The Jimmy Butler saga has officially come to an end after Monday's call with the league office to finalize the trade between the Minnesota Timberwolves and Philadelphia 76ers. Wolves owner Glen Taylor spoke of the matter shortly after his return package arrived in town, pointing out that Butler had to be moved, as his status with the team started to become an obstacle.
“It just appeared that they weren’t working together as a team or as a unit the way that they should’ve. I can’t exactly answer why,” said Taylor, according to Chris Hine of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “The only thing that was different that we had was Jimmy’s position of leaving the team. Maybe that was affecting guys more than they even knew themselves.”
Taylor later pinpointed the recent five-game skid and a poor 4-9 start to the season as main motivators for making the move, knowing the fantasy of starting out the season well to convince Jimmy Butler to stay was too far fetched to come to fruition.
“We have to play at least 10 games and then we would see which teams were meeting their goals, which teams weren’t and the teams that weren’t we thought we would have a better chance to negotiate,” said Taylor of the negotiations. “We were preparing ourselves to do this anyway. But certainly, I guess if we would’ve won all five games out there, it might have been different.”
Jimmy Butler was eventually traded to the Sixers alongside center Justin Patton for Robert Covington, Dario Saric, Jarryd Bayless and a 2022 second-round pick, a return Taylor and co. intend to use to keep the team in contention for another playoff appearance.
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