On the Timberwolves roster crunch: What happens next?

It isn’t very often that we look at a team that finished 29-53 the previous season and worry about a roster crunch, but that’s exactly what the Timberwolves are looking at standing here in mid-July.

Often times, a team that was well below the .500-mark one season will have heavy roster turnover the next — why keep a roster of losing players intact, right?

The Timberwolves are in a unique situation, however, as the core of the 2015-16 team that went 29-53 is painfully young, and holds the brightest future of perhaps any core, on any team around the league.

That means that they key players from last year’s 29-win squad aren’t going anywhere: Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins, Zach LaVine, and Ricky Rubio are here to stay. Add in this year’s top draft pick, Kris Dunn, and that’s five of the top-six or seven players on the roster that are locked-in.

Wolves fans will attest that the biggest weakness from the 2015-16 season (macro-weakness, really, ignoring symptoms of a larger problem like shooting, perimeter defense, etc.) was the lack of a bench. As soon as Kevin Martin was revealed to be old/injured, Tyus Jones wasn’t ready for the big show, and Zach LaVine and Gorgui Dieng were promoted to the starting lineup, the bench was putrid.

So after the five players mentioned above, here’s the rest of the pre-free agency roster: Dieng, Jones, Shabazz Muhammad, Nemanja Bjelica, Kevin Garnett, Nikola Pekovic, and Adreian Payne.

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Garnett remains a question mark. While it looks like he will not be retiring, there remains a possibility that he’ll be bought-out, or he may simply only play a handful of minutes per game in an extremely limited role.

Pekovic is less of a question mark in that he isn’t going anywhere anytime soon (two years and $23.7 million remain on his contract), but more of a question mark in that we have no idea what, if anything he could contribute come fall.

The only players that Minnesota has signed thus far in July are sharpshooter Brandon Rush and centers Cole Aldrich and Jordan Hill. That fills the 15-man roster of fully-guaranteed players, and finishes off the reality of the roster crunch the Wolves are facing.

Of the 15 players, eight of them have played exclusively at power forward or center in their NBA careers. That leaves seven players to cover three positions.

Of those seven, two are pure point guards in Rubio and Jones. That leaves five players to cover shooting guard and small forward, one of whom is rookie point guard Kris Dunn.

There isn’t much positional flexibility there, especially when considering that Muhammad has seen his best minutes as a small-ball power forward, and other than spot minutes from Rush, is also the only true backup three-man on the team.

So how will Tom Thibodeau and Scott Layden solve this top-heavy puzzle? Payne will almost certainly be bought-out, as it seems highly unlikely that any other organization would surrender anything resembling an asset for the 25 year-old bust out of Michigan State. (It’s also possible that Glen Taylor will veto eating any additional money on what is already a sunk cost; the Wolves still owe Atlanta a draft pick for this acquisition.)