Jimmy Butler: Fatigue No Excuse for Minnesota

Jimmy Butler isn’t buying into the growing (if familiar) narrative that head coach Tom Thibodeau is running his stars into the ground.

The Minnesota Timberwolves “need to get in better shape if we’re tired,” suggests Butler.

Karl-Anthony Towns logged 48 minutes and Butler was on the court for 45 minutes in Tuesday night’s 118-112 overtime loss to the visiting Minnesota Timberwolves.

Per the Star Tribune:

“We need to get in better shape if we’re tired,” [Butler] said. “Do whatever it takes for this team, for this organization to win. If you’re tired, run some extra laps after practice.”

 

Wolves coach Tom Thibodeau steadfastly shortened his bench rotation to essentially three players these last two weeks while reserve forward Nemanja Bjelica has missed nine games because of sprained foot and a healthy Shabazz Muhammad has been dropped from it altogether.

 

“Minutes are minutes,” [Taj] Gibson said. “You just have to play through them. The game was about runs. I don’t know, you can say it’s the minutes, you can say a lot of different things.”