All has been quiet with the Timberwolves for nearly month, which feels like a lifetime considering the first half of the summer was filled with controversy and speculation about Jimmy Butler’s future and his relationship with Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins.
Alas, the peaceful times are once again clouded thanks to a simple, yet impactful, comment Butler made to someone on Instagram. We can thank World Wide Wob on Twitter for showing his 178,000 followers this picture of Butler and his buddies, with Butler using one of his typical sarcastic captions to mess with his guys.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BmbPAfmBHSb
Butler’s caption is clearly a joke about being the leader of his buddies, and it has nothing to do with Towns or Wiggins. But as you can see in the screen grab below, someone made it about that and Butler responded.
A couple of things here.
It’s hard to blame the fan for reacting the way they did because this has been a stressful summer for fans, and Butler has done nothing to ease the tension. But it’s also within Butler’s rights to comment back, although he would’ve been a lot better off letting this go rather than writing back with something that leaves the door open for more speculation.
The whole “you show them since you have the answers” comment is being interpreted as Butler admitting that he can’t get through to Towns and Wiggins. It might be a simple jab back at the fan, but because it’s been reported that Butler is fed up with Towns’ attitude and he doesn’t like Wiggins’ work ethic, this is where Butler’s reply was destined to go.
All of this could be squashed like a bug on if Butler, Towns or Wiggins would make a public statement about it. Instead, all three have been mostly silent with the exception of Towns saying he has a “lot of things that have to talked about,” which also made the situation stickier.
Also, someone needs to remind Butler that it’s 2018, a year in which it is now acceptable for a “grown ass man” to cry. I teared up watching Interstellar last night and I don’t feel bad about it at all.
