Since the Minnesota Timberwolves earned the first overall pick in the 2015 NBA Draft and selected Karl-Anthony Towns, the team has been on a steady path to improvement. Drafting Towns was the first time Minnesota ever owned the number one pick.
Now, the Timberwolves are perennial playoff contenders, and looking to make the postseason for a third straight year in 2024. But the earlier stages of the Karl-Anthony Towns era were not always as successful. The Wolves missed the playoffs for five of the first six seasons of KAT’s career.
In that span, Minnesota frequently struggled with putting reliable players around the multi-talented big man. Here, we will look at the worst starters the Timberwolves employed next to Towns. To qualify for the list, players must have started for a minimum of 20 games.
These are the 8 worst Timberwolves starters of the Karl-Anthony Towns era:
8. Dario Saric
Spending just one season in Minnesota, Dario Saric started 28 games with the Wolves during the 2018-19 season. In his lone campaign in the Twin Cities, Saric put up averages of 10.5 points and 5.5 rebounds.
He earned his starts at the four while Towns occupied the center spot. Never known as a high-efficiency shooter, Saric shot just 45% from the floor during his one season with the Timberwolves.
Unfortunately, Saric was simply not the best fit next to Karl-Anthony Towns. While he was not necessarily a liability, he did not have any one area of the game where he excelled. As a result, he did not do much to raise the team’s ceiling, and Minnesota went a mediocre 36-46 in 2018-19.
Comparing Saric’s impact against the likes of a current starter like Rudy Gobert makes it clear why he was one of the worst starters of the KAT era. Gobert brings a clear edge in rim protection and rebounding, which is a total game changer for the Timberwolves. Plain and simple, Saric did not do much to change any opponent’s game plan.
7. Juancho Hernangomez
A trade deadline acquisition during the 2019-20 season, Juancho Hernangomez made exactly 20 starts with the Timberwolves over the course of two seasons. While he impressed at the power forward slot during his first 14 games with the team in 2020, his production began to fall off in his first full season in Minnesota.
Hernangomez’s hot shooting streak of 42% from beyond the arc in his first season with the Wolves proved to be a fluke when he shot just 32% from distance in a much larger sample size the next year. Playing in 52 games in 2020-21, he saw the floor for just 17 minutes per game. His limited production made him extremely expendable.
While not a full-time starter for significant period of time, Hernangomez still proved to be one of the worst options the Timberwolves put next to Karl-Anthony Towns. His presence did not ultimately contribute to winning, as Minnesota struggled mightily in 2020-21 and won just 23 games.
Hernangomez was never a starting-caliber player, and the Wolves dealt him away in the summer of 2021 in a trade that netted them Patrick Beverley. The move turned out to be a huge win, as Minnesota gained a much more valuable player.
6. Nemanja Bjelica
Making his NBA debut with the Timberwolves at age 27, Nemanja Bjelica joined the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2015. He came to the United States after beginning his professional basketball career eight years earlier in 2007.
Bjelica lasted three seasons in Minnesota before signing a new deal with the Sacramento Kings in 2018. While with the Timberwolves, he earned 22 career starts and averaged just over six points per game.
Coincidentally, Bjelica joined the Wolves at the same time as Karl-Anthony Towns. He was one of the few teammates that was around for each of the first three seasons of KAT’s career. Unfortunately, he did not do enough to move the team forward in his time in the Twin Cities, as Minnesota won less than 36 games on average during his tenure.
Ultimately, Bjelica never provided as much of a scoring punch as the team may have hoped for when they brought him in from overseas. He excelled as a passer and read the floor well, but he was another example of a player that was not the greatest fit next to Towns.
The best season of Bjelica’s Timberwolves tenure was during 2017-18, where he earned 21 of his 22 starts with the team. But his offensive fit was still a bit clunky, and he never earned a full-time role as a starter before departing the franchise.
5. Shabazz Napier
When the Brooklyn Nets acquired Kevin Durant in the summer of 2019, they shipped out Shabazz Napier to Golden State. Soon after, he was traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves where he would remain for half of the 2019-20 season.
From October 2019 until February 2020 when the Wolves ultimately dealt Napier away, he started in 22 of the 36 contests he suited up for in Minnesota. Unfortunately, he suffered from one of his worst statistical shooting seasons while with the franchise.
Napier shot just 40% from the floor and an abysmal 29% from three in his three dozen games with the Timberwolves. Standing at just 6-foot-1, Napier was a player that was forced to rely heavily on his shooting without significant size to benefit him. With his shot running cold, the Wolves knew he would not be a viable long-term option.
