The Timberwolves trade of D’Angelo Russell was inevitable

The Minnesota Timberwolves were active at the NBA Trade Deadline. In 20/20 hindsight, it appears as though the team was painted into a corner and needed to make a move. Why? Well, we are now finding out more about the team’s struggles than we originally knew.

Whenever an NBA player is among the three highest-paid NBA Players on the team, the bar is elevated a bit. It makes sense, as the amount of money paid is theoretically proportional to the team’s value on the player. The more the team values the player’s contribution to the team, the higher the compensation. While it’s not a hard set of rules, it does come with expectations and expanded responsibilities within the territory.

Timberwolves needed a leader at PG

But sometimes players struggle to understand the increased responsibility for the overall team as their salary increases. That appears to be the case for what developed for the Minnesota Timberwolves’ player dynamics this season.  On the face of it, it all seems pretty horrendous. Then, if you start to dig, it does not seem to be as bad as originally thought.

But after digging further, and then pausing to contemplate what it all meant to the team, it certainly approaches, if not downright crosses, the threshold of deal-breaker for Timberwolves PG D’Angelo Russell, and his role with the team.

What do we mean? Ultimately, we know that the Timberwolves needed better play from their point guard role as long ago as the 2021-22 NBA Playoffs, when the team needed a point guard who could step up for the team, but the lineup did not have DLo on the floor. That was a harbinger of things to come. The Timberwolves tried to improve D’Angelo Russell by adding center Rudy Gobert. But we will soon discover that it only made the situation worse.

Background details surface

When the Minnesota Timberwolves traded for center Rudy Gobert, one of the goals for the move was to help to facilitate the performance of PG D’Angelo Russell. At the time, the team hoped to find the secret formula that could promote DLo’s on-court performance to emulate that of his Brooklyn Nets days.

In theory, the addition of Gobert was intended to give Russell a safety valve of sorts, a player who would be in a position to be fed lob passes, set screens, and help D’Angelo Russell run those pick-and-roll plays that would allow him to retain his offensive output while enabling him to distribute the basketball to open shooters more consistently.

Unfortunately, that never happened.

What derailed those plans?

It was pretty clear from the opening game that the best facilitator for the newly arrived Rudy Gobert was not D’Angelo Russell but rather was Karl-Anthony Towns. It was Towns who made it a point in the early going to feed the ball to Gobert, getting him involved quickly in scoring for the Timberwolves. After KAT fell to injury, it was not D’Angelo Russell who assumed that facilitator role.

Initially, the hope was that backup PG Jordan McLaughlin could handle the load and be a major facilitator for the team. But he was injured, which negated his ability to do so. Rather it was point forward Kyle Anderson, and then it was shooting guard Anthony Edwards who was tasked with involving Rudy Gobert in the offense. And now, those cryptic words from Minnesota Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch about Rudy Gobert make perfect sense. The Timberwolves were scrambling to win, and the broken dynamics of the team’s roster would simply have to wait.

Those broken dynamics were shared by The Athletic’s Senior Writer, who covers the Minnesota Timberwolves. In a recent interview on KFAN 1003 sports radio, the Athletic’s Jon Krawczynski detailed the locker room dynamics for the Minnesota Timberwolves, and the details do not portray DLo in a very positive light:

He followed that up by sharing more details on social media after the fact, clarifying his original statements.

Role IV: Generate lockerroom chemistry

There is one aspect of any NBA team that is never a given, and that is how well the players gel together. The Minnesota Timberwolves team knew that the lineup had to improve their defense dramatically in order to improve their postseason performance, and the Timberwolves front office decided that center Rudy Gobert was that solution.

Whether or not that proves to be the case, from the moment that decision is made, it became imperative for the highest-paid players to do everything in their power to make that work. Unfortunately, D’Angelo Russell didn’t get the memo.

Timberwolves chemistry? TNT

In the locker room, the coaching staff was frantically searching for healthy bodies, effective lineups, and complementary skill sets to give the team a chance to win. They simply did not have the bandwidth to babysit players and ensure that they played nice. That was left up to the players, and you would expect that they would do their part.

The team cannot build any chemistry when one of the top-paid players is openly critical and frustrated with other players, particularly a newcomer to the roster with experience and accolades like Rudy Gobert. In the end, was DLo threatened by the fact that he suddenly found himself to be the fourth guy on a three-player core?

If D’Angelo Russell felt threatened by the arrival of Rudy Gobert, and how that might impact his own standing on the team, he was his own worst enemy. Or was it simply a glorified dynamic of the carpenter who smashes his thumb, but openly chides his hammer or nail? You decide.

