On the cusp of a season when the Minnesota Timbewolves are expected to compete for an NBA Championship, Karl-Anthony Towns was traded because of a looming payroll crunch.
At first blush, that sounds like a greedy and nefarious move on the part of ownership to sabotage success for the sake of savings. But in fact, the trade disrupts but does not necessarily diminish the Wolves’ ability to vie for a ring this season. And it provides them with much more flexibility to develop around a dynamic young core that includes Anthony Edwards, Jaden McDaniels and Naz Reid in seasons to come.
By contrast, hewing to the status quo this season inevitably led toward either expensive, roster-constrained stasis or forced convulsions far more disruptive to the Wolves’ blueprint than the trade that was just executed.
Let’s get specific.
Given the safe assumption that center Rudy Gobert will exercise the player option on the final year of his contract next season, the Wolves would have been paying him and KAT a combined $100 million to play for them in the 2025-26 season. Okay, that’s not much more than the combined $92 million owed the duo this season if KAT had stayed put.
The difference is Reid also has a player option on his 2025-26 deal – but for the relatively paltry sum of $15 million, way below what the reigning Sixth Man of the Year could earn by declining the option and hitting the open market.
Even if Naz acceded to a hometown discount, a deal that locks him up for multiple years is likely going to double (or more) that $15 million per-season amount. Meanwhile, Minnesota is already going to pay Ant and McDaniels a combined $70 million in 2025-26, along with the $10.7 million Mike Conley is owed for the final year of his contract extension.
The size and length of KAT’s contract ensured the payroll crunch was only going to intensify into the prime seasons of Ant, McDaniels and Naz. KAT is owed $53.1 million next season, $57 million in 2026-27 and has a player option for a whopping $61 million in 2027-28.
In the past, the Wolves could have simply gone the high-roller route, akin to what the Golden State Warriors did, and paid the league the hefty luxury taxes that come with rewarding a bevy of stars their rightful worth, hoping that championships or other forms of success stimulated enough subsidiary income to make it profitable. But the league’s new collective bargaining agreement, which was enacted after KAT signed his huge long-term deal, imposes penalties on high-rollers who exceed certain salary thresholds (the infamous “second apron”) that go beyond financial penance. Teams in the second apron are denied the ability to sign mid-level free agents, or players released by teams already paying their contracts, and other roster maneuvering crucial to surrounding your stars with complementary role players.
What all this means is the Wolves could not effectively retain the services of KAT, Gobert and Naz beyond this upcoming season without consigning themselves to either onerous league penalties or significant personnel changes elsewhere on the roster – as in losing a core player like McDaniels. And given Gobert was an essential, non-replaceable component of the top defense in the NBA last season, Naz right now gives you about 80% of the value KAT provides (some would say more, and Naz hasn’t yet hit his prime) and neither Gobert nor Naz are locked in to a KAT-like, “super-max” contract that runs through 2028, finding a way to trade KAT was the best option.
Under the circumstances, Tim Connelly, president of Basketball Operations, did yeoman work here, receiving power forward Julius Randle, combo guard Donte DiVincenzo, small forward Keita Bates-Diop and a heavily-protected draft pick (via the Detroit Pistons) from the New York Knicks in exchange for KAT.
Randle is a three-time All Star (including the past two seasons) who has averaged 19.1 points, 9.4 rebounds and 3.7 assists over his 10-year career – not that much different than the 22.9 points, 10.8 rebounds and 3.2 assists KAT has put up per-game over his nine-year career.
But despite the statistical similarity, Randle is a downgrade from KAT, especially in the current context of how the Wolves operate. Although Randle is a rugged 250 pounds and played some small ball center earlier in his career, at 6 feet 8 inches, he is four inches shorter than KAT and obviously lacks the crucial experience KAT logged learning how to play both beside a unique center like Gobert in the frontcourt and in the pivot as a rim protector when Gobert sits.
Despite his higher assist total, Randle is also less of a floor spacer and arguably more of a ball stopper than KAT. He is a much less accurate shooter, especially from long range, with a career three-point percentage of 33.3 that is dwarfed by KAT’s 39.8. But even from two-point range, KAT has never shot below 54.1% in any season of his career, while Randle has been above 54.1% from two-point territory just once in the past five years.
Credit Randle with averaging more than five assists per game over his past four years in New York. On the other hand, he’s turned the ball over more than three times per game over that span and prefers isolation plays. Per basketball-reference.com, only 43.3% of his baskets have been assisted in his career, and only once in the past four seasons has it been over 40%. By contrast 60% of KAT’s makes have been the result of a dish by his teammate.
To be clear, there is value in being able to get a bucket on your own – in fact, aside from Ant there are precious few players on the roster who can reliably accomplish it. It is just that in recent years Randle has seemed most comfortable when he’s the focal point of the offense. His usage rate has exceeded 29.0 over his last four seasons in New York, and while the emergence of Jalen Brunson as the go-to guy on the Knicks wasn’t disastrous when the pair shared the court, it clearly crimped his style. Playing with Ant would likely do the same.
