Minnesota Timberwolves: Ball and Toppin could offer highest floors in lottery

In this year’s draft, the Minnesota Timberwolves might decide to go with a high-floor option.

The NBA Draft Lottery is just over three weeks away, and the draft is finally within three months. Soon, we should start to get a better sense of the Minnesota Timberwolves‘ plan.

As of now, we’re going off of various mock drafts out there, a smattering of rumors, and best guesses.

Some of the latest mocks suggest that the Wolves may be leaning in the direction of some high-floor players that also may have legitimate, star-level ceilings.

Minnesota Timberwolves: Ball and Toppin could offer highest floors in lottery

Yours truly has been all over Dayton big man Obi Toppin as an option for the Wolves if they end up picking outside the two or three picks in the draft. He’s also become a frequently mentioned option for Minnesota across various mock drafts.

Recently, Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Wasserman reported that Toppin has been gaining steam from teams who think he could be selected as high as No. 3 in the draft. Wasserman also listed the Wolves as a team that might be interested in taking a player that can step in and play immediately, versus a player that might have a higher ceiling but could take more time to acclimate to the NBA game.

Now, Wasserman has posted an updated mock draft that indeed has Toppin going at No. 2 to Cleveland, using similar logic to why he thought the Wolves would be interested: Cleveland can’t afford to miss, so they’ll take a higher-floor player.

In ordering his mock draft, Wasserman put the Wolves at No. 3 based on record. With Anthony Edwards going No. 1 to Golden State and Toppin No. 2 to Cleveland, he gave the Wolves LaMelo Ball, who would be the consensus best player available at that point for the Wolves. (James Wiseman would be the other possibility, but the redundancies with Towns are enough that it’s unlikely Minnesota would pick him.)

The commentary is also as expected: the Wolves defense would get even worse, and D’Angelo Russell would likely move to more of an off-ball role and focus on scoring.

There’s real concerns with this line of thinking. Yes, Ball’s creativity is exciting and would elevate almost any NBA offense, but Russell’s already a creative distributor and dynamic orchestrator of the pick-and-roll game. Taking the ball out of his hands limits his effectiveness, and while a Ball and Russell pairing would have plenty of size and length, the defense would be … tough to watch.

If Ball was a knockdown shooter or if either player was even an average defender, than drafting Ball would be a much more palatable option.

Our own Dylan Jackson disagrees with this take, however, believing that Ball’s scoring touch would change the Wolves for the better and that sliding Russell to more of an off-ball role would actually allow him more freedom to focus on scoring.

Of course, there’s only one ball to go around, as they say, and Karl-Anthony Towns needs his touches, too.

Toppin and Ball are both high-floor options that the Wolves would consider regardless of where they land in the top-seven in this year’s draft. But there are also obvious pros and cons to both prospects.

Which direction will Gersson Rosas and the Wolves ultimately go?