zimpy27 wrote:HotelVitale wrote:zimpy27 wrote:Jimmy tells you candidly why he left.. from his own mouth...
I get where you're going but I don't think it's that simple, for two reasons. First I've had plenty of work drama over the years and I definitely reframe narratives about what happened to make them simpler and more about my own values and control. I'm someone who's pretty low-ego and generally very honest with myself but still try to do that to make it seem like my principled disagreement about something was why something happened, rather than a more complicated chain of things. Butler also seems like someone who's really into that type of thing (in a good way).
Second, in this video Butler specifically mentions both a) Simmons being very upset about losing touches and b) him leaving because the team wasn't sure about him and was worried he wouldn't fit their personnel experiments. Both of those point directly to the Sixers being concerned about the fit of the 3 all-star guys that year. So the root cause could easily be that question of Simmons and touches.
You can come up with other narratives. Maybe Jimmy left because of aliens and now he's covering it up. All you have is the truth Jimmy has given here, Jimmy of all players is going to give you the truth. If you choose not to believe what jimmy is saying then you want to have a pretty solid line of evidence to refute it.
That feels like a weirdly defensive and dismissive response, but okay I can explain it again and in more detail if you want. Butler says in the video that he left because he heard the team was concerned about 'controlling' him, he doesn't explain why but you're right we should start with that. First what would have caused that feeling? Brett Brown is known as a particularly democratic and non-heavy-handed coach, and Redick in the video confirms that Butler didn't seem to be that difficult a guy to work with on the Sixers. So what would the Sixers be controlling, what tension would they be concerned about? Butler doesn't say and doesn't give us much to work with, the narrative he gives skips over it.
In the video the only tensions Butler talks about were Ben being heated about losing touches in the PO, and him saying TJ McConnell also wanted some more touches. Both those seem like they're more incidental things that came up in the flow of the conversation so I don't think they're giving you a clear answer. But even if you want them to they're both pointing towards some ongoing tensions with the Sixers around spreading out the ball on offense. Sure it's speculating to say that's the main reason there was tension, but Butler doesn't contradict that and there's clearly a TON of info and stories that aren't mentioned here. Then we also have Embiid's story, so I'm not sure why we think that Butler saying nothing about Simmons' feelings means that what Embiid says about it is false.
Also my point about how we reframe things isn't that JB (or I) make things up or make up fake narratives, it's that after the fact we all tell a simpler story to make sense of a more complicated heap of things. Like if at work I have 10 months worth of tension with someone about 50 things, most of it minor but some if it spilling into the open, and then that person finally quits over a small final argument--I'm not going to tell a story that goes into detail about every little disagreement or anything else. You just end up saying 'that person always had a serious attitude' or 'we were never in agreement about basic strategy.' (Clearer example might be breaking up with an ex, we can all remember multiple versions of stories we've told and re-told people over time about what happened there.) JB here said that he never felt quite right about the Sixers FO and his role there, and that they seemed to be inventing tension that he didn't think was there. But that leaves out many months of the individual arguments, grumblings, side-conversations, etc, plus a bunch of stuff the FO and other guys were talking about that didn't include him. Jimmy's story isn't about that cuz why would it be? End of the day, he didn't feel respected there or like he was a good fit so it didn't work out. Perfectly reasonable short narrative but it doesn't tell us the what and why at all.
