If the Minnesota Timberwolves want to avoid a Anthony Davis/New Orleans Pelicans situation, they’ll need to work to keep their All-Star center happy.
Last offseason, the Minnesota Timberwolves locked up Karl-Anthony Towns to a contract extension.
Despite having their lone All-Star on the books for another five years, the Wolves have a lot of work to do in surrounding Towns with talent.
The summer following the 2023-24 campaign may may seem like a long ways away, but the Wolves must find a way to continue their efforts of bringing in players that help this team win. Finding players a year or two away from him being free agents is too late.
This is a process that will need to be worked on starting this offseason. The Wolves don’t have a lot of cap room and more than likely won’t until next summer. After next year, the only bad contracts left on the books will be Gorgui Dieng and Andrew Wiggins, assuming neither has a massive jump in production in the meantime.
Over the next two offseasons, Minnesota will get out from under the contracts of Jeff Teague, Jerryd Bayless and Taj Gibson. They’re all fine players in their own right, but chipping away almost $40 million dollars will help the team out tremendously.
Dario Saric will be a free agent after the 2019-20 season and it will be interesting to see whether the Wolves decide to extend him. Furthermore, as the franchise inches closer to a more team-friendly cap situation, they must find ways to not put themselves in a similar situation.
Stacking up on draft picks and cheap role-players will help the team out. The 2019 NBA Draft is rapidly approaching and the team is slotted into the No. 10 pick, pending the May 14 lottery, of course.
This year’s draft is not the strongest class of prospects, but they should be able to grab a solid player. Over the next three years, Minnesota will need to find a co-star to play alongside Towns. Theoretically, that player could still be Wiggins, but the Timberwolves cannot simply keep waiting around and hoping that the former Kansas Jayhawk becomes that player.
Instead of waiting, they should be looking to make a trade or make a splash in free agency. Of course, it’s hard to look down the line and see which player the Wolves could sign or trade for because a lot can change in the next two to three years.
Getting a healthy Robert Covington back will be fantastic; he was the de facto second-best player on the roster during this past season. And overall, there is still a lot to like about the roster with which the Wolves enter the offseason. The group of Towns, Covington, Wiggins, Josh Okogie, Keita Bates-Diop, Saric, and potentially Tyus Jones, pending his restricted free agency, isn’t a bad place to start.
Again, playing the waiting game with Wiggins will not work. The odds of him potentially becoming the player he was supposed to be dwindles every season.
For now, getting a truly established star is the top priority.