The Minnesota Timberwolves locker room felt a collective sense of relief after the two-month Jimmy Butler saga came to an end on Saturday with news of his trade to the Philadelphia 76ers. Veteran forward Anthony Tolliver described the ordeal as a cloud hovering over the team, one that has finally been lifted as the team finalizes the swap in a call with the league office to make it official.
According to Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic, the losing coupled with Butler's looming trade were two stressful situations that were wearing on this team.
“Whenever you’re struggling and you have adversity going on, it just kind of doubles the weight,” said Tolliver, who noted that Butler's trade “from a moving on standpoint, it’s definitely a good thing,” according to Dane Moore of ESPN 1500.
The Timberwolves got three-and-D specialist Robert Covington, forward Dario Saric and an injury-prone Jerryd Bayless in return for Butler, but Tolliver expects the full weight of the “nightly expectations” to fall on the recently-extended Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins as the team's “max players.”
Tolliver stressed there was “never really a doubt” that Karl-Anthony Towns was the team’s “best player” — something much easier said with Butler out of the picture.
Minnesota now has a clean slate to work with after 13 games, despite starting out with a 4-9 record to begin the season. Head coach Tom Thibodeau will once again put Towns and Wiggins at the forefront of this team and ask them to earn their extension money night in and night out, now given supporting pieces that can stretch the floor and make them more effective moving forward.
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