While the 2023-24 NBA season remains weeks away, the Minnesota Timberwolves are almost assuredly about to become one of the most scrutinized teams this year. Not only are the Timberwolves due for a significant improvement over their 2022-23 NBA season results, but the team is on a collision course with an NBA Salary Cap snafu.
So challenging is the salary cap challenge that many NBA insiders, experts, analysts, and pundits already are publicly reporting that the Timberwolves front office will be forced to trade one of the team’s three centers at the 2024 NBA Trade Deadline. In fact, ESPN NBA Insiders agree that the Minnesota Timberwolves will likely be forced to part ways with power forward Karl-Anthony Towns.
Waiter, there’s a fly in my NBA rumors about trading KAT
But there is one glaring weakness to those grandiose plans. Who will step in to take over for Towns as the Minnesota Timberwolves starting power forward? That is a huge question and is one that many believe will simply happen out of nature’s abhorrence over a vacuum. But for a basketball team GM who must plug holes in rosters and lineups as they occur, there is no wiggle room.
Shedding players who average 20+ points per game, for whatever reason, does not just happen on a whim. Wherever the team ends up on the other side, there will be an immediate need to address significant minutes and production that is suddenly vacated in the Timberwolves roster, starting lineup, and even rotations.
Even now, Minnesota Timberwolves Karl-Anthony Towns appears in an endless array of NBA rumors and NBA Trade scenarios. And so, if you cannot beat them, you join them. Well, to a point., at least. That is to say that if the Minnesota Timberwolves do elect to trade away Towns at the 2024 NBA Trade Deadline, who could fill those shoes on the Timberwolves roster? Believe it or not, the Timberwolves have some compelling and intriguing options:
V – Leonard Miller
Rookie forward Leonard Miller is a lot like the prize in a box of Cracker Jack. We don’t know what we’ll get, but we are eager and excited to find out. After all, Miller is so very young, but he possesses such a diverse range of NBA skills that it is nearly impossible to fit him into the traditional five-position NBA lineup.
But he is 19 years old, stands 6-foot-10, and weighs 210 pounds. It would take a bad 2023-24 performance to take him out of the running for a larger role on the Timberwolves roster. But I don’t think that will happen. In fact, if we are rolling the dice, I would expect young Leonard Miller to exceed expectations this season.
Miller is more than meets the eye
After all, he has the body of an NBA center with the ball-handling chops of an NBA point guard. And while he is going to experience a learning curve that will slow down his ultimate best performances until someday in the future, he has already showcased his expansive arsenal of shots, rebounds, and even defensive skills.
No, even with 30+ minutes per game, Leonard Miller will not suddenly be dropping 20+ points per game on opposing teams. But perhaps he really doesn’t need to. We know that Miller is a unicorn, a player whose abilities to compete at multiple NBA positions make him incredibly difficult to match up with. If the opposing team defends him with a backcourt defender, he simply leverages his incredible 6-foot-10-and-still-growing height to drive for an easy layup or dunk.
If he is guarded by a frontcourt defender, he simply outflanks them with his agility, speed, and point-guard ball-handling skills. And best of all, if opposing teams double him up, he simply passes out to the open shooter.
IV – Luka Garza
If you are hesitant to toss such a heavy burden onto an NBA newcomer, due to the uncertainty of the results, then the Minnesota Timberwolves have another stronger option in place on the Timberwolves roster already in place. Young backup center Luka Garza stands 6-foot-10, weighs 243 pounds, and he has an ever-improving perimeter shot to go with a solid battery of offensive skills. Best of all, he averaged 6.5 points per game on just 8.7 minutes per game last season.
While he remains locked into a Two-Way contract, the upside of backup center Luka Garza on the Timberwolves roster remains a bit limited. But if he competes at the same or better level than his 2022-23 performance, he will make a strong case for more playing time and a larger role in the Minnesota Timberwolves’ future.
Garza gonna ball this season
And he is already showing signs of his intentions to get more playing time with the Minnesota Timberwolves this season
Really noticeable watching Luka Garza that he has slimmed down even more. Foot speed is Garza’s biggest weakness, but his straight-line running here looks way more fluid to me.
— Dane Moore (@DaneMooreNBA) August 13, 2023
Also kinda noteworthy that he’s playing the 4 for Bosnia and Herzegovina, next to Jusuf Nurkic. pic.twitter.com/IqUoVFkwg5
Truth be told, he already has made a strong case for a standard contract and could be the 15th player signed to a standard contract on the Timberwolves roster this season. But even making the roster does not truly reflect the intense workout and grind mentality that this young man possesses.
Luka Garza won’t stop until he is a starter for the NBA and has achieved his optimal production. At 24 years of age, he has several years to improve his NBA readiness. He has already showcased former Lakers legend Kareem Abdul Jabar’s famous skyhook shot. If he can unlock and unload that shot in NBA games, the skyhook is the limit. (pun intended).
