Timberwolves are now the team that Jimmy Butler never thought they could be

There are a few ironies coinciding with the return of Jimmy Butler to Target Center, a place where the Golden State Warriors forward has played sparingly since he uprooted the Timberwolves organization with a trade demand in 2018.

It will be the first time since 2021 that Butler will take the floor in Minneapolis, and the last time he did, he and Anthony Edwards had a brief confrontation after a whistle.

“He ain’t finna fight nobody out there ... all that walking up on each other, that’s stuff for the birds, man,” Edwards said about Butler after the game.

When the Warriors and Wolves tip off their second-round playoff series on Tuesday, one of the ironies is that nobody on the Wolves was there to experience the reasons the crowd will likely boo Butler with zeal.

Butler made his demand in the fall of 2018 in part for contract reasons, in part because he didn’t see a future alongside Karl-Anthony Towns, whom Edwards always propped up during their time together.

No player is on the Wolves roster from that time. The coaching staff and front office are different. Nobody associated with the team has an emotional attachment to that time, but the fans do, as Mike Conley underscored in his comments Monday.

“I might not have the best appreciation for the whole Jimmy thing because I wasn’t here,” Conley said. “That predated me, but I do just as far as I know what it means to this city.”

Here’s another irony of Butler’s return this postseason: The Wolves have created a team in the image Butler wanted, and Towns was a crucial part of building the culture that contributed to it.

This Wolves team is built on defensive tenacity and physical toughness. They don’t back down from anyone challenging them, with multiple examples in the last few seasons — including Jaden McDaniels and Klay Thompson getting into it during a Wolves-Warriors game last season.

That confrontation ended in Draymond Green putting Rudy Gobert in a chokehold, another bit of kindling that adds to the juiciness of this matchup’s story lines on and off the court.

The Wolves are also a team that is internally tough. They can talk to each other in a culture they often describe as “hard truths.” That wasn’t the case when Butler was in town, and he longed for a team that didn’t have to walk on eggshells around each other, since he wants to be as brutally honest as possible with his teammates. The Wolves became that kind of team, and they did it with Towns as a crucial part of it a season ago.

Towns became the kind of player Butler didn’t think he could become. The Wolves had the No. 1 defense last year, and Towns fit into a culture where players could hold each other accountable without egos receiving permanent damage.

Towns is now in New York, and he won another playoff series with the Knicks, while the Wolves have maintained that culture of toughness and truth, despite needing some time to adjust to each other early in the season.

Butler went to two NBA finals with Miami, whose much-ballyhooed Heat culture meshed with his personality — until he did what he did in Minnesota and burned some bridges as he exited to San Francisco.

If any player embodies the spirit of how Wolves fans feel about Butler, it’s Edwards, who wasn’t afraid to stick up for Towns in his rookie season when Towns and Butler got into a verbal altercation. The following season, Edwards stood up to Butler during that exchange on the court, much to the delight of the crowd.

The Wolves will now be going against Butler and Green, two of the toughest players in the league by reputation. But their culture, one Butler once lamented, has been building toward this moment for years.

“I know there’s going to be a lot of buzz,” Conley said. “That’s what people want to see. That’s what we came here for.”