The Minnesota Timberwolves will be entering the 2024-25 season without Karl-Anthony Towns. It will be the first season they begin without KAT on the roster since the 2014-15 year where their lottery picked initially brought the sharpshooting big man to the Twin Cities.
It is certainly disappointing to lose a player who many would consider to be the heart and soul of the Timberwolves. Towns was around for the roughest of rough times and remained as one of the team's leaders all the way until this past season when they achieved one of the best years in franchise history. KAT saw it all during his time in Minnesota.
Now that he is gone, Timberwolves players and coaches will be given the difficult task of replacing him. Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo will of course be big lifts to this roster's on-court production, but it will be hard to fill the massive void that KAT leaves behind in an overall sense.
In the meantime, many are speculating about the trade and why the Timberwolves chose to do it. Some have connected the dots to see that finances probably played a part in it. Minnesota insider and senior writer for The Athletic Jon Krawczynski recently confirmed this, with an even more significant caveat: the Timberwolves were going to be forced to choose between KAT, or Naz Reid and Nickeil Alexander-Walker.
Minnesota would have had to give up Naz Reid and NAW to keep KAT
According to Krawczynski, the financial implications of Towns' new contract would have led to the team being forced to move off Reid and Alexander-Walker, had they opted to keep KAT around. While keeping Towns on the roster would have meant retaining a bigger core piece from the Western Conference Finals team, it clearly would have ultimately had negative long-term consequences.
Yes, keeping KAT keeps the starting lineup intact as well as the Gobert-Towns frontcourt, but losing Reid and NAW would have been arguably even more detrimental. Those two provide much-needed depth, along with defense and perimeter shooting power. It seems that retaining KAT and having to pay out his massive contract while searching for smaller contracts to fill the void would not have been an ideal situation.
This new information gives us a little more insight into why Minnesota's management decided to pull the trigger on such a massive team-altering move. Losing KAT is still a big disappointment to many fans, but perhaps this can soften the blow in a way.