It's time for transparency and closure in the Timberwolves' dysfunctional dance

The boos emanating from the Target Center crowd at the Timberwolves-Bucks game on Friday night had a vocabulary accented by Minnesota Nice. But let’s not sugarcoat the damage being done by the dysfunctional dance that has inaugurated the 2018-19 season.

When Wolves head coach and president of basketball operations Tom Thibodeau was introduced, the booing was ornamental and ephemeral, like the cobweb effects of Halloween decorations. But as the Bucks systemically dismantled the Wolves at both ends of the court — leading by 11 after the first quarter and 63-38 at the half — any mitigating reservoirs of goodwill evaporated into exasperation and ire. By the 125-95 finale — the worst Timberwolves loss of the Thibodeau era — the booing was relegated to a smattering of die-hards compelled to compete with an equally large contingent of chortling Bucks fans.

Anyone raised in a family riven by a theoretically amiable divorce understands the emotional dynamics corroding most of the important relationships, both within the Timberwolves franchise and in the way it has presented itself to its fans and the rest of the outside world, these past few weeks. There is an energy-sapping mix of decorum and disdain unpredictably sloshed together as the parties debate the size of the settlement and the ongoing care and custody of cherished assets. Meanwhile, everyone has their own tote board of internalized grievances lurking just beneath the surface, provoking and absorbing minor vengeances that will take time to dissipate even after the split occurs.

That’s why it ultimately didn’t matter that the Wolves came into Friday night with a 2-0 record at home this season, including a solid triumph over a quality opponent, the Indiana Pacers, in their last Target Center appearance earlier that week. When a toxic environment, no matter how well-dressed, is allowed to fester, genuine forbearance is threadbare. If Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor discounts the resonance of performances like the one that occurred on Friday, it will imperil the long-term health of his franchise.

Jimmy Butler maintains that he told Thibodeau of his desire to be traded months ago. At the very latest it occurred during their meeting on Sept. 18. It is unfortunately worth recounting Thibodeau’s first public response, delivered via his opening remarks at the Timberwolves Media Day Sept. 24.

“A couple of things I want to start with. One is obviously the trade request by Jimmy. It is not the first time a player has made that type of request, nor will it be the last. Our job is to seek out the best opportunity for us. If something is good for us, then we are interested in doing it. If not, then we are ready to move forward the other way.” Those were literally the words that christened the official start of the 2018-19 NBA season in Minnesota.

Lest there was any mistaking his message, Thibs soon added, “The challenge last year for us was how quickly could we get everyone on the same page. Every year you are faced with new and different challenges. So this year it is, how do we build on that? So we took a hard look at all the things that we did accomplish last year — the plus is that we have the core back together again.”

This wasn’t just whistling past the graveyard; it was doing so while workers tossed a live body into a freshly dug hole.

Since at least Sept. 18, the challenge of 2018-19 season was how best to resolve the fallout from the fact that the Wolves’ two All-Stars didn’t want to play with each other. Nearly six weeks later, and six games into the regular season, Step One in addressing that challenge — extricating Butler from the situation — remains undone.

Publicly, at least, Thibodeau’s intransigence has the backing of Taylor. “I’m OK with it,” the owner told the Star Tribune’s Sid Hartman in a story published the day of the regular-season opener. “Initially, when Butler told (Thibodeau) he wanted to leave, you know Tom did everything he could to try and keep Jimmy here and I understand that. They have a close relationship. Thibs brought him here so that he would stay here. But eventually I think that in listening to Jimmy, Thibs and I are lined up on this. We need to be looking at a trade.”

The most charitable interpretation of the Wolves’ ostrich-like response to the Butler fiasco is that, despite their weak negotiating position, they are driving a hard bargain to get the best return on a Butler trade. This viewpoint seemed to gain credence late last week with reports that the slow-starting Houston Rockets were willing to mortgage their future to acquire Butler. The offer supposedly includes four first-round draft picks staggered over a seven-year period to comply with NBA rules, plus bit players like injured guard Brandon Knight and disappointing young forward Marquese Chriss in order to make the swap equitable in terms of salaries.

