Just like every other team in the association, the Minnesota Timberwolves were stuck sitting around back on Feb. 1 wondering what on earth happened when Luka Doncic was suddenly traded to the Los Angeles Lakers. It made no sense for this to happen, and especially at the price the Dallas Mavericks ultimately gave their former franchise superstar up for.
The Lakers were able to acquire an all-world talent and a top-five player in the game for pennies on the dollar. That left many to wonder - did the Lakers get an unfair advantage in this whole process? That would seem to be the likely answer to this situation. Or perhaps was Doncic available for less than that the general public considered to be his worth? If that were somehow the case, there would have been many more teams that would have been able to hypothetically put in a successful bid for Luka.
With that in mind, ESPN's Bobby Marks recently devised a hypothetical trade that each team in the league could have potentially made to offer the Mavericks for Doncic. In his imagined proposal for the Timberwolves, Minnesota would have sent Rudy Gobert along with their 2025 first-round pick and a 2028 first-round pick swap in exchange for Doncic.
Marks proposed Gobert and two firsts for Doncic
The reasoning Marks provides for his trade package is as follows: Because Minnesota can't combine contracts, the option is Gobert or Anthony Edwards. Edwards for Doncic makes the most sense basketball wise, but there is a significant hold up: Edwards is not a free agent until the summer of 2029. Previous trades have depleted Minnesota's draft assets, leaving the Wolves with only the Pistons' first-round pick this season and swap rights in 2028.
His logic certainly tracks when it comes to the Timberwolves' available assets. And while we can sit around all day and say this is not something Dallas would have actually agreed to, we can also acknowledge that the actual real-life package that sent Luka to Los Angeles was never going to be considered realistic by the masses in a hypothetical scenario either.
If the Wolves had presented this idea to the Mavericks and they had accepted, it would have been a total slam dunk for Minnesota. Losing Gobert would hurt the defense, but avoiding giving up Edwards and being able to pair him with Doncic would have created arguably the greatest duo in the NBA.