Five hundred and six days ago — draft night 2017 — Timberwolves coach and president Tom Thibodeau executed a landmark trade to acquire Jimmy Butler, his star pupil from the duo’s time together in Chicago.

The transaction was bold; it placed a smattering of the organization’s assets on the table during a time when comparable franchises were content to wait out the Bay Area behemoth.

At the same time, it reeled in a competitor who is arguably the second-best to ever inhabit Target Center’s home locker room. It was an analysis of strategy that emphasized experience, veteran savvy and present success at the expense of a more patient and developmental directive.

In a fleeting sense, Thibodeau’s bet paid dividends.

The Wolves won 47 games in 2017-18 – 16 more than they did during his inaugural year in Minnesota. What’s more, the group racked up an impressive .627 winning percentage in contests that Butler was active; a mark that – extrapolated over an entire season – predicts a 50-plus win team.  

But after – and even during – a swift postseason loss to the Houston Rockets, acrimony and angst began to rear their ugly heads. Respected reports of dissatisfaction intertwined public discontent from players.

The summer-long spectacle culminated in a meeting during which Butler requested to be traded. Then he crashed a practice and talked about it on TV. Then he eased his way back into the season while the Wolves got off to a disastrous 4-9 start – including their most recent 0-5 road trip. 

Altogether, he played 69 regular-season games, one playoff series and 2,695 minutes of action in a Timberwolves uniform. On Saturday morning, the two-time All NBA wing slipped from the team’s grasp as a second trade in consecutive seasons sent him to the Philadelphia 76ers in exchange for Dario Saric, Robert Covington, Jerry Bayless and the 76ers’ 2020 second-round pick.

Replacing a player as capable and accomplished as Butler is a goliath burden to bear, one made even more difficult by the scarcity of talent at his position on the Wolves’ roster and around the league at large.

Butler was able to utilize a skill set that his teammates lacked in asserting his structural value. A number of those abilities will be all but impossible for this overhauled group to match right away, while others could be masked more effectively; their success in these regards will greatly influence what the Wolves can achieve during the rest of the season to come.  

Where Butler will be Missed

Throughout the 2016-17 campaign – one before Butler came to the Twin Cities – the Wolves’ defense allowed opponents to score 109.1 points per-100 possessions, according to NBA.com.

Last season, after adding the All-Defensive team wing, that mark improved slightly to 108.4. But in a league where offensive improvement has outpaced defensive adjustments, the team’s rank hardly improved.  

Through 13 games of a brand new season, they again land toward the bottom of the league (28th).

It hasn’t been the jump that many anticipated, but much of their shortcomings have come in the absence of Butler – whether he’s been sidelined due to injury or on the bench for a stint of rest. In fact, when he was on the court last season, the Wolves allowed just 105.1 points per-100 possessions. Comparatively, that mark was 107.7 when Andrew Wiggins was on the floor in 2017-18 and 110.4 during Wiggins’ prior campaign.

Butler’s ability to shadow an opposing team’s premier perimeter threat is an invaluable skill that few in the league can mirror – its importance was magnified on a team stretched for defensive talent on the wing. And as a result of his incessant hustle, he ranked fourth around the NBA in steals per game, fifth in deflections and second in loose balls recovered last season.  

But under a coach who runs an intricate defense built on educated and decisive action, Butler’s schematic competence may have been his most relevant contribution.

Given that his defensive additions were – at the most basic level detailed above – twofold, so will be the Wolves’ proclivity to excel on that end in his absence.

Canvassing the league, there are few competitors as capable as Butler in man-to-man containment. But Covington, the 27-year-old small forward that the Wolves’ acquired from the 76ers, is better suited than most.

With Covington’s acquisition, Tyus Jones is no longer the team’s only advanced-stats darling. Covington ranked first among all small forwards by ESPN‘s real plus/minus and defensive real plus/minus last season. He’s big (6-foot-9, 215 pounds), long (7’2″ wingspan) and athletic.

In all likelihood, a level of comfort similar to what they enjoyed last season will be difficult to come by, but Covington is a good place to start.

Where the Wolves may be set-up to more effectively subdue this transition is in the area of strategic understanding. Not through a one-to-one swap of talent, but with a combination of capable alternatives.