A 30-point loss to the Bucks — worst of the Thibs era — did little for the theory that the team can move forward with Jimmy Butler. (Brad Rempel / USA TODAY Sports)

If the Wolves are going to play this kind of hardball, they owe it to their paying customers and to players on the team more loyal than Butler to be transparent about these trade talks. Because there is justified suspicion that they are coming to the table with unreasonable expectations.

“It’s important that we do a trade that helps our team and keeps us competitive,” Taylor told Hartman. “I think we are a stronger team than we were last year. Based on how well we did last year, we should play better than last year.”

Thibs has acted, coached and spoken with similar expectations. This attitude is either delusional or incredibly cynical about what you can make people believe.

Either way, it is long past time to cut the bullshit.

Thibs and Taylor are both arguing with supposedly straight faces that Butler’s betrayal will not exert a pronounced negative impact on the caliber of the Timberwolves season. If true, then it probably makes sense for the Wolves to hang on to Butler for as long as possible and remain a vital entrant in the playoff chase through to the February trading deadline; then hope to secure a return for Butler that enables the club to squeak into the postseason. It would not make sense to accept the likes of Knight and Chriss as mere filler in a Houston deal where the real return value lies in those third and fourth first-round picks years from now when the Rockets could well be in the lottery.

Under the Thibodeau regime, the Wolves have been notoriously tight-lipped about any of their maneuvers, be they trade talks, draft choices or even salary negotiations. Knowing that, the network of leakers that include player agents and representatives of owners and administrators from other teams have felt free to spin their side of negotiations with the Wolves with impunity, confident that it won’t be rebutted.

That needs to change. Quite frankly, Thibs and Taylor no longer deserve the good-faith benefit of the doubt their silence assumes is granted to them by Wolves fans. At this point, the Wolves’ potential trading partners have more to lose than Minnesota from transparency — the Butler situation has already put the Wolves’ cards on the table. So let’s start turning them over as we negotiate the pot.

Specifically, it was widely reported that the Wolves turned down an offer from the Miami Heat that included swingman Josh Richardson, a first-round pick and some salary-filling players in exchange for Butler. Is this accurate?

Ditto the leaked Houston offer. Are their four firsts on the table? If so, are they all unprotected and convey to Minnesota regardless of where Houston finishes? (Any protected choices would disappear from the trade if the conditions for protection were met.) Are Knight and Chriss the salary fillers?

Meanwhile, how about some “leaks” going in the other direction? What would be a reasonable haul for Butler, according to the Wolves’ brass?

Why is it so important that we know the Wolves’ true intentions and trade parameters leading up to an inevitable Butler deal? Two reasons.

First, as it now stands, the Wolves’ lack of transparency and the ongoing absence of a Butler trade provides Taylor and Thibodeau with plausible deniability should the team not play up to the exalted standards they anticipate — they can simply say the leaked offers never occurred.

Second, it will help us know going forward whether the Wolves’ brass and ownership really care, or even realize, that their stubbornness is profoundly disrespectful to their de facto new face of the franchise, Karl-Anthony Towns.

Butler’s antipathy to Towns (and the other young cornerstone, Andrew Wiggins, although that relationship is less crucial to the future) has been laid bare during this tumultuous offseason. One would assume, or at least hope, that the negative impact of hanging on to a raging alpha presence who has besmirched the reputation of your max-money, 22-year-old All-Star might factor into the decision-making process of Wolves management. But on the contrary, until very recently Thibs has placed a higher priority on coddling the guy who wants out instead of the guy whose play will determine the future length of his tenure with the Wolves.

We are now nearly two weeks into the season, a passage when the games are counting and the evidence is real. The notion that the Wolves are a better team and that Butler’s limbo status isn’t a detriment on the season, is, surprise surprise, not panning out.

Last year, as might be expected, the two-player pairing with the best plus/minus on the Wolves was the two All-Stars, Towns and Butler, at plus-392 in 1,849 minutes together (seventh most of any duo on the team). By contrast, Butler was minus-18 in the 315 minutes he logged without KAT, and Towns was minus-20 in 1,069 minutes he played without Jimmy.

