Tuesday 19th March 2024,
The Hoop Doctors

Jimmy Butler Denies Report He’ll Sit Out to Force Trade from Timberwolves

jimmy butler

The Minnesota Timberwolves’ season continues to get weird.

Derrick Rose dropping a career-high 50 points on Wednesday was strange enough. Of course, though, no day would be complete without another wrinkle in the Jimmy Butler saga.

The Athletic’s Shams Charania and Jon Krawczynski initially reported that Butler would miss the Wolves’ game against the Jazz as a means of forcing the team’s hand in trade talks:

Shortly thereafter, however, Butler denied the rumor, telling ESPN’s Rachel Nichols his absence would be strictly health-related:

ESPN.com’s Adrian Wojnarowski added that the plan is for Butler to travel with the Timberwolves on their impending trip to face the Golden State Warriors:

Meanwhile, Charania and Krawczynski stand by their initial reporting on the Butler matter:

Good luck making sense of all this. It’s absolutely wild.

From the outside looking in, it seems like ESPN and The Athletic are dealing with two different, opposing sides of the story. That happens in these instances. Perhaps Butler will play on Friday against the Warriors. Or maybe he won’t be deemed healthy enough to roll.

Either way, despite his denial, we cannot completely dismiss the reporting from Charania and Krawczynski. Both have been all over this situation since Day 1. If they say Butler is sitting by his own hand, that could be true.

Is he out of action to expedite the trade process, or is he, in fact, just trying to make sure his body’s right as the season wears on? We can’t be sure. And so it goes with this soap opera. It doesn’t seem like anyone, the parties directly involved included, can get a clear handle on this situation.

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