Minnesota Timberwolves: 2 massive Jimmy Butler trade ideas to Clippers

Minnesota Timberwolves four-time All-Star Jimmy Butler has only played in seven of the first 10 games in the regular season, and every seems to be worried going into the Wolves’ game on Monday night against the Los Angeles Clippers.

The Minnesota Timberwolves‘ Jimmy Butler has had a few destinations in mind during his trade frenzy with the Wolves’ front office, with the Los Angeles Clippers being one of reported preferred spots.

And as we’ve noted here at Dunking With Wolves in the past, even though Butler is intrigued with landing on a handful of specific teams, he’s likely to be traded anywhere in the league at any point. (Click here to read our 30 Jimmy Butler trade scenarios with every team in the NBA.)

As previously noted, Butler sat out for his third game this season on Sunday in a 30-point loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. Our own Ben Beecken wrote up the unfortunate details of the loss.

The Timberwolves are obviously struggling with not having Butler’s talents on the floor, but must be internally doing better without him there as well – which is causing massive conflict on what exactly needs to be done with Butler.

The Wolves are currently tied with the Los Angeles Lakers as the No. 11 seed in the Western Conference at 4-6. And with a game against the Clippers tonight, we may see the Wolves drop even lower thanks to the possibility of Butler sitting out due to “general soreness.”

Nick Friedell of ESPN illustrates the Butler “soreness” drama in its full capacity below:

"Via, ESPN “I let them know,” Butler said after Friday’s 116-99 loss to the Golden State Warriors. “They don’t know how my body feels. So if I’m nicked up, then you can count on that. I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes. I don’t know what we plan on doing tomorrow. Obviously, I got to get some treatment along with a lot of other guys. But we’ll see whenever Sunday and Monday gets here.” “I’m not worried about no deal,” Butler said. “Injury or not, I got to take care of myself. I realize they have a job to do as an organization; I have one to do as a player. But if I’m not in the right with my body to go out there and do it, I don’t want to get hurt. I’ve been hurt almost every year now, so we’re going to take things with caution.” “I know it’s true,” Butler said when the reporter acknowledged the trade demand factored into concern over his injury status. “So stop asking me questions about if I’m going to sit out or not. If I’m going to sit out, you probably won’t talk to me on the day I sit out; but if I do, then I do and you can create a story around it with a lot of made-up stuff like y’all normally do.”"

While Butler is justified in wanting a healthy body going into the season, this doesn’t necessarily seem fair for the Minnesota Timberwolves, who can’t showcase that Butler is still an All-Star this season for teams that are interested with him pulling himself out of the rotation.

We certainly won’t ‘make up any stories’ to go off of Butler saying he’s sitting out so he can rest his body – whether the Wolves like it or not – but we will go into detail on potential trading partners with the Wolves.

We’ll do this because Butler is getting paid $20 million to choose to play when he wants for the Wolves, and if this was any other job, I’m pretty sure there would be a lawsuit by now.

While we created a trade scenario with the Washington Wizards yesterday, today I’ve created another trade piece centered around the Wolves’ Jimmy Butler, but this time sending him to the Wolves’ opponent later tonight.

Here are two trade scenarios that could send Jimmy Butler to the Los Angeles Clippers.