How lopsided was Timberwolves trade of Wiggins for D’Angelo Russell?

Minnesota Timberwolves reworking the entire roster

At the time, the Minnesota Timberwolves were not just trading for D’Angelo Russell. The Timberwolves were aggressively trying to appease their star center, Karl-Anthony Towns, who patiently continued to play lights out while awaiting the team’s efforts to assemble a winning roster around him.

The Timberwolves knew that D’Angelo Russell could give the team the necessary leverage to keep KAT on the roster. Besides that, he was a perceived upgrade at a position that the Timberwolves greatly desired.

The Timberwolves had already moved on from veteran  PG Jeff Teague, and the team was in need of a franchise-leading field general. D’Angelo Russell was ‘the fit,’ for many reasons. He seemed to be peaking, having just earned an All-Star honor in 2018-19 with the Brooklyn Nets, pushing his scoring average to over 23 points per game, and inching his three-point accuracy north of 35 percent shooting.

What Wiggins wasn’t

Wiggins never developed a long-shot, was lazy on defense, and was rapidly losing whatever goodwill he had with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Wiggins needed a wake-up call, and the sudden trade to the Golden State Warriors did exactly that.

So what were the Minnesota Timberwolves thinking? Well, the team had Karl Anthony Towns on the roster and had just traded away a disappointing Wiggins for a much better-suited D’Angelo Russell. But if you recall, that was a period of tremendous roster upheaval for the Timberwolves. If you recall, the team traded away plenty of players for plenty of new players.

The Timberwolves were involved in three separate trades before the NBA Trade deadline that year, sending out seven players and bringing in eight players.