The Jimmy Butler trade demand saga has hit a new twist causing division between Minnesota ownership and the front office.
Coach Tom Thibodeau and General Manager Scott Layden have openly expressed no interest in rebuilding and shipping out Butler to rival teams. ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reports teams looking to trade with Minnesota are bypassing the front office and engaging Owner Glen Taylor on a deal for the four-time All-Star. Jacobs, who has experience in dealing an All-Star level talent recently with Kevin Love, is open to a Butler deal with NBA insiders predicting a trade will develop sooner rather then later.
Here is the full breakdown on the dysfunction in Minnesota according to Woj.
As the Minnesota Timberwolves front office tells inquiring rivals that the franchise has no plans to trade All-Star forward Jimmy Butler, owner Glen Taylor had a different message for owners and executives at the NBA’s board of governors meetings: Butler is available, and prospective suitors should contact Taylor himself should they struggle to make progress with general manager Scott Layden, sources told ESPN.
The growing disconnect between Minnesota’s ownership and front office has created an impression for opposing teams that a showdown between Taylor and Tom Thibodeau, the Wolves’ president of basketball operations and head coach, looms as an increasingly plausible conclusion to Butler’s trade request. “The owner’s trading him,” one board of governors attendee told ESPN on Friday. “That was made clear. It’s just a matter of when.”
“He basically said, ‘If you don’t get anywhere with [Layden], and you’ve got something good, bring it to me,” another high-ranking league official told ESPN. Taylor declined comment to ESPN on Friday as he left the midtown Manhattan hotel that hosted the league’s meetings. Many of those attending the board of governors meetings are convinced that Taylor and top team business officials don’t want a prolonged saga with Butler, preferring to move him to a new team sooner than later.
Thibodeau — who oversees Layden, the point person on trade talks with outside GMs — wants to hold onto Butler and navigate the season with him. If Thibodeau is destined to get fired at season’s end, those familiar with this thinking say he’d rather do so reaching the playoffs for a second consecutive year with the benefit of Butler on the roster. The idea of missing the postseason in the aftermath of a trade that leaves the Timberwolves devoid of a short-term, comparable talent to Butler, a four-time All-NBA forward, is fully unappealing to Thibodeau. Meanwhile, Taylor has far less of a stomach for a dysfunctional season of feuding among Butler, All-Star center Karl-Anthony Towns and forward Andrew Wiggins and the damage that’ll do to the franchise’s image, league sources said. The franchise’s business operations want to limit the sullying of what had been until now a successful marketing campaign around the franchise’s starry young core, league sources said.
An expedited trade may be in the cards with the potential awkwardness of T-Wolves media day looming on Monday. Prior to trade demands from Jimmy Butler, the T-Wolves appeared to be an ascending Western conference team fresh off a 47 win season, their most in team history since the 2003-04 season.