Jimmy Butler trudged off of the court after the Timberwolves’ worst loss of the season, spasms rupturing through his lower back and sending bolts of lightning through his extremities.

“Let me kick you in the back 1,000 times and let me see how you feel,” he would say later to describe the pain.

He hobbled out of the arena, gingerly made the left turn to go down the back hallway and then turned right into the locker room. While the rest of his teammates sunk into the chairs in front of their lockers and buried their faces in their towels after an embarrassing home loss to the lowly Suns, Butler’s back wouldn’t allow him to sit.

The only thing he could think to do that might bring a little relief was lay down on the floor, hoping the hard surface would help his back return to alignment.

In that moment, seeing his friend and teammate unable to move and grimacing in pain on the floor next to his locker, Jamal Crawford knew that the Timberwolves had not only lost a game. They had lost their leader.

“He’s out for a while,” was the first thought that entered Crawford’s mind, he told The Athletic. “That’s just human nature. You think, man he’s going to be down for a little bit. How are we going to patch things together until he gets back? You start trying to be like a forward-thinker.”

Jimmy Butler grimaces in pain from an aching back during a Dec. 16 game against the Suns. (Credit: Brad Rempel/USA TODAY Sports)

Butler’s back locked up in the second half against the Suns on Dec. 16. The loss dropped the Wolves to 17-13, a record that should’ve had long-suffering fans throwing a parade. But something wasn’t quite right yet with a team that added four new faces over the summer. Chemistry was slow to form. The defense was non-existent and the season was much more of a grind than mid-December needs to be.

There was no time to sit out.

“My thing is I’m not the most talented guy,” Butler told The Athletic. “I won’t sit here and tell you that I’m the most athletic, I’m the best shooter, I’m the highest flyer. But what I pride myself on is being extremely tough and just playing hard. That’s a talent within itself.

“I know if my teammates need me, I’m going to always show up. If I can play, I’m going to play. If I can’t, there’s nothing I can do about it. As long as I got some go in me, I’m putting it out there on the line for my guys because I know they’d do the same for me.”

Working around the clock with Wolves athletic trainers to loosen up his back, Butler showed up at the team’s shootaround some 36 hours later determined to play that night against Portland.

“He’s buzzing around at shootaround like hold on, what! What’s going on?” Crawford said.

From the moment Butler arrived in Minnesota via trade last summer, he set about trying to change the culture of a team that has known nothing but losing since 2004. He started to set a tone in training camp in October and certainly made his presence felt when the season got rolling in November.

But when the season seemed to be reaching a tipping point on that December night, Butler gritted his teeth, clenched his fist and grabbed hold of a Wolves team that was badly in need of some direction. And he did so from flat on his back.

Not 48 hours later, Butler was back on the court. He put up 37 points, six rebounds, four assists and two steals in a 108-107 victory over the Blazers to kick-start a string of 12 wins in 16 games heading into Thursday night’s game in Houston.

“That meant a lot to us,” Tyus Jones said. “Jimmy’s the heart and soul of this team. He’s the engine. We follow him. He’s our leader. We knew he was hurting in that Phoenix game pretty bad.

“For him to come right back two days later and play in that game just shows he’s willing to put it on the line for us. I think you would see a lot of guys sit that one out and get healthy.”

As important as Butler’s 35 minutes in the win over the Blazers were, the 10 minutes in the fourth quarter of the loss to Phoenix may have had an even greater effect. Butler was clearly laboring for most of the second half, chewing on his mouth guard as the pain and stiffness in his back intensified.

There was one sequence late in the game when Butler stole a pass near midcourt, stopped just as he dribbled over the half-court stripe to grab his back in pain and then dunked the ball.

Jimmy Butler with a steal & slam, in obvious pain going back up the floor pic.twitter.com/BH9cNfgkH2 — CJ Fogler (@cjzero) December 17, 2017

“The crazy part is if I wouldn’t have jumped up there and dunked it, I would’ve missed it,” Butler said. “If the steal’s there, I gotta go for it and go finish the easy two on the other end.”

It may not have been the prudent thing to do in such a long season, in a league where player health, rest and the long-term effects of heavy minutes are studied more closely than ever. But Tom Thibodeau wasn’t taking “the engine” out of the lineup in such a close game, and Butler wasn’t about to tap out.

