The Whiteboard: Jimmy Butler finally got traded. What now?

Jimmy Butler is out of Minnesota, which means it’s time to catch up on some other big NBA storylines materializing this season.

Jimmy Butler has finally been traded from the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Philadelphia 76ers swooped in and got him, and suddenly, that was that. Now that Butler has finally been traded there’s a void in the NBA discussion sphere. Luckily, there are still plenty of things to talk about this season, and plenty of questions that need answering.

First up has to be regarding the Houston Rockets. Houston is 5-7 thus far, and after I identified their tough upcoming six-game stretch as a crucial one for the Rockets they went and dropped the first two straight of those games before beating the Pacers on Sunday. This is a wholesale disaster, and that’s even before we get to Chris Paul’s rough shooting numbers.

Also, Adrian Wojnarowski reported on Saturday that Houston could already be looking to part ways with Carmelo Anthony. It is Nov. 12, and the Houston Rockets are a mess already. Can the Rockets dig themselves out of this deepening hole?

Here’s another question for the Western Conference: are the Sacramento Kings actually good? It seemed dubious that both the Kings and De’Aaron Fox would continue doing so well, and Sacramento has come back down to earth a bit, going from 6-3 to 7-6.

Those last three losses have come to the Milwaukee Bucks and Toronto Raptors, currently the best two teams in the East, and the Los Angeles Lakers. The Kings did beat the Timberwolves in that stretch, and their coming stretch of Western Conference games will be enlightening.

Over on the Eastern Conference side of things, the Washington Wizards are a shocking 3-9 through their first 12 games. Washington managed to barely hold off the Miami Heat to pick up that third win on Saturday. The Wizards have yet to win two straight games this year.

If this picks up, how long until the Wiz blow it up, or at least make an earth-shattering deal by Wizards standards? It seems untenable to keep this entire core together for a team that’s winning 25 percent of its games.

Finally, let’s move to Toronto. Will Raptors fans still be able to cheer for Kawhi Leonard next season, or will he have moved on to somewhere else? And, the follow-up question there, what would it take for Kawhi to stay in Toronto?

Thus far this season it’s hard not to crown the Raptors as the early favorite to win the Eastern Conference. Would a Finals appearance keep Leonard in Canada? How important are off-court factors in all of this? How does Uncle Dennis feel about the cold, and about poutine?

All of these questions will be huge, especially north of the border, for the rest of the year. It seems like there couldn’t be many better situations for Kawhi than the one he’s in right now, but there’s a lot of time until he has to make that decision in the summer.

All of those questions, and several more, mean even without the Jimmy Butler deal there’s a lot of mystery and excitement coming in the NBA.

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