How Butler and Gibson have helped Thibodeau set the tone in Minnesota

Hang around a pregame NBA locker room long enough, and at some point, you'll see an assistant coach fill a giant white board with the team's points of emphasis for the night, scouting reports on opposing players, various defensive assignments and schemes, and other forms of basketball minutiae.

The exception to this rule is the Minnesota Timberwolves' locker room, where rather than an assistant, it's head coach Tom Thibodeau who fills the white board with what might be the league's most neatly written pregame notes.

When asked if his habit is a case of needing to do things yourself if you want them done right, Thibodeau chuckles. "No, (the assistant coaches) can do it right, too," he says, but he walks away with his bag of markers without explaining why he takes on this tedious task. Perhaps even he can't put his finger on it.

The minor pregame detail is very on-brand for Thibodeau, whose workmanlike, orderly management has been well documented.

It was that order, combined with Thibodeau's legendary defensive chops, that had fans drooling over the Timberwolves' potential when the team hired him in 2016, pairing him with young stars Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins.

Except unlike Thibodeau's debut season in Chicago six years earlier, when the Bulls stunned the NBA with a league-best 62 wins, the Timberwolves fell flat. They went 31-51, finishing 10 games back of the Western Conference's eighth seed and extending the second-longest playoff drought in history to 14 years.

Something was missing.

To remedy that, Thibodeau - who also serves as Minnesota's president of basketball operations - called on the most reliable star he had in Chicago, acquiring Jimmy Butler from the Bulls in exchange for Zach LaVine, Kris Dunn, and No. 7 overall pick Lauri Markkanen.

The obvious win for the Timberwolves was acquiring a two-way beast - an All-NBA swingman and legitimate superstar who could elevate the rest of Minnesota's talented, yet underachieving roster. But in landing Butler, the Wolves also reunited Thibodeau with one of the few stars who not only understands, but shares his maniacal dedication to the game - and to consistency.

If Thibodeau has the NBA's neatest notes, Butler has a case for the league's neatest locker - four to five pairs of shoes and flip flops in a perfect line in front of his locker, various lotions, powder, and gum displayed as neatly as they would be on a store shelf, and on this night in Toronto, a sweater so thick it boggles the mind how it was folded so perfectly.

The contents are similar from locker to locker around the Association, but the orderly arrangement of Butler's stands out, which shouldn't be surprising for a player who reportedly considers a Chipotle order ruined if it contains more than three pieces of lettuce.

"The best leadership you can have are the things that you do every day, on and off the court - how you get ready, how you prepare, how you practice, how you concentrate in a meeting," Thibodeau said when asked about Butler.

In addition to acquiring Butler as part of a summer haul that included Jeff Teague and Jamal Crawford, the Timberwolves also signed Taj Gibson, giving Minnesota a starting power forward that actually spent more time with Thibodeau (five years) in Chicago than Butler did.

Seven months later, the 34-22 Timberwolves sit fourth place in the West, with Butler and Towns headed to next weekend's All-Star Game, and Gibson having logged more minutes than any Timberwolves player outside the team's big three of Butler, Towns, and Wiggins.

Much of that success can be attributed to a talent infusion on the court, but ask up and down the roster, and players will tell you that Butler and Gibson have been just as important off the court in helping Thibodeau instill the culture he envisioned for Minnesota a year ago.

"They just understand his system," Towns told theScore last week in Toronto. "They've lived in it for years, so they have that understanding of everything. They do a great job of just helping us understand certain things that he's trying to talk about - certain things they know he wants to say, but he's not saying the right way sometimes."

Wiggins echoed Towns' praise for the two former Bulls.

"They're just great people, great vets," Wiggins explained. "They know the game inside and out. They know how to approach the game. They know their routine, and their approach to the game is being a professional on and off the court."

When asked to describe what it means to help instill the Thibodeau culture, Gibson rattled off a litany of cliches, but the conviction in his voice was palpable.

"Bringing a winning mentality, coming to work hard every day, believing in your teammates, having fun, always (being) positive, always being good to other people around you," Gibson said.

In simpler terms?

"Putting in hard work every day, hoping everybody around you sees the hard work you put in, and then they jump in on the same kind of thing that you're doing.

"So far it's been like that. You noticed a change in attitude the more the wins started racking up. It's the most wins they've had in a long time. You start to see the whole dynamic change, and guys always happy in the locker room, just a winning feeling."

To Gibson's point, the Timberwolves have already won more games this season than they have in all but one of their previous 12 campaigns, and Wednesday's game against the Cleveland Cavaliers is one of 17 nationally televised contests Minnesota is taking part in this season.

The impact of Gibson and Butler on the team's younger players is felt away from the cameras, however.

"(Butler and Gibson) come in and work every day," third-year guard Tyus Jones told theScore. "They take care of their bodies - making sure they're lifting, eating the right way. They study the game, they're always watching film, always talking about our opponent, always talking the game. There's a lot of little stuff that you might take for granted or not really notice, because they're doing it off the court. That changes the culture. When your two veteran players - your better players - are doing that constantly, everyone else starts to do it.

"Out of the gates, from the first day of training camp, when we got to the gym, Jimmy was already there in a full sweat," Jones said, eyes agape as if he's reliving the moment. "Everyone was kind of like, Oh ...," Jones' words trailed off as he recalled finding Butler already hard at work.

"He was setting the tone. That was just him being himself, being there early, working on his game, getting a jump-start on it."

Jones' final words could very well apply to Thibodeau, standing in front of a white board with a bag of markers inside a mostly empty pregame locker room, meticulously completing a task usually reserved for assistants. Perhaps, by simply being himself, Thibs is setting the tone. And with Butler and Gibson back by his side in Minnesota, he has players who can translate that message for him.