Three-time All-Star Jimmy Butler returned to the Timberwolves for Friday's rematch with Oklahoma City after a two-game illness, with boogers, snot, mucus and all.
He mentioned all three symptoms separately Friday while he discussed an upper respiratory infection that left him too ill to play and his Wolves teammates truly defenseless during lopsided losses to Indiana and Detroit.
"I'm here to play, I'm here to compete, I'm here to win," he said Friday morning. "If you all see snot rolling down my nose and my face into my mouth, it's disgusting but it might happen a few times."
He watched those two games from home and said he saw a team too slow to run back on defense and too preoccupied with arguing with the referees.
"It's going to take time, but we don't have that much time," Butler said. "You can't continually practice bad habits, man. You've got to lose those habits ASAP. That's what practice is for. … You can't keep doing it over and over again in the game. That's when it really counts, but we're getting better at it.
"That being said, with my being out on the floor, I can cover up a lot of things. Not everything, don't get me wrong. I'm not that good of a player. But on the defensive end, I pride myself on that end. I have to make sure that I'm at the top of my game at the defensive end and that everybody else is up there with me."
Wolves coach Tom Thibodeau seemed a more contented man knowing Butler was ready to return.
"It's big for us just because of all the things he brings to our team," Thibodeau said. "From a defensive standpoint, from a toughness standpoint, from a playmaking standpoint. The one thing I know he can do is score big. But I think he's trying to get the team to function at a high level right now."
