterday that Jimmy’s his “guy” and this appears to be a case of Teague trying to protect Butler without knowing Butler’s plan (which is clearly to make sure everything gets out to the media almost immediately). It’s also possible Butler met with a few players and Teague and the others weren’t part of that meeting. Or maybe it was made up by Butler to continue this saga. Who nows.
In any case, nothing in Minnesota can go smoothly right now, even reporting about something that was apparently confirmed by the player in question.