The fact that Minnesota was forced to start him for the majority of his time with the team that season just speaks to how bleak things were just before the arrival of Anthony Edwards. That Wolves team lost 11 straight games in December 2019, helping them finish with just 19 wins and land the top overall pick in the 2020 draft.
4. Jarrett Culver
When making a draft pick in the lottery, there is statistically a great chance of landing an elite prospect that will develop into a reliable long-term starter and potentially even a cornerstone for your team. Such was the case when the Minnesota Timberwolves made the right choice in drafting Anthony Edwards in 2020.
But for every hit, there is always going to be a miss or two as well. Jarrett Culver unfortunately falls squarely into the category of a miss. Some lottery picks will fail for a multitude of reasons. It could be that they were not put in a position to succeed, or they may have dealt with a nagging injury that prevented them from progressing athletically.
For Culver, it simply appeared that he was unready to handle the responsibility that comes with stepping on an NBA floor. The Timberwolves showed their belief in him from day one, affording him 24 minutes per game and starting him in 35 games as a rookie.
The sixth overall pick of the 2019 draft had plenty of opportunity, but he was unable to capitalize on it. After two seasons and 97 games, Culver had failed to find his footing and it was sadly already the beginning of the end for his NBA career.
His unfortunate flop easily makes him one of the worst players to start next to Karl-Anthony Towns.
3. Brandon Rush
Over the years, the Minnesota Timberwolves have had a bad habit of bringing in older players and keeping them around past when they were useful. Brandon Rush is another telling example of this disappointing trend.
After an eight-year career of mostly coming off the bench, the Timberwolves decided to sign Rush in 2016 and start him for a large portion of the following season. If that were not bad enough, they also gave him heavy minutes despite the fact that he was clearly past his prime.
Coming off a season with the Warriors in 2015-16 where he played just 14 minutes per game, Minnesota allowed Rush to see the floor for nearly 22 minutes per game while his shooting numbers went through the floor. He shot 37.4% from the field on four shot attempts per game.
Rush’s shooting percentage was the lowest of any player to appear in at least six games for the team that year. After his disappointing campaign with the Wolves in 2016-17, Rush was out of the league after failing to make the Milwaukee Bucks’ roster the following season.
The fact that Brandon Rush played such big minutes so late into his career in Minnesota is enough to place him in the top three worst starters of the Karl-Anthony Towns era.
2. Treveon Graham
Treveon Graham arrived with the Minnesota Timberwolves along with Shabazz Napier during the 2019 offseason. Like Napier, he was traded from Brooklyn to Golden State before being rerouted to Minnesota shortly after.
Graham’s time in the Twin Cities actually ended up being even shorter than Napier’s. He remained with the Timberwolves for 33 games before being sent to the Atlanta Hawks alongside Jeff Teague in January 2020.
In his brief stint with the Wolves, Graham earned 20 starts and put up 5.2 points per game. One would think that Brandon Rush’s 37.4% shooting in his tenure with Minnesota would be tough to beat, but Graham shot even worse at just 35.4%.
After the Timberwolves shipped him out, Graham lasted just 22 games in Atlanta to close out his NBA career. The fact that Graham is the fourth player on this list to be rostered during the 2019-20 season speaks to how much Minnesota was scraping and clawing to put out NBA-caliber players on the floor that year.
Karl-Anthony Towns endured rough times in more ways than one during the season that ultimately netted the Timberwolves Anthony Edwards. While Towns only played in 35 games, he also had to sit back and watch the front office struggle to put together a roster that could stay competitive.
1. Tayshaun Prince
All things considered, Tayshaun Prince was objectively the Timberwolves’ worst starter of the Karl-Anthony Towns era. This is not to diminish Prince’s career as a whole, as we all know he was a key piece to a legendary championship team with the Detroit Pistons in 2004.
But like Brandon Rush, Tayshaun Prince was simply past the point of being useful by the time he arrived in Minnesota. To add insult to injury, the Wolves were painfully unaware of this and threw him in the starting lineup for over half the season.
Earning 44 starts in his final season in the NBA, Prince played 19 minutes per game for the Timberwolves and scored just 2.9 points per game. In 2015-16, many aging players were beginning to utilize their three-point shot as a way of elongating their careers. But Prince was unable to capitalize on the trend, shooting a horrific 17% from three for the season.
Plain and simple, it was time for Tayshaun to retire. During Prince’s lone season in Minnesota, Karl-Anthony Towns’ career was just beginning. Rather than putting other young pieces around KAT, management opted for a declining role player who provided little to no value to the team. That earns Prince the top spot on our list of worst starters of the Towns era.
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