III – Kyle Anderson
Forward Kyle Anderson is one of the most versatile players on the Minnesota Timberwolves roster. And it makes sense to give starts to the guy who absorbed so much of Karl-Anthony Towns’ vacated minutes from the 2022-23 NBA season. He has the size and fortitude to compete as a rebounding power forward, but the ball-handling skills to slide down to the point forward/guard role if the game situation so dictates.
When the Minnesota Timberwolves lost Karl-Anthony Towns for 53 games in the heart of last season, the team promoted veteran forward Anderson to help handle that starting role. What the Timberwolves discovered was the fact that Slo-Mo was far more than a standard power forward.
Slo-Mo made a fast first impression
When the team needed a veteran to step up, Kyle Anderson did so. Standing 6-foot-9 and weighing 230 pounds, he is big enough to endure banging bodies under and near the basket. But he is so much more.
Much like rookie Leonard Miller, the truth is that veteran forward Kyle Anderson has a superpower on the basketball court that involves facilitating the basketball much like a point guard. And it was that superpower that pointed the Minnesota Timberwolves at parting ways with veteran point guard D’Angelo Russell, and adding former Utah Jazz point guard Mike Conley Jr.
Could he do so again if the Timberwolves opt to trade Karl-Anthony Towns at the 2024 NBA Trade Deadline? He certainly could. And with a sequel, both he and the Timberwolves’ entire roster would be far more prepared to take advantage of the sudden changing of the guard. While Slo-Mo may be the most obvious choice, there are two other choices as well.
II – Rudy Gobert
With his newfound three-point shot, the Minnesota Timberwolves rim-protecting center Rudy Gobert could be a very intriguing choice as a player who could expand his role to take on more offense as well as remain the team’s primary rim protector. But, just how would that work?
One of the shortcomings that Rudy Gobert introduces to the Timberwolves on the offensive half of the basketball court is the simple fact that to optimize Gobert’s advantages, he is positioned with his back to the basket and remains locked there while one of his four other teammates is responsible for getting him the basketball.
Stifle Tower transforms into a French sharpshooter
That can take the form of driving to the basket, drawing defenders away from Gobert, and then dishing the ball to him for a quick dunk or layup. Or it can simply take the form of a lob pass, which Gobert can sink with his typical crowd-energizing authority. But in all cases, Gobert’s threat to the opposing team is much like a king on a chessboard. Not very mobile, and therefore somewhat ignorable.
But Rudy Gobert has a three-point shot now. And while I am by no means advocating for the Timberwolves center to suddenly take up a position at the perimeter in an attempt to become a long-range marksman for the team, an occasional perimeter shot could be incredibly effective in both the surprise it would cause to opposing teams, as well as the strategy it would force opponents to consider to stop that option.
I- Naz Reid
If there is a more well-suited player on the Minnesota Timberwolves roster who could step up in the wake of Karl-Anthony Towns, I truly do not know who that might be. The Minnesota Timberwolves are blessed with players who, for the most part, love to put in the work to grind out that slow and steady path to excellence. And backup center/power forward Naz Reid is a qualified tour guide on that trek.
Naz Reid. In the end, the answer to the Minnesota Timberwolves’ strategy this season could come down to Naz Reid.
When the Minnesota Timberwolves 2022-23 NBA season ended, the litmus test for this team’s intentions in my clue book was how the team handled the inevitable free agency of backup center/power forward Naz Reid. If the team allowed Reid to test his fair market value in the 2023 NBA Free Agency market, then that translated into the Timberwolves being dead set on keeping veteran Karl-Anthony Towns around for the foreseeable future.
If the Timberwolves locked into a negotiation to bring Reid back that carried over into the NBA Free Agency market, then that meant that the team was trying to squeeze everyone in under the 2023 and projected 2024 NBA salary caps. But neither scenario played out.
Timberwolves made it clear that Naz Reid is key to the future
The scenario that did play out for the Minnesota Timberwolves is the one where Naz Reid never made it as far as the NBA Free Agency market. Instead, the Timberwolves extended him before his contract expired.
So how did the team resolve Naz Reid’s passionate insistence on a larger role with the team going forward? Well, the clue seems to point to the fact that the team foresees a scenario where Naz Reid’s role will grow within the Timberwolves roster organically. Of course, that means next to nothing at this point in time, and I willingly concede that matter. But of the three options, the one extension scenario that is optimal for the Timberwolves to give serious consideration to trading Karl-Anthony Towns at the 2024 NBA Trade Deadline involves signing Reid back quickly to a multi-year extension. So who did the Timberwolves extend quickly?
Naz Reid.
Of course, even after a diminished season, the Minnesota Timberwolves could and should command a pretty pricey return for NBA All-Star center/power forward Karl-Anthony Towns if trading him away truly becomes an option.
But if the Timberwolves front office opts to embrace that strategy, it’s comforting to know that the team is quite capable of absorbing his vacated role in the lineup with no need to depend on any trade package to do so.