monsterpile wrote:thedoper wrote:longstrangetrip wrote:WolvesFan21 wrote:8th seed means nothing. Having Butler for 2 years means nothing unless you win a Championship. If Butler leaves the trade will have been an utter failure and that is looking likely.
It seems like you are saying that the only way to judge a trade positively is if it results in a championship. If that's true, 99.5% of all trades must be deemed failures! And it presumes that we were easily on track to win a championship with LaVine and Dunn, and our 31 wins the previous year makes that a preposterous presumption. I would agree that if we had given up some very good players, and it didn't result in a significant improvement in wins, that would constitute failure. But we gave up LaVine and Dunn, two names that will never be enshrined in the Naismith Hall of Fame in Springfield...and we improved by 16 wins! It's baffling to me how that cannot be judged as successful. As I said before, even if Butler walks this franchise is much improved but this trade because 1) we swap Dunn's ineffective minutes for Tyus' productive minutes and 2) we get to spend $20 million plus on a player who is almost certain to be more effective than Zach Lavine. And if Butler stays, this deal looks even better.
I can find many, many areas to criticize the actions and style of both PBO and coach Thibodeau. This trade is not one of them though in that it almost single-handedly resulted in a 50% increase in wins, and I'm going to continue to give the much-maligned Thibs his due when deserved (it won't be often, I can assure you :)).
Got to give you lots of credit on this take LST. You've been probably the most vocal critic of Thibs on the board but as you said, the Butler deal is not the anti-Thibs hill to die on. I'm still pro-Wiggins as much as anyone here and swapping Wiggins for Lavine in the deal still would have been a win for Thibs. Butler is that good, and the salary space around Towns is that important.
I need to give props to LST also.
First of all, I don't think the Butler deal would be a reason for firing Thibodeau even if it turns out to be a mistake in retrospect. That deal is the least of my concerns when it comes to Thibodeau. I think the trade, at the time, was a reasonable move intended to improve the team immediately, increasing the odds of a playoff appearance last season and accelerating the team's development. Evaluating the trade in my mind doesn't turn on whether the Wolves win a championship. Obviously, winning a championship last season or this season would cement the trade as a brilliant success. But it could still turn out to be a success even if the Wolves fall short of that lofty goal.
As I see it, evaluating the trade's success turns instead on (1) how well the Wolves did last season relative to reasonable expectations, and (2) what the trade does to the longer term trajectory of the team in light of the alternatives (some combination of LaVine, Dunn, the 7th pick or other moves with those assets). I consider barely making the 8th seed last season over a team that played without one of its top two players most of the season to be a disappointment relative to reasonable expectations. From the outset, the trade risked the longer term trajectory of the team given that Butler was 28 year old with a history of missing lots of games, was 6 years older than young talent he was being paired with, and had only 2 guaranteed years left on his contract. As we look back now after one season with Butler, it does not look like Butler had a positive impact on the play of any of the younger players on the team. And in typical fashion, he missed 23 games last season (just slightly more games than his average). Meanwhile, we've all seen reports that Butler doesn't like playing with the Wolves most talented player, KAT, and that he's unhappy with the Wolves and looking to move on next summer. Those reports are troubling to say the least. If Butler does indeed leave without as a free agent next summer, leaving dissension and disappointment in his wake, then Thibodeau's reasonable short-term gamble to acquire Butler for promising younger talent and draft assets will have been a bad one in my view. Even worse if KAT is driven off by all the Butler drama.
So what would success look like? For me, it would be something like the following: (1) KAT agreeing to an extension this Fall, (2) the Wolves finishing in the top 4 this season followed by a first round series victory, (3) Butler re-signing with the Wolves next summer followed by comparable top-4 finishes and first round playoff series wins. For those things to happen, (1) Butler is going to have to patch things up with his teammates and stay healthy, (2) KAT and Wiggins will have to improve over last season (KAT defensively and Wiggins on both sides of the ball), and (3) the Wolves bench will have to be significantly better than last season, and (4) Thibodeau will have to do a better job coaching. All this is clearly possible, but I'm not optimistic right now.
When the Butler deal was done, I said it was not a deal I would have done, but I also thought and said it was a reasonable deal. It may yet turn out to be a very good deal. We'll know after this season. But I would have gone with the approach the Sixers and Celtics have taken. Their approach has been to build organically, amassing draft picks, adding young talent and being patient with that young talent. I think that's the better approach and more apt to produce sustainable success. Adding a player like Butler six years older than your young core and giving up other young promising assets to do so seems fundamentally flawed.
