Jimmy Butler says that nobody cares he has ‘nicked up’, a term which he picked up from the coach Tom Thibodeau to downplay the significance of injuries. Butler is not complaining about it; he is just trying to explain it like this, as he knows the fact that sympathy is not available for any player during the NBA playoffs.
It does not matter he is less than two months removed from the surgery to get the meniscus in his right knee fixed. Or that he also has a sore shooting wrist, an injury which he refuses to acknowledge. But the league sources say that he suffered that injury during his 31-point performance in the Minnesota Timberwolves’ win or else go home regular-season finale. Butler, on the other hand, is pretending that the twist in his left ankle late in the first half of Saturday’s Game 3 did not happen.
Notably, the Timberwolves had traded Butler who led to reuniting him with the Thibodeau as they had waited way too long since tasting the success of playoff. They had planned to pair him along with Karl-Anthony Towns to form a combination of an instant winner team.
But in the Timberwolves’ first two playoff games, Butler and Towns no-showed as Kevin Garnett’s prime because Minnesota fell in 0-2 hole to top-seeded Houston Rockets. The Timberwolves’ two All-Stars came for the game 3, and suddenly it became a series after Minnesota’s 121-105 win at the Target Center.
After his 28-point, five-assist and seven-rebound performance in Timberwolves’ first playoff win since the 2004 Western Conference finals, Butler said, “I can tell you that over the last couple of days I got tired of my teammates telling me to be more aggressive. So I took it upon myself to do just that.”
