Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor says Jimmy Butler “had an agenda” coming into the season.
Taylor adds that Minnesota “wasted some time” trying to convince the All-Star shooting guard to recant his trade request, which was fulfilled last week.
“We have to play at least 10 games and then we would see which teams were meeting their goals, which teams weren’t and the teams that weren’t we thought we'd have a better chance to negotiate." T-Wolves owner Glen Taylor on trading Butler, Thibs' status: https://t.co/wlrpiRsDbE
— Chris Hine (@ChristopherHine) November 14, 2018
Taylor believes the T-Wolves, health-permitting, can still be a “darn good team.”
Per the Star Tribune:
“It just appeared that they weren’t working together as a team or as a unit the way that they should’ve. I can’t exactly answer why,” Taylor said. “The only thing that was different that we had was Jimmy’s position of leaving the team. Maybe that was affecting guys more than they even knew themselves.”
[Taylor] said the Wolves’ slow start and miserable 0-5 road trip wasn’t the main catalyst behind trading Butler. But Taylor added the trade might have gone down around this time anyway, the product of an agreement among him, the coaching staff and Butler to play at least 10 games of the regular season and evaluate where the Wolves were and what the league’s temperature was relative to making a deal for Butler.
“We have to play at least 10 games and then we would see which teams were meeting their goals, which teams weren’t and the teams that weren’t we thought we would have a better chance to negotiate,” Taylor said. “We were preparing ourselves to do this anyway. But certainly, I guess if we would’ve won all five games out there, it might have been different.”
Taylor said he was “not satisfied” with the 4-9 start of the season, though he added, “I don’t think it was all under our control. I wish it would’ve been more under our control, but I think we saw Jimmy had an agenda and we had to work around that.”
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