As people around the NBA try and make sense of Jimmy Butler's orchestrated antics during Wednesday's Timberwolves practice, the players themselves had the day off. Instead of resting on their laurels, or throwing cupcake emojis in Karl-Anthony Towns' IG comments, they attended a players-only meeting, called by—you guessed it—Jimmy Butler.
The meeting comes with less than a week before the start of the 2018-19 season, and it's looking increasingly more likely that Butler will be in a Timberwolves uniform when it does. Naturally, others spoke up at the meeting, but it was "led" by Jimmy, who—after Wednesday's shenanigans—appears to now run the Timberwolves franchise.
Teammate Jeff Teague flat-out denied the players' meeting happened and called it fake news:
"I run this shit," Jimmy reportedly said as he was leaving the practice floor. Based off what we've seen, he wasn't being figurative.
Imagine blowing up at all your coworkers, including your boss's boss, then call a meeting with the same coworkers to talk more ish about your boss's boss—in this case GM Scott Layden, who was supposed to be on the side of Jimmy's BFF coach Tom Thibodeau. It's hard to sort through Jimmy's reasoning here, but maybe he explained it better to his teammates.
NBA insider Shams Charania says "players left the meeting believing that Jimmy Butler would be part of the franchise going into next week as the regular season begins.
However, the guy who writes the checks wanted Butler gone long ago, perhaps because Karl-Anthony Towns needed those assurances before signing his massive extension. And now the Wolves are in a weird limbo where no one seems to know what to do, including the people supposedly in charge. That means Jimmy's in charge.
