Minnesota Timberwolves have a bright present and future

The clear-cut winners of Draft Night, the Minnesota Timberwolves, have a bright present and a future

Without question, the most impactful and newsworthy event of NBA Draft night was the trade that sent Jimmy Butler and the 16th pick to the Minnesota Timberwolves for the 7th pick and a bag of peanuts named Zack LaVine and Kris Dunn.

As Kevin O’Connor of the Ringer NBA show said, the Bulls could’ve executed this exact trade any time last season, before Lavine tore his ACL and Dunn submitted an exceptionally bad rookie season. They simply got fleeced, and are in for a very, very, very long rebuild.

The Minnesota Timberwolves are not only the favorites in this trade, but now one of the most exciting teams to watch in the Western Conference for years to come. With the Warriors set to resign Kevin Durant and Steph Curry, no Western Conference team can allow their immediate hopes to skyrocket, but the Wolves’ most important concern should remain the steady development of their franchise cornerstones Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns.

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Jimmy Butler’s arrival all but ensures that.

A Thibodeau veteran, Butler will remake Wiggins and Towns into good defenders even if it shortens their careers. A backcourt of Butler and Ricky Rubio will generate tons of steals and fast break opportunities – as LaVine and Rubio did last season – but with less glamorous defensive success as well, in the form of fighting through screens, and preventing opponents from getting easy drives to the lane.

You can bet this improved backcourt won’t allow opponents to shoot almost 37% on three point shots and 53% on two pointers – as teams did against the Wolves last season.

Before I allow myself or readers to proclaim the Wolves’ perennial Western Conference finalists, there is one flaw which could seriously limit this team’s ceiling.

Too many centers

Though he benefited from sharing the floor with a more traditional center in Gorgui Dieng, it is no secret the league is eager for Towns to assume the duties of the team’s full time center, rather than play a power forward/center hybrid like the smaller, more injury prone Anthony Davis.

Dieng is too offensively limited – and too laterally slow – to slot down to power forward. Yet he is under contract for four years and $64 million, beginning this season. Cole Aldrich, another center who cannot play any other position in the modern NBA, is under contract for two more years and over $14 million.

So I was surprised when the Timberwolves used their newly acquiesced 16th pick to draft another center in Justin Patton.

Ideally, Towns will stay healthy and one of these centers can be his backup – or another can be the backup’s backup in case of injury. But now the team has 3 inflexible centers, plus Towns, who splits his time between power forward and center (they also have the unofficially retired Nikola Pekovic under contract one more season).

Drafting another center was surprising, but perhaps a contender in desperate need of rebounding – really, only the Boston Celtics – will be willing to trade valuable assets for one or more of the Wolves’ non-Towns centers. As it stands, the only wing players under contract next season are Wiggins, Butler, Rubio and Tyus Jones, but if there’s one thing Thibs knows how to do, it’s get huge minutes out of wing players.

With that said, let’s address the real genius of the Butler trade: financial flexibility.

Without question, the most impactful and newsworthy event of NBA Draft night was the trade that sent Jimmy Butler and the 16th pick to the Minnesota Timberwolves for the 7th pick and a bag of peanuts

$$$$$$

As the Warriors and Clippers are about to discover, it is hard to pay multiple players max money, especially if said players make an All-NBA team. Wiggins will receive a new contract kicking in at the start of the 2018-2019 season that should make C.J. McCollum’s four-year, $106 million extension look like chump change.

It is lucky – or, managerially skillful – that the 2019 season will be Towns’ last on his rookie contract, as well as the last contract year for Butler (a modern day bargain at under $20 million that season), Rubio, Jones, and even Aldrich. The Wolves have two years to figure out which role players are best suited to compliment their big three of Butler, Towns and Wiggins, or – if their big three is really a big two – get valuable trade assets for their odd man.

With 5.5 assists per game last season, Butler proved to be a true point forward, and his presence can’t hurt the ball movement of a club that already finished 9th in assists last season. Despite still lacking three point shooting, the offense should hum when Butler and Rubio share the floor, or when Butler initiates the offense alone.

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If Jones – who averaged 7.3 assists per 36 minutes last year – continues to progress, the years’ old Ricky Rubio trade rumors may finally come to fruition. As long as they don’t trade him for a 5^th center, it is safe to say the future looks bright in the twin cities.

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