Yahoo Sports Jimmy Butler on return to Minnesota: 'I might actually join in on the boos'
The Philadelphia 76ers are going to visit the Minnesota Timberwolves on Saturday and we already know what’s going to happen.
Jimmy Butler is going to get booed. Every Minnesota fan in the Target Center will be jeering the Sixers star at the top of their lungs. People watching the game from home will boo through their TVs. A low “boooooo” might quietly emanate from the nighttime skyline of downtown Minneapolis.
Everyone knows this will happen, and that includes Butler. Apparently, he might even join in.
Jimmy Butler says he’s ready to be booed in Minnesota
"They’re going to boo me,” Butler said in an interview with The New York Times’ Marc Stein. “I would boo me, too. I’m not going to lie to you. I would boo the heck out of myself. ... I might actually join in on the boos.”
That’s a reasonable stance for Butler, who has seemed pretty self-aware about his image over the last year. It’s hard to think of an NBA player in recent memory that has incinerated as many bridges on his way out of towns as Butler, who seemingly did everything he could to humiliate and antagonize the Timberwolves into trading him.
Butler clearly had problems with both the person in charge of the team and its stars, and didn’t try very hard to hide it. He eventually forced a trade that sent Dario Saric and Robert Covington to Minnesota. That made him a villain, something he told Stein he relishes:
“Oh, I love it,” Butler said in a phone interview, throwing in a profanity for emphasis. “I love it. I love it. Who wants to be loved all the time?
“It’s O.K. It’s fine. I don’t need everybody to like me. I know who I am. I can’t say that enough. I know what I’m about. I know where my heart is. People will say, ‘He’s this way, or he’s that way,’ but nobody knows except for the people around me every day. Ask them and they’ll tell you differently.”
Butler has taken a step back in the pecking order with Philadelphia, averaging 18.8 points and 5.2 rebounds per game as a Sixer. Both marks would represent his lowest marks since 2014 if extrapolated over a full season. Of course, Butler still has his highly regarded defense, and, at the end of the day, he simply makes the team a lot more interesting.
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