Jimmy Butler Talking To Mark Wahlberg Is Like Tipping A Nacho Cheese Fountain Into A Fondue Pot

Jimmy Butler simply doesn’t give a d*mn. He is the kind of guy who will deliver twisted and edgy quotes like, “Damn right I’m confrontational. I am confrontational ... I would be the first to tell you, I don’t give a damn. I’ve always been like that,” and leave you mopping your brow. Butler can now be seen in conversation with his friend Mark Wahlberg over at Interview, and the unrepentant truth bombs drop hard and fast. Wahlberg, an actor best known for claiming he would have prevented 9/11 if he had been on one of the hijacked planes and for committing an actual hate crime, has been credited as the person who got Butler to discard his “underdog status” and start “seeing himself as a star,” which has had, um, interesting ramifications for Butler as a person and the league as a whole. Here’s a sample:

WAHLBERG: Do you think that being brutally honest has gotten you into trouble?

BUTLER: I think so, but I don’t think it’s wrong. I really don’t. Maybe my delivery is the problem. Everybody wants honesty until you’re honest with them. I hear so many people say, “I want the truth. I want you to be honest.” But the second you are, they’re like, “Damn, I didn’t know you were going to say that!” So am I wrong for telling you the truth just because you can’t handle it? Or maybe I know you can’t handle it, and I should sugarcoat it a bit? I will say being brutally honest has gotten me in a lot of bad situations.

There are a lot of ways to describe Butler’s hilarious exit from Minnesota, which spanned three months and all of the following: the degeneration of all his relationships on the team; a trade demand with an arbitrary deadline; an infamous practice where he went out of his way to humiliate Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns and yell at GM Scott Layden; a SportsCenter vent session immediately after said practice; the cancellation of practice altogether plus a media blackout; a Butler-organized players-only meeting that smoothed things over(?) and indicated he might stay; the sad, desperate prostration of Tom Thibodeau; cheese cascading from Butler’s pores in public; the possibility of a protest self-benching; and then, post-trade, an after-the-fact accounting of how hard he pooped on his teammates.

“Brutal honesty” seems a little reductive if not outright wrong, but go off, James Butt. At least the league’s most exhausting player shows no signs of slowing.

Anyway, here’s what he has to say about his old squad:

WAHLBERG: Are the Timberwolves playoff material?

BUTLER: I’m not going to lie to you — I want to see all my former teammates be successful, but I haven’t been paying attention to them too much.

[ Interview]