Tom Thibodeau doesn't want to trade Jimmy Butler, which is reasonable and insane

You guys aren’t going to believe this, but Tom Thibodeau apparently does not want to trade Jimmy Butler. As the Minnesota Timberwolves draw closer to opening training camp next week, though, the questions become: how much does that matter, and is it going to be his call to make?

Earlier this week, Butler made an unambiguous in-person request that Minnesota trade him to one of three preferred destinations, and ideally to one specific Southern California location. Even so, Thibodeau — the famously hard-charging head coach whose relentless pursuit of possession-by-possession, here-and-now success has resulted in him putting ultramarathon miles on the bodies of all of his most trusted lieutenants — reportedly remains resistant to shipping out the on-court sweat-equity avatar whom he helped build into an All-Star in Chicago, and who helped lead last year’s Wolves to the franchise’s first playoff appearance since 2004.

Wolves executives have “rebuffed” inquiries from rival teams about acquiring Butler, calling him “an elite player […] that the franchise intends to keep,” according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. But the guy who pays those executives’ salaries might not be so on board:

It is, to put it mildly, not exactly a world-class shock that Thibodeau would bristle at the idea of trading away the player whom he imported just one year ago at the cost of three lottery picks, and whose two-way presence was the single most important element in Minnesota transforming from a perennial sad sack into a playoff team last season. As I wrote Wednesday, Minnesota went 37-22 in Butler’s 59 games last year and 10-13 in the ones he missed, producing the point differential of a 61-win team with him on the court and a disastrous 29-win outfit when he was off it, according to Ben Falk’s stats at Cleaning the Glass.

It is possible that this year’s Wolves would coalesce into a playoff-caliber outfit even without Butler through some combination of factors — significant steps forward in non-scoring areas of the game from Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins, who are still just 22 and 23 years old, respectively; quality contributions from whichever present-day pieces would come to the Twin Cities in a Butler deal; a possible “addition by subtraction” lift after alleviating a toxic locker room dynamic that had gotten this contentious:

But considering just how little success Minnesota experienced before Butler’s arrival, and just how much the Wolves struggled without him last year, we’re going to need to see that before we can really believe it.

Consider: according to NBAwowy.com’s lineup data, in 794 minutes of Towns and Wiggins sharing the floor sans Butler, the Wolves got outscored by 3.3 points per 100 possessions (a point differential equivalent to the 24-win Dallas Mavericks) despite scoring like gangbusters because they conceded a staggering 116.3 points-per-100. Essentially, whenever Minnesota’s other two top players were on the court without their best one, opposing offenses performed like A Warriors Made Entirely Out of Stephs and KDs.

To be fair, young players like Wiggins and Towns can improve on defense with time, repetition, increased awareness and, most importantly, more consistent and consistently applied effort. Maybe moving on from Butler and putting the responsibility for leading the team squarely on their shoulders would bring that out of them. Still: that no-Jimmy number is not just bad, but the kind of galactically bad that will make a head coach and president of basketball operations think twice — or three times, or four, or a thousand — before sending away the one guy he believes can be the tourniquet that stops the hemorrhage of points.

And yet, you’d imagine Thibodeau would at least consider deals more seriously if he had significant offers to mull. Teams likely aren’t putting anything approaching premium assets on the table at this point, because they know that Butler’s request put Minnesota under siege mere days before the start of camp, and they believe they might be able to extract a four-time All-Star for a song.

It’s a reasonable negotiating position. If you’re the Los Angeles Clippers, New York Knicks or Brooklyn Nets — the three teams Butler has reportedly identified as ones with which he’d be willing to sign a new long-term contract after the end of this season, when he can enter unrestricted free agency — why would you open up your war chests now, when Minnesota’s over a barrel, when you could just play out the year, wait until summer, and make your max-deal pitch to Butler to try to import him without giving up any of your good players or future-draft goodies? Especially considering the feeling that five years and $190 million is a significant enough cost to bear for a player who has averaged 37.6 minutes per game over the last five seasons, has missed 15 or more games in four of the past five years, underwent surgery to repair a torn meniscus in February, and will turn 30 before opening night of the 2019-20 season.

(The counterargument there: Paul George. The Clippers’ Staples Center roommates, the Los Angeles Lakers, had the chance to swoop in and snag the All-Star swingman last summer, but didn’t, betting that his well-publicized interest in joining them would keep for a year. It didn’t. Things still worked out pretty OK for the Lakers this summer, all things considered, but still: would’ve been nice to have two All-Stars on the perimeter this year.)

That’s the thinly veiled subtext of Woj’s report, from the Wolves’ perspective: just because we’re bereaved in the wake of Butler’s request, that doesn’t make us saps. If you’re not going to make us an offer we can’t refuse, or at least an offer we can accept, then we’re not dealing … and, hell, while we’re at it, you have to take on Gorgui Dieng’s remaining $48 million, too! This is posturing — the act of a team desperate to find a foothold and some semblance of leverage in hopes of making the best of a bad situation.

In a vacuum, it’s completely sensible that the Wolves would want to stay calm and think slow throughout this process. They’re the ones with the All-NBA player to hawk, after all, the ones with the talent to maybe make a top-four push if they just stand pat, the ones who can offer Butler the richest possible long-term deal come year’s end. In the actual context of the world as the Wolves live in it, though — the clock ticking down before a media day for the ages in which Butler, Towns, Wiggins, Thibodeau and everyone else in Minnesota has to answer questions about how badly everything has blown up in everybody’s face, the very real possibility of losing a two-way linchpin for nothing come July, the increasingly evident schism between the franchise’s on-court and front-office decision-maker and the man who hired him — time’s not on their side. They have to act like it.

When the star tells you he’s not long for your city, believe him and do whatever you can to make lemonade, even if that means swallowing hard and getting less than you gave up. You don’t “rebuff” inquirers and demand they take on eight-figure backups as a conversation-starter. That isn’t a strategy; it’s a prayer lofted up to the basketball gods. We’ll soon find out whether they’re interested in answering and taking mercy. I’m not optimistic.

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Dan Devine is a writer and editor for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoosports.com or follow him on Twitter!

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