Second Thoughts

Disgruntled Butler brings heat to court

Jimmy Butler, a guard for the Minnesota Timberwolves, drives to the basket past the Denver’s Paul Millsap during the first half of a game in April. Butler escalated his trade request drama Wednesday by challenging Coach Tom Thibodeau and a few players during practice.
Jimmy Butler, a guard for the Minnesota Timberwolves, drives to the basket past the Denver’s Paul Millsap during the first half of a game in April. Butler escalated his trade request drama Wednesday by challenging Coach Tom Thibodeau and a few players during practice.

Asking for a trade has not worked, so it seems Minnesota Timberwolves guard Jimmy Butler has moved to the next phase of his exit strategy.

Butler has been one of the lead stories in the NBA for three weeks after making his trade request to the Timberwolves, but on Wednesday he escalated the situation by showing up to practice and making quite the scene.

Butler apparently challenged Coach Tom Thibodeau, General Manager Scott Layden, and young cornerstone players Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins at practice, where he apparently took the third-stringers and beat the starters in a scrimmage. At one point, he reportedly yelled over to Layden, "you (expletive) need me," while beating up on the starters.

Later in the afternoon, Butler sat down with ESPN's Rachel Nichols for his first interview since his trade request, and explained, among other things, why practice went as it did, admitting "a lot" of the reports about his actions were true and explaining he was just being passionate and "brutally honest."

Butler said people will say he went about it the wrong way, but he believes he was justified in what he did, saying that's what you get from him and he is just being honest with how he feels. He said he wouldn't have taken any offense if any of his teammates had come up to him and confronted him about it and told him he went about it the wrong way.

This is all really a master class from Butler in using the only leverage he has to force the trade he's already asked for and not yet been granted. Butler can go in and be a disrupter in practice, all under the guise of passion for his return to the basketball court.

Hard heads

NFL Hall of Famer Larry Csonka hates helmets.

At least the kind that have been used for the past 60 years.

Csonka, known as one of football's all-time tough guys, said Monday at the Little Rock Touchdown Club in Little Rock that he thinks there would be far fewer concussions and head injuries at all levels of football if there had been a different mode of evolution from leather to hard-encased helmets.

Csonka, a five-time All-Pro fullback and two-time Super Bowl winner with the Miami Dolphins, said that if football players still used leather helmets, or something softer, leading with the head would be penalty enough.

"When they left leather helmets, they made a big mistake, as far as injuries are concerned," Csonka said before addressing the Little Rock Touchdown Club. "There must be some middle ground that can be incorporated."

Csonka, 71, said he suffered between six to eight concussions in his first three seasons, with hard-encased helmets, and most of them were minor, except for the one that left him hospitalized for several days with a broken blood vessel on the outside of his brain.

"It was bad," he said.

Csonka survived and thrived when he learned to use his 6-3, 235-pound frame to punish tacklers, especially those in the secondary, with forearm shivers and shoulder blows.

"I learned to stop punching people in the face with my nose," Csonka said.

Sports on 10/11/2018

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