Yeah, six games (and just five together) is a small sample size, but it is still striking that the Towns-Butler pairing has been turned upside-down in terms of its effectiveness — a team-worst minus-42 thus far this season in 119 minutes together (fourth most of any duo). To complete the reverse parallel, KAT is plus-11 in 67 minutes without Jimmy, and Butler is plus-14 in 47 minutes without Towns.

It is not a great leap to surmise that the dysfunction between Butler and Towns that was exacerbated during the offseason has invaded their interplay on the court. What hasn’t been talked about nearly enough is that if Butler’s presence continues to cast a pall upon KAT’s performance and Butler is allowed to stick around indefinitely, it will likely cost Towns tens of millions of dollars.

When Towns agreed to a new five-year contract just before training camp in late September, it was widely reported that he would be paid the “super max” amount of $190 million. I myself repeated this potentially inflated number numerous times. But it is far from a done deal on those terms.

Last season, his third in the NBA, Towns was voted on to the All-NBA third team, making him eligible for a “super max” deal, which is why the contract he signed can indeed be categorized as a “super max” pact. But KAT isn’t done fulfilling the criteria for “super max” status. Under the provisions of the 2017 Collective Bargaining Agreement, he needs to be named to an All-NBA team twice in seasons two-through-four, once if it is season four, or as an MVP or Defensive Player of the Year in any of his four seasons.

Simply put, without an All-NBA nod this season, the size of KAT’s upcoming deal, which kicks in next year, shrinks from $190 million to $158 million over a five-year period — a $32 million drop. For perspective, consider that Towns will earn less than $27 million his first four seasons in the league.

Can what a player potentially earns affect his attitude and performance? Well, you could ask Jimmy Butler, who has stated more than once that the Wolves’ disinclination to tear up his current contract and pay him more was a prominent part of his decision to ask for a trade.

The longer Butler stays, the more it could also impact Karl-Anthony Towns, who has $32 million riding on this season. (Brace Hemmelgarn / USA TODAY Sports)

The fact that Butler’s self-proclaimed reason for leaving is lack of salary commitment in Minnesota, and that he is currently not playing well alongside Towns, who needs to perform at an All-NBA level to get his own super-max money from the Wolves, is yet another of many reasons why a Butler trade needs to happen sooner rather than later. Even the appearance of a financial conflict of interest among two teammates who don’t want to play with each other is not a good look.

Whatever the reason, Towns is in a funk right now. His too-often shoddy defense reached a new nadir last Wednesday night in Toronto, when he frequently torpedoed his team’s pick-and-roll defense with half-hearted perimeter switching, a lack of alertness on transition plays and box-outs on the boards, and a general lassitude at both ends of the court that was too blatant to go unnoticed.

Not coincidentally, KAT’s most active and aggressively alert defense of the season happened in the second half of the Indiana game, when the Wolves put on what is thus-far their peak performance of the young season.

Does that mean Towns needs to be coddled? Absolutely not. On the contrary, trading Butler removes his case for martyrdom and increases his accountability.

Look, this isn’t rocket science. Barring a cataclysmic trade, collapse, or injury, Karl-Anthony Towns is the polestar of the Wolves future over the next six seasons he is under contract, and Jimmy Butler is gone by February if not this week.

Even Thibs has belatedly begun to embrace this reality, going out of his way to praise KAT’s overall play versus Indiana, while slowly but surely moving his team away from “Butler ball.” The Wolves are playing at a faster pace (from 22nd last season to ninth this year), shooting more threes (from 30th to 21st) and utilizing their bench more often (again 30th to 21st) and more effectively.

To fully embrace the future, however, you’ve got to let go of the past. That means turning the page on Jimmy Butler. Once that happens, we will finally be able to concentrate more on basketball and less on soap operas. Long suffering fans of this franchise deserve at least that much.

(Top photo: Brad Rempel / USA TODAY Sports)