Role III: Optimize the roster

I am surprised that this responsibility for any NBA team needs to be spelled out, but with the way events occurred within the Timberwolves locker room, I’m leaving nothing to the imagination. The highest-paid players on any NBA team should be wise enough to realize that the good of the team means optimizing the entire roster.

For starters, that player assumes a greater role in the salary composition of any professional sports team and is immediately cast as a stakeholder in the overall performance of that team. We would easily recognize an NFL quarterback who becomes a top-paid player in the NFL, but who has no interest in working with receivers and running backs to ensure their ability to play in a  coordinated and synchronized manner to ensure that offense can score points.

Point guards cannot ‘opt-out,’ of facilitating teammates

So that same responsibility falls upon any NBA point guard who must work with his teammates to ensure that plays are executed flawlessly on the basketball court. For the Minnesota Timberwolves, that undeniably fell upon D’Angelo Russell. Did he believe that it was not part of his job description, whereas 29 other NBA starting point guards were tasked with that responsibility?

Or was it the fact that he was more comfortable scoring, and not playing generously on the basketball court? In his four seasons with the Minnesota Timberwolves, DLo’s 6.2 assists per game were not horrendous by any means. On the other hand, they were less than his 7.1 assists per game average from the 2021-22 NBA season, and his offensive output of 17.9 PPG was one more season of a steadily declining ability to score that began at 21.7 PPG when he first arrived to the roster.

D’Angelo Russell’s ability to score was regressing. Unfortunately, his ability to involve his teammates did not improve quickly enough to compensate, as we will soon see:

Role II: Feed me the damned ball

The Minnesota Timberwolves have a group of rising stars who are all capable of scoring. From power forward Karl-Anthony Towns, to shooting guard Anthony Edwards, and even to center Rudy Gobert. Right now, the Timberwolves have had to find ways to put points on the scoreboard, and many of those points have indeed come from the hot shooting of D’Angelo Russell.

But that is not sustainable. Give a hot shooter the basketball, and he is just one offensive weapon that opposing teams need to defend. But give a hot NBA point guard the basketball, and suddenly opposing defenses need to defend all five players on the basketball court. And that is why the Minnesota Timberwolves roster, the way it is currently constructed, needs a true point guard and not a shooting guard who can sometimes distribute the basketball like D’Angelo Russell.

It’s a math problem

The difference in impacts is simply a math problem. The mistake that many make is the direct comparison of D’Angelo Russell’s 17.9 PPG, 3.1 RPG, and 6.2 APG to that of new PG Mike Conley Jr.’s 10.7 PPG, 2.5 RPG, and 7.7 APG. That does not represent the true nature of how each player impacts the rest of the roster.

Let’s talk through a scenario to illustrate what I mean. With Russell on the basketball court, opposing defenses know that their defensive assignments are: Anthony Edwards, D’Angelo Russell, and anyone not named Rudy Gobert. With Mike Conley, the opposing defenses must defend everyone on the basketball court.

DLo’s offense was additional. He put points on the scoreboard. Once Conley is familiarized with the Timberwolves roster, his offensive impact will be multiplicational. He will improve everyone on the floor with a factor that makes them all more effective. That only happens with a field general, and that is what the Minnesota Timberwolves have finally added.

Role I: Set the right example

We’ve occasionally addressed the notion that the Minnesota Timbewolves are in an incredibly unique NBA set of circumstances. You see, the conception that the Timberwolves have one shot to pull this all together is absolutely not true. In fact, like a space-exploring rocket ship, the second stage may be more powerful than the first stage.

The veteran leadership on the Minnesota Timberwolves roster before trading away D’Angelo Russell was Karl-Anthony Towns, Rudy Gobert, and D’Angelo Russell. But the team has another stage of future NBA stars in Naz Reid, Jaden McDaniels, and Anthony Edwards. That is something that few other NBA teams have right now.

Gobert was the veteran example for Jaden McDaniels. Towns was the veteran example for Naz Reid. And Rusell was the veteran example for Anthony Edwards. But what type of example? Not all have been the type the Timberwolves front office had hoped they might be:

Not everything was running according to the script.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way

The fundamental role of teaching younger players the right way to go about your business is an item that few would check the box for D’Angelo Russell. It’s nothing new, as D’Angelo Russell’s feud with teammate Nick Young started with DLo recording Young talking about cheating on then-fiance Iggy Azalea. Later that year, Russell was traded to the Brooklyn Nets, while Young was traded to the Golden State Warriors.

Now, years later, D’Angelo Russell is still setting bad examples, making poor decisions, and showing more me than most NBA teams are comfortable with.

In the end, the Timberwolves appear to be in a better situation now, and D’Angelo Russell is part of a Lakers team that will likely benefit from his skillsets more.