“I love these guys. I love to compete. So if I can go out there and play, I’m going to play,” Butler said. “Thibs knows me. That’s half the reason he wanted me here. He knows if I can go, I’m definitely going to go. And he knows if I can’t, don’t question it. I can’t. I would never sit out. I hate not playing. That’s that. But for these guys, I’m putting my body on the line.”

The toughness rippled through the Wolves locker room and resonated with young stars Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins, who have combined to play in 501 of a possible 502 games in their careers.

“When you see a big piece like him be able to fight through injuries like that and be able to play at a high level like that and give up his body for us, it builds that trust, that unity,” Towns told The Athletic. “It’s built more. He set an example that he will go out there and do anything he can for us so we can come out with the win.

“When you have a person who is being unselfish like that — me and Wigg do it a lot too, but when Jimmy was out there and he did it, it unified all three of us even more and it unified the team to see that we’re all going to be out there trying to play for each other.”

As Thibodeau likes to say, Butler has been “at his best when his best is needed.” For a team that was fighting through the frustrations of unfamiliarity, Butler had to make a statement.

For Butler, he was doing what he always does. He was answering the bell. He has averaged 25.4 points, 5.6 assists, 5.0 rebounds, 2.4 steals and is shooting 51 percent from the field and 37 percent from three-point range in the 16 games since his back injury.

“I’ve always had that. I don’t know where it comes from, but I just know that when I’m out there on the floor, if you’re hurting, oh well,” he said with a shrug. “That adrenaline’s going to kick in sooner or later and just deal with the consequences after. That happens as well.

“But I don’t know man, when that basketball is out there, that’s been my life for I don’t know how long now. So without it, I’m lost. Hurt, sick, if I can play basketball, I gotta play basketball.”

Sound familiar?

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What the Wolves have been missing all these years since Kevin Garnett left was the edge that he brought to everything he did. It wasn’t always easy to deal with. Garnett could make things hard on those who couldn’t match his intensity level.

Butler heard similar complaints in his last year in Chicago, when some felt that he was an overbearing influence on some of the younger Bulls.

He came to Minnesota to team with Taj Gibson as former Bulls who could help Thibodeau get his message through to a young core that was slow to grasp his teachings last season. Make no mistake, this is not a “good cop-bad cop” situation. Whether it’s on the team plane, in the locker room after a game or in the huddle on the sideline, Butler doesn’t shy away from difficult conversations.

“If you can’t take a little ‘motherf—–g’ every once in a while, I don’t think that you’ll last very long,” Butler said. “The league has taken a turn where it’s not that many real ones, goons, that type of player, whatever you want to call them. But I’m not the one that’s going to pat you on your back because I don’t like when people pat me on my back.

“When I’m doing something wrong, I want you to tell me in the manner that I know that I better fix it or there’s a consequence coming. I don’t want you to give me a choice of ‘Hey, do you think that you could do this?’ No. I want you to tell me. That’s the way I go about things.”

It’s not all fire and brimstone from Butler, who cuts the tension in the locker room with some sharp-tongued humor and drops expletives in interviews to let everyone know that he dictates the rules of engagement.

“We are in this thing together,” he said. “If we know that you can be better at something, we gotta let you know. We know what you can be capable of. We want you to be as great as you can be. I think everybody’s starting to realize that nothing’s personal now. It’s all about trying to stack up these wins in the win column.”

Jimmy Butler’s leadership has been crucial to the Timberwolves’ rise in the Western Conference standings. (Credit: Jeffrey Becker/USA TODAY Sports)

It may have taken a little getting used to, but the signs that things are coming together are hard to ignore. With Thibodeau breathing fire on the sideline, Butler cracking down on mistakes in the locker room and Gibson and Crawford bringing the even-keeled approach that can help defuse things when it gets a little too heated, the Wolves are pushing the San Antonio Spurs for the No. 3 spot in the Western Conference.

Over the last 15 games, the Wolves are tied with Golden State for the best offensive rating (113.9), and more importantly have rocketed up the league’s defensive rankings by holding teams to 103.6 points per 100 possessions, fourth in the NBA in that span. It all adds up to a net rating (10.3) that is a full three points better than second-place Oklahoma City.

After a rough start defensively, Towns has become a difference-maker on that end. Wiggins is starting to do more than just score and Crawford has provided the consistent bench scoring since making it clear that he wanted more minutes than he was getting earlier in the season.

