Wojnarowski: Timberwolves are not trading Karl-Anthony Towns

ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski appeared on Ryen Russillo’s show this week and shot down the idea that the Timberwolves would consider trading Karl-Anthony Towns.

It’s been an exhausting past couple of weeks, Timberwolves fans.

From the coach firings and resignations to the alleged unhappiness of All-Star big man Karl-Anthony Towns, the first May without a lottery apperance in 14 years has been far more newsworthy than the Wolves would want it to be.

Of course, plenty of this news is, well, what’s the term? Fake news?

For instance, while Towns could very well be unhappy with the organization, but that doesn’t mean he has asked to be traded or even wants to be traded. And it certainly doesn’t mean that the Wolves are shopping their 22-year-old superstar. That would be ridiculous.

But then came the Zach Lowe and Brian Windhorst “report” that something *might* happen. Not news either, of course.

And now, Windhorst has reported that the Wolves have “taken calls on Karl-Anthony Towns”.

Here’s the thing: people can call all day long, and just answering the phone doesn’t make it any more likely that a trade is going to happen.

Earlier this week, Adrian Wojnarowski was on the Ryen Russillo show and said basically that exact thing.

"“I think their owner would trade management/the coach before he would trade Karl-Anthony Towns. I don’t think they would allow that…Minnesota’s biggest issue is not Karl-Anthony Towns…It’s more a question about Andrew Wiggins. If someone was going to get booted, and I’m not saying anyone is going to get moved, I think Wiggins is the one you’re going to look at first…”"

Russillo agreed, even stating that Towns could be openly hitting on his spouse and he wouldn’t trade him. The imagery is … difficult, but I appreciate the intent behind it.

Fans know that if Woj says it, it’s true. At least in the moment, that is, and it’s equally true that things change extremely quickly in the NBA.

But all that to say, a trade involving Towns is not going to happen any time soon. As Russillo alludes to, it would take a year of running in place and not making a clear improvement for the Wolves to not attempt to extend both Towns and Jimmy Butler. This probably means that Andrew Wiggins is shopped at some point, but he’ll be difficult to move as his massive extension kicks in this fall, although our own Trey Flynn took a stab at a few ideas.

Next: 5 low-cost free agents for the Wolves to consider

We’ll keep monitoring this, but it still feels like much ado about nothing.