By exchanging Jamal Crawford and Nemanja Bjelica for Derrick Rose and Anthony Tolliver during the offseason, Thibodeau made it clear – through what he has said and the players he identified – that defensive intellect is paramount. Though neither new arrival is a heralded individual option, both provide maximum effort and systematic knowledge – Rose through his tenure with the Bulls and Tolliver from his similar experience with the Pistons.

Beyond these two options, the Wolves have populated their rotation with players like Jones, Gorgui Dieng, Josh Okogie and now Saric – all have excelled to varying degrees on the defensive end. As a totality, even without Butler, the team appears comparably suited to execute its coach’s desired action.

It helps that they’ve set such a low bar.

While the defensive end was where Butler’s worth was supposed to manifest the most, he was also a proverbial captain of the Wolves’ fourth-ranked offense a season ago. The newest member of the 76ers scored 22.2 points on average while dishing out 4.9 assists per night in 2017-18 – combining the two, Butler accounted for at least 32 points per game. 

In general, though, they have the resources to fill in the gaps in his production. In 2016-17 – behind three players 22 years of age or younger – the Wolves ranked 10th by offensive rating (ORTG), scoring 2.7 fewer points per 100 possessions than they did after Butler’s arrival.

So far this season – through all of the injuries and dysfunction – the Wolves’ offense sits at 17th. Without Butler, it’s possible that a more egalitarian approach will be adopted to take advantage of the group’s depth of talent. And with Covington and Saric added to the fold, the Wolves should be able to continue their three-point revolution. The former is attempting 6.3 shots from deep per 36 minutes this season, connecting at a 39 percent clip; though the latter is off to a slower than usual start, he’s taking 6.4 3s per-36 minutes and making them at a 30 percent rate (well below his 2017-18 mark of 39 percent).

Butler was an undoubtedly potent addition, but it’s not unruly to expect the offense to remain a positive – and improve on their sluggish start – moving forward.

A more meaningful aspect of his repertoire on that side of the ball was end-of-game production. After a Nov. 11, 2017 loss to the Golden State Warriors, Butler memorably exclaimed, “I’m going back to putting the ball in the basket,” referencing the backseat he had been taking in the Wolves’ game plan to that point.

The team’s ability to score late in games is a story that transformed simultaneously.

Before Butler took the reins as alpha, the Wolves had noticeable difficulty finding buckets to finish off an opponent – their 99.3 points per 100 possessions in fourth quarters ranked 25th in the NBA. But afterward, they improved by more than 13 points by the very same measure to rank among the league’s best units.

Butler averaged three field-goal attempts in the fourth prior to his proclamation and 5.1 in its aftermath; his ball dominance became extremely predictable – most prominently in clutch situations – but it proved to be somewhat necessary based on the results.

Still, the Wolves’ plethora of talent should be able to pick up some of the slack. While Butler led the team with 6.7 fourth-quarter points on average, his .413 field-goal percentage was only better than Crawford and Teague in the same situations. Conversely, Taj Gibson (.643), Towns (.544) and Rose (.526) each amassed elite marks with less than 12 minutes to play.

Rather than ammo for Butler critiques – as the shots he took were more abundant and difficult – this is an observation of talented surrogates.

But the group ranked a measly 24th in fourth-quarter offense in 2016-17 (fifth in 2017-18). Though their surrounding talent has improved in the meantime, this is an area by which they have struggled throughout Thibodeau’s tenure. Looking ahead, Butler’s departure forecasts a finish somewhere in between their prior two campaigns – just how close to one end of the spectrum will disproportionately dictate their success.

Before he could even be asked about Butler’s trade request at the team’s preseason media day, Timberwolves newcomer Luol Deng expressed his belief that, “Everything that’s going on – I think that will bring us closer.”

After this tumultuous start – baked in a cloud of trade demands, general soreness and reported frustration – a galvanization of sorts should be somewhat expected. 

But it’s still a young and inexperienced team; one that lost its best two-way player and will be carried on the floor by unproven leaders. Butler’s authority on both sides of the ball – seen most often through lock-down fervor on defense and quantitative end-of-game creation on offense – are areas that the Wolves will be hard-pressed to duplicate.

In all likelihood, it will take the team – and a player like Towns – more than one regular season to fill the walloping void of Butler’s demonstrative footprint. Nonetheless, the circus is over; at long last, the Wolves can focus on developing their young, All-NBA center and pursuing moves that maximize potential.

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Charlie Johnson

Charlie is a Timberwolves contributor for ZoneCoverage. Formerly, he wrote about the Wolves for SB Nation.

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