Would Randle be comfortable coming off the bench? Next year his contract expires with a player option on $31 million for the 2025-26 season. That’s $22 million less than the Wolves would have had to pay KAT and it will be interesting, and perhaps a source of tension, to see how Randle and the Wolves regard the possible length of his tenure in Minnesota, which in turn affects the size of his role and his willingness to fulfill it.
While Randle has to prove he won’t eventually be addition-by-subtraction on the roster, the Wolves are likely ecstatic to land DiVincenzo, the clearest upside for the team in this trade.
Although Connelly deserves a ton of credit for finagling his way up into the draft lottery (by trading a 2031 first round pick) to land Rob Dillingham, Conley’s heir apparent at point guard, Dillingham is 19 years old, weighs 165 pounds, and was frankly overburdened being penciled in as a key cog on a championship contender. Enter DiVincenzo, who, like Nickeil Alexander-Walker, can play either guard slot, is hard-nosed and has good size at 6-4 and 203 pounds. He is also an accurate volume shooter from distance, having made almost exactly 40% of his treys on seven attempts per game over the past two seasons. Best of all, DiVincenzo’s contract is merely $36 million spread over the next three seasons, making him a perfect bridge in the transition from Conley to Dillingham at the point.
The value of the other two pieces in the trade, forward Bates-Diop and the pick from Detroit, could be specious or stealthy good. Ever since he was drafted by the Wolves in 2018 (and traded to Denver a year later), Bates-Diop has proven to be a smart player who wrings the most out of his limited talent – a quintessential “serviceable” player. But it is not clear that the Wolves have room for him.
As for the draft pick, it can’t convey if the Pistons finish among the bottom 13 teams this coming season, the bottom 11 the year after that or the bottom 9 in 2026-27 (at which time it becomes a 2027 second-rounder). My guess is the Pistons sufficiently escape the doldrums by 2027 and the Wolves get to replace one of the first-rounders they sacrificed in the Gobert trade.
Put all the elements of the trade together and it appears that the Wolves have created some legitimate means of escape from abject salary-cap hell with minimal downgrade on prospects for the current season and enhanced flexibility to tailor future talent around their solid young core.
Will KAT be missed? Absolutely. But if Wolves Coach Chris Finch can figure out the most productive fit for Randle – and if Randle buys into it – the immediate cost of the trade will be more the time lost getting acquainted than any glaring weakness in the rotation.
And the credit for that goes to Naz Reid, the undrafted, overweight center signed to a contract of four-years for less than $6 million total, who has inexorably reupholstered himself into a dynamic combo forward who is now a genuine replacement for KAT at a fraction of the cost, even after accounting for the exponential raise he will receive in his next contract.
For those who doubt this, consider how effectively both KAT and Naz played next to Gobert last season. In 1,279 minutes Gobert and KAT shared the court, the Wolves scored 118 points per 100 possessions and allowed 109.4 points, for a net rating of plus 8.4 points per 100 possessions. In the 917 minutes Gobert and Naz played together, the Wolves scored 108.6 points and allowed just 99.4 points for a net rating of plus 9.2 points per 100 possessions.
Naz is ready for this expanded role. Otherwise this trade likely wouldn’t have happened.
Let’s close this with a properly heartfelt farewell to KAT. Drafted as a teenager by the late Flip Saunders in the summer of 2015, he remained an always-approachable basketball star throughout his nine years in Minnesota.
He endured a phenomenal amount of grief and turmoil during his time here, ranging from the death of beloved mother from COVID to the tasteless hazing foisted upon him under the guise of “tough love” by Jimmy Butler (tacitly endorsed by then-coach Tom Thibodeau, who is ironically now coach of the Knicks team where KAT is headed). On a more mundane level, there was chronic losing and thus subsequent churn of both coaching staffs and front-office personnel during his tenure.
Through it all, KAT remained steadfastly loyal to the organization and the fan base and willing to do what was asked of him, be it a switch to power forward when Gobert was acquired or a steady diet of “drop coverage” on defense ill-suited to his huge feet and athletic instincts. Last season, after suffering a knee injury that required surgery, he busted his rear on rehab to make it back ahead of schedule so he could play the final two regular-season games and ready himself for the playoffs. His defensive role guarding two future Hall of Famers, Kevin Durant and Nikola Jokic, played an enormous role in the Wolves reaching the Western Conference Finals.
I’m thankful he was able to leave on that high note.
The aspects of his personality that occasionally made him polarizing and a magnet for mockery and abuse were also the things that made him such a decent human being – his compassionate, anti-bullying mentality; his palpable desire, and need, to be liked; his penchant for letting doubt affect his thought process during big moments and big games. He could be corny to the point of being cringey. But he always cared, was rarely caustic and never cruel.
I wish him ongoing redemption, satisfaction and peace of mind.
Britt Robson
Britt Robson has covered the Timberwolves since 1990 for City Pages, The Rake, SportsIllustrated.com and The Athletic. He also has written about all forms and styles of music for over 30 years.
The post Breaking down the Minnesota Timberwolves Karl-Anthony Towns trade appeared first on MinnPost.