What happens if the Timberwolves don’t trade Jimmy Butler?

Jimmy Butler told the Timberwolves to trade him by Friday. Given what he pulled at practice this week, what’s on the table if the team resists?

If you are a person that exists in the world and you are currently over the age of 60, you remember exactly where you were on the days that JFK and MLK got shot and on the night Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon.

If you are an NBA fan proficient in social media and you are over the age seven, you remember where you were during the DeAndre Jordan Hostage Crisis, the J.R. Smith Soup Incident, and now, the Jimmy Butler Practice Disaster.

Even a day later, the seething beauty of this event is only beginning to dawn on us.

If all that happened was Jimmy Butler walking late into practice for the team that is currently paying him many millions of dollars to not play basketball, checking himself into the practice along with four kind gentlemen from the end of the bench, turning into Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen the day they played Tony Kukoc in the 1992 Olympics during the practice, directing various expletive-laced tirades towards the four most important people in the organization who aren’t the owner throughout the practice, and then walking out of the practice like he owned the joint, that would be enough.

But no, oh no no no no…that’s but the half of it. Jimmy Butler pre-planned this entire charade, and then set it up such that he would give a prime-time interview on ESPN about the charade that he had orchestrated.

That’s, my friends, is some Machiavellian s— right there.

Since then, Jimmy has demanded that he be traded by the end of the week.

Now, we are here, where “here” is a place no organization ever wants to be in: held hostage by their star player. They mill probably have moved him by the time you read this.

We have to wonder though: what happens if they don’t? Let’s go through the possible scenarios:

5. Jimmy and the organization make up, and he happily suits up for the team on opening night.

Likelihood: < 1.0%

When I’m not writing about basketball, I’m teaching children. One of the things that I teach children is math, and one of the math things that I teach children about is functions. A function is a thing that you can usually solve, such that if you put a particular number into the function, it gives you a particular answer. Sometimes though, a function doesn’t give you answers for every number. With these, when you put a number in, you get nothing, and the function is undefined. It’s like it can’t exist.

Since children are more apt to remember things that aren’t as boring as that last paragraph, I tell them that if they put a number into a function that leaves the function undefined, the universe will explode and we’ll all die, so they shouldn’t do this.

Butler suiting up for the Wolves on opening night would be like an undefined function: it’s not going to happen, and if it did, everybody in Minnesota would surely perish.

4. Jimmy gets sent home

Likelihood: 2.5%

The Wolves wouldn’t exactly be breaking new ground here. The Knicks sent Joakim Noah home after a practice last year where he reportedly nearly went full-Carlesimo on Jeff Hornacek. It seemed to work out fine, other than the time when Noah decided to take off all of his clothes in the middle of Venice.

If the Wolves send Butler home, he may take off his clothes in public, but it is just as likely that he keeps his clothes on, scalps a court-side ticket to Minnesota’s home opener against Cleveland, and heckles Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins like that creepy guy who danced on the dugout in A League of Their Own, except instead of Towns or Wiggins chucking a ball at him in response, they would walk up to Thibs and start crying like the little fat kid in that movie after Tom Hanks yells at him.

The Wolves likely don’t want this to happen.

3. Jimmy shows up to a different team and demands to play

Likelihood: 5.0%

This sounds far fetched, but it’s really not.

If Butler flew himself to LA or Miami or Brooklyn, showed up to their practice facility on an off day, and threatened to re-enact the Minnesota practice every day until they officially traded for him, that would put the team in question in a fairly uncomfortable position.

They could politely ask him to leave, but as Woj said, “Jimmy’s back,” and Jimmy does not respond to polite requests.

They could also have security escort him from the building, but not only would this start of any potential long-term relationship on the wrong foot, but it would send a message around the league that the Clippers, Heat, Nets or whoever wasn’t a player-friendly organization. That’s not what you want to be in 2018. No no no.

This might be Jimmy’s best bet to get dealt. Don’t discount it.

2. Jimmy kidnaps Thibs

Likelihood: 8.0%

This is the scenario the Wolves would probably most like to happen. It kills two birds with one stone: Butler will get arrested and likely convicted, and the Wolves rid themselves of the person in the organization standing in the way of a Jimmy divorce. They’ll be forced to hire a new coach while Thibs is detained, and by the time he’s found, they’ll have a P.R.-friendly way to part ways with their former head man.

There’s only one problem. Have you ever seen a kidnapping movie where the person doing the kidnapping inevitably falls in love with the person they’ve kidnapped? Of course you have, because that’s the plot of like literally every kidnapping movie ever that doesn’t involve Liam Neeson. Or maybe it’s just the plot of this Alicia Silverstone movie I vaguely remember seeing when I was a kid. One or the other.

Either way, this would definitely happen here. Before Butler even finished tying the rope around Thibs’ ankles, he’d convince his erstwhile partner in crime to give it one more shot. He’d remind him how they once went head to head with the great Miami Heat juggernaut thanks to Butler playing approximately 857 minutes over a five-game series. He’d make him remember that it used to be them against the world and that if one of them was going to drive off that cliff, they were both going, hand in hand, hearts aligned.

You had me at hello, Tom. You had me at hello.

1. Jimmy goes full Cape Fear on Karl-Anthony Towns

Likelihood: 87.5%

If you just go by Andrew Wiggins’ shot profile, you’d think he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the lamp. Clearly though, there is more to this young man than meets the eye.

The “dap” heard round the world — the one Wiggins apparently offered up to Butler following his excoriation on Wednesday — wasn’t the act of a clueless kid without an ounce of self-respect; it was a measure of self-preservation.

Wiggins knows he is dealing with someone who is, shall we say, not well. He knows the man who is at least momentarily still his teammate has a dark side masked by the boyish charm and calm demeanor he flashed in front of Rachel Nichols and the rest of the basketball-watching public. It lurks below the surface, ready to come out when those who are most endangered least expect it…those who would be foolish enough to doubt Jimmy’s full wrath, who would question his desire, who would brush aside concerns that s— is about to get real.

Kaaa-aaaarllll….come out, come out where-ever you areeeeee…

It’s almost too perfect. Minnesota is the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Do you know what you keep on a lake? A boat.

Karl-Anthony Towns might not have a wife and daughter, but if he did, he would definitely sink his own boat to protect them from a psychopathic Jimmy Butler. This is especially true given his new max contract, as he could surely afford to buy a new boat. Although after such an incident, it’s doubtful that he would want to.

Yeah.

Right.

The Wolves should probably trade Jimmy Butler.