Timberwolves sign Andrew Wiggins to five-year contract extension

The Timberwolves have finally announced the long-rumored Andrew Wiggins contract extension.

The much-anticipated Andrew Wiggins contract extension is complete.

The Timberwolves themselves reported the extension on Wednesday afternoon, announcing a five-year extension with the first-overall selection in the 2014 NBA Draft. The team did not disclose contract details, but ESPN initially reported the value to be $148 million before Shams Charania of The Vertical reported the final value at $146.5 million — without a player option.

Glen Taylor clearly wanted to do his best to avoid a Kevin Love-type situation here. (It was probably especially important after a pretty weird summer saga that seemed to add some unnecessary intrigue to what should have been a fairly cut-and-dry process.)

The Timberwolves official Twitter account captured the big moment…

We’ve covered the should-they or shouldn’t-they question extensively over the last year or so here at Dunking With Wolves, so here’s a bit of mini-analysis:

Yes, this extension as the right move to make. In today’s NBA, teams must pay for future projected performance. (That’s virtually always the case anyways, one could argue, but it’s especially true for players coming off of rookie contracts and signing their first extensions.) Very, very rarely are players stars when they’re first eligible for a contract extension — and yes, Karl-Anthony Towns is absolutely the extension to the rule.

Andrew Wiggins is not a star. Will he be a star? Maybe. He has the physical tools. That’s the most important thing. He’s also produced from a scoring perspective, albeit inefficiently.

But the other ‘most important thing’ is that he’s improved in each of his two seasons following his Rookie of the Year campaign back in 2014-15. Wiggins made a modest jump in his sophomore season and while 2016-17 looked fairly similar, the 3-point shot was much-improved. He’d shot 30.5 percent from long-range over his first two professional seasons, but shot a respectable 35.6 from beyond the arc last season, all while attempting a full shot more per-36 minutes than the prior year.

At any rate, this deal makes plenty of sense for Tom Thibodeau and the Timberwolves. There is really no alternative, and the injury to Zach LaVine back in the spring cemented Wiggins as the second player that Thibs wanted to build around, if there had been any doubt in his mind at the time. (I’m fairly confident that Thibodeau was already all-in on Wiggins, but the LaVine injury convinced me that giving the max contract to Wiggins was the correct move.)

Next: Karl-Anthony Towns is the key to the Timberwolves defense

Congratulations to Andrew Wiggins, and here’s hoping that this season gets off on the right foot for everyone.