Thibodeau will get control of that **** show in Minny. No way he lets one of his guys, Butler, get shipped out of town for pennies on the dollar. Hell, if Towns is the one with the attitude problem, maybe Towns is the one who gets shipped out.
To answer your question, heck yeah, if you could get Butler for any package that doesn?t include KP or a 1st round pick, you do it in a second. No one else on our roster would be untouchable.
Only thing that gives you pause is the worry that Butler won?t extend with you past this season.
If the rumor is true that Jimmy Butler will not sign an extension with the Timberwolves and will opt out and leave in free agency, then they have no leverage when it comes to negotiating trade deals. Sure they will get something in return but it won't be a King's ransom because no team is going to give anything major up for a player that has already openly stated he won't stay in Minnesota. So there is no way we would be sending Porzingis to Minnesota, the most they could hope for is Tim Hardaway and a future pick or Courtney Lee, Lance Thomas and a future pick. Teams aren't going to give up the farm if the rumor is true. However, if Minnesota prefer to keep Butler and trade Towns and Wiggins, then that could still be pretty pricey to acquire them because they have under long term contracts and are still ascending young players (even if they have attitude problems).
As for draft picks that might not be an issue for us if we did trade for Jimmy Butler this off season because we wouldn't be tanking. Now it would make sense to lottery protect our 2019 pick just in case they don't make the play offs, but for 2020 onward we can protect the pick in a similar manner to the pick the Milwaukee Bucks owe - they have it protected 1-3 and 17-30, which makes the pick unlikely to be conveyed because they should be finishing with pick in the latter protected range. So we could protect any pick we send their way in a similar manner and say to them if it hasn't conveyed by 2021 or 2022 we'll send them an unprotected second round pick. Even if we didn't protect the pick in 2020 or 2021, with Butler, KP and hopefully another big name free agent on the books (e.g. sign Kyrie in 2019), then the most we would be losing in a late first round pick which in order to secure Butler and his bird rights would be a sacrifice worth making because we could then extend him to a max deal while signing Kyrie (or another big name) using our cap space.
In regards to your final point, we wouldn't make a trade unless Butler gave some assurances that he would sign an extension with this team. Obviously he could still opt out and leave but the hope would be that if we traded for Butler he would commit long term to this team to play alongside KP and possibly Kyrie from 2019 onward, and that's without considering the other players we have on the roster.