“To tell you the truth, fear will make you do a lot of things that you don’t know that you could do,” Butler said. “So if I strike fear in somebody and they know I’m not playing around, they’re going to do it. But if you just talk to them softly and all of that, the majority of the time it don’t work.”

Butler said there have been “multiple moments” that he has had to let his voice be heard when mistakes were being made.

“They know that I’m serious too,” he said. “That’s when you see other guys around the locker room saying, ‘Jimmy, chill out, chill out, chill out.’

“I’m not chilling out. This is not winning basketball. That’s not a winning play. And we need to change it. So we’re going to change it right here and we’re going to change it right now.”

As refreshingly anti-coddling as this all sounds, Butler knows it has to go both ways. He encourages teammates to fire back at him when he doesn’t perform, such as a November night in Phoenix when Devin Booker and T.J. Warren blasted the Wolves perimeter defense for 70 total points.

“If I do it, you have full rein to lay into me and let me know,” Butler said. “But I’m going to hold you accountable just like I expect you to hold me and the next guy accountable.”

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So what drives Butler to gut through so much pain for a relatively meaningless game in the middle of December? For one, the term “relatively meaningless” doesn’t apply to Butler.

But he also thinks back to a harrowing childhood in Tomball, Texas, and the lengths at which he had to go to get himself out. “I’m not going back to that person,” Butler said.

“I just think that the things that basketball has brought me because I just play hard and I work incredibly hard, it’s fun,” he said. “It’s a life I’ve always dreamed of.

“You want to be in a foxhole with a guy like that, who (says) if I can walk I’ll be playing,” Jamal Crawford said of Butler. (Credit: Brad Rempel/USA TODAY Sports)

“Me and my guys, we have fun. We play dominoes all day. There’s not too much for us to worry about. But that’s only if I keep going in the way that I am and I keep going about the game and life the same way. I preach to them, as hard as I’m working, y’all gotta work the exact same way.”

That goes for the team of confidantes around him that follow him from Chicago to Los Angeles and now to Minnesota. That goes for his personal chef and his personal trainers. And that damn sure goes for Towns, Wiggins, Jeff Teague, Nemanja Bjelica and the rest of his teammates.

“We’ll do whatever it takes,” Towns said. “If you’ve got to give a back, give a back. Gotta give a leg, give a leg. It was great.”

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The higher the Wolves climb, the louder the drumbeat will become for Butler to join the MVP conversation. Houston’s James Harden is the clear front-runner, even after missing the last seven games with a hamstring injury that could be healed enough for him to play Thursday night against the Wolves.

LeBron James’ Cavaliers have plummeted down the Eastern Conference standings in January and the Bucks’ spotty play has dulled the shine on Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Steph Curry and Kevin Durant could split the Warriors vote, leaving the door open for Butler, Kyrie Irving, Anthony Davis, Russell Westbrook and DeMar DeRozan to join the fray.

“More than the talent, more than the numbers, more than the Jimmy Buckets, you want to be in a foxhole with a guy like that, who (says) if I can walk I’ll be playing,” Crawford said. “Even if it’s not my normal numbers I give you guys, I’m going to be out there with you and let the chips fall where they may. You want to go to war with a guy like that.”

“What he’s doing every night, it’s amazing. But it’s also bringing the best out of everyone on the team. To me, that’s the true mark of greatness,” Thibodeau said. “He’s playing at an unbelievable level.”

The Timberwolves have been resistant to the idea that one seminal moment was responsible for the roll they are on now. It’s been a gradual build for a team that was completely made over this summer. That takes time.

But there are moments along the way that either expedite that process or slow it down. Lying on the floor groaning in pain could have been one of those hard-luck Wolves moments that has plagued this franchise over the last 15 years.

Instead, Butler turned it into a rallying point. And there’s no turning back now.

“When you do that for somebody, they know that if this guy can play hurt, I can,” Butler said. “If this guy’s feeling it a little bit, I can. If you can’t go, you can’t go. But I love this game. I love my teammates. I see the way they go about it every day in this building to prepare to go to war. They love it. I’m fighting with them each and every time.

“Each and every time.”

(Top image: Jimmy Butler’s toughness has been a big reason the Wolves are only two wins away from last year’s victory total. Credit: Jeffrey Becker/USA TODAY Sports)