Wolves to sign Tayshaun Prince

According to Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports, the Wolves are about to announce an agreement with veteran forward Tayshaun Prince.

Timberwolves have agreed to terms on a one-year deal paying the veteran's minimum with veteran forward Tayshaun Prince, a source told Yahoo.
— Marc J. Spears (@MarcJSpears) August 13, 2015

The roster now stands at 17 players but depending on who the odd men out are, it could finally be fairly balanced from a position standpoint. There could certainly be a minor trade or two coming down the pipe in short order to help balance things out further, but the Wolves may end up having to cut a couple of players instead.

As far as Prince himself…the signing seems largely pointless. Prince is still a borderline rotation player in the NBA at 35 years of age, but his value is now more than ever reliant on the ability to shoot threes as his athleticism and penchant for drawing fouls and getting to free throw line have certainly waned.

There is still some marginal defensive improvement with this acquisition, too, but that’s more in comparison to the wings the Wolves have been running out there of late than it is legitimate progress in a vacuum. Prince is still an average-y defender more because of his length and know-how than because of his ability to actually guard anyone one-on-one anymore.

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The 46.3 three-point percentage from 2014-15 and the 37-percent career mark from long-range will play, of course, and will slot in nicely coming off the Wolves’ bench. The major downside from Prince offensively is the inability to beat anybody off the dribble at this point in his career and his high rate of mid-range jumpers — 28.1% of Prince’s career attempts from the field have come from between 16 feet away from the rim and the arc, including 33.2% of his shot attempts over the past two seasons.

It’s hard to say which current player on the Wolves’ roster could lose minutes to the newest member of Minnesota’s 35-and-over club, but Shabazz Muhammad and Anthony Bennett come to mind, and it could also mean that Damjan Rudez will officially not be making the 15-man roster by the time training camp breaks, if he even makes it that long before being moved.

If Prince is legimiately only expected to play 10-15 minutes per game he’ll definitely be an upgrade over the backup forward the Wolves trotted out on the court a year ago, helping to alleviate the drop-off in production when the likes of Kevin Martin and Andrew Wiggins take their rest.

But this signing doesn’t do much to keep allowing the young players to grow, and Prince has never played less than 24.1 minutes per game in a season, which came last year in a campaign that was divided between Memphis, Boston, and Detroit.

We’ll break down the depth chart further in the coming days, but this is an interesting move to say the least. Minutes will be at a premium for a likely 30-win team and the head coach version of Flip Saunders will find himself in a strange quandary come October.

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