Minnesota Timberwolves: 5 potential targets in 2019 NBA free agency

1. D’Angelo Russell

Here’s the pipe dream. Two high-level free agents, D’Angelo Russell and Tobias Harris, have both shown interest in signing with Minnesota. Thanks to the team’s massively clogged cap sheet however, they will likely only be able to sign one, at most, in the best-case scenario.

Harris isn’t on this list because the team doesn’t need wings and can’t afford to give the max to a guy who isn’t and will never be a top-25 player. Harris is who he is. Russell, just 23 years old and coming off an All-Star appearance, is a better gamble for a max contract. Likewise, he fills the point guard void with high-level upside for the foreseeable future.

ESPN’s Zach Lowe noted the genuine interest between the Wolves and Russell, so you know it’s legit:

"“There has been a lot of Minnesota [signing] D’Angelo Russell noise, and it’s not all Karl Towns commenting on Instagram because they’re friends. Minnesota has communicated to the league, not the NBA league, just the league at large that they believe they have a pathway to get D’Angelo Russell.”"

The Wolves, even with dumping one of Teague, Dieng or Wiggins’ contracts, won’t have enough to realistically sign Russell. The more practical option is to do a sign-and-trade with the Brooklyn Nets, assuming they will in fact sign Kyrie Irving. The problem there, however, is the Nets won’t want to take back any significant money, so the Wolves won’t be able to simply dump a bad contract with draft picks attached.

That then requires bringing in a third team with cap space to eat one of Minnesota’s bad contracts, which in turn means attaching another asset. At minimum, the starting point for getting a sign-and-trade for Russell done would mean the Wolves sending out promising 2018 first round pick Josh Okogie and a lightly protected future first-rounder. That again, is a minimum.

Keeping Karl-Anthony Towns — a legitimate superstar — happy has to be paramount to the franchise’s plans going forward. Pairing him with one of his best friends would be a great way to do that.

If the Wolves could build from the ground up with a Towns-Russell-Culver trio, things would look brighter in Minnesota than they have in a long time. The rumors of D’Angelo to Minnesota alone will make the next few weeks interesting for the Timberwolves, whereas the team would normally be sitting July out.

Even if the Wolves can’t move off Wiggins or at least one of Teague or Dieng and the noise amounts to nothing, the new front office has shown that it will do things differently, smarter, than the Wolves have done in forever. That, at least, is a start for a team in one of the coldest NBA cities with almost no cap space at the moment.