4 realistic trades for disgruntled star Karl-Anthony Towns

With Minnesota Timberwolves star Karl-Anthony Towns reportedly unhappy with the state of the franchise, it’s worth looking into what a trade for him may look like.

And just when you thought the blockbuster trade rumors were over for a bit, they’ve been reborn. According to The Athletic’s Ethan Strauss, Minnesota Timberwolves superstar Karl-Anthony Towns is not pleased with the direction of the team that drafted him and recently extended him. He is in year one of a max extension signed in 2018 that goes through the 2023-24 season.

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Towns’ career up to this point has been odd. Despite going No. 1 overall in 2015, the Timberwolves did not give him an ideal environment to thrive. His rookie season started off slow, but toward the end he took off and gave the league a taste of his premier talent. In year two, Towns got to play for Tom Thibodeau, who went back to his roots of playing guys too much and deployed Towns for an average of 37.0 minutes a game.

Thibodeau then got his hands into the front office, trading for Jimmy Butler and Jeff Teague in the summer of 2017. Butler became the star of the show in 2017-18 while Towns took a back seat. The team was on pace to surpass 50 wins behind Butler’s excellent season, but Butler suffered an injury that forced Minny to limp to the No. 8 seed at 47-35. The team’s inability to stay afloat in Butler’s absence caused many to blame Towns.

2018-19 started off rocky for the entire Timberwolves organization. Butler’s trade demand and subsequent antics forced ownership to go against Thibodeau’s wishes, trading Butler to Philly for Robert Covington and Dario Saric. Thibodeau was then let go and Ryan Saunders took over as head coach in yet another weird season.

The front office was overhauled this past summer, headlined by Gersson Rosas’ hiring as the president of basketball operations. The team’s most significant move was trading up from 11th to sixth overall in the 2019 draft to take Jarrett Culver and the rest were under-the-radar additions such as Jordan Bell.

It was obvious they wouldn’t be great in a loaded Western Conference, but a competitive product didn’t seem crazy.

Well, now it does. Since the official team Twitter account gloated about the Timberwolves’ surprising 7-4 start, they have gone 5-16 and find themselves 12th in the West.

Memes aside, they’re simply bad. Towns is averaging a ridiculous stat line of 26.5 points, 11.7 rebounds and 4.4 assists with a true shooting percentage of 65.4, but his talents are arguably being wasted.

For one thing, Towns doesn’t even lead the team in shots. That honor goes to Andrew Wiggins, the player who takes the fifth-most shots per game of anyone in the league (20.7) but has a TS% of 53.4 (ranks 152nd). It’s hard to win when your leading shot-taker is putting up bad shots.

Furthermore, Towns and Gorgui Dieng are the only Wolves with positive box plus-minus figures (plus-9.3 and plus-1.8, respectively), and only four Wolves have win shares per-48 minutes above the league average threshold of .100 (per Basketball-Reference).

Towns’ frustration is understandable, no doubt. The issue is the money: he’s locked up through the 2023-24 season, which makes him attractive to buyers, but doesn’t force Minnesota’s hand to sell. They seem committed to building a good product throughout his contract, even though doing so immediately is difficult.

Should the Timberwolves look to trade their cornerstone and reset, here are five teams they could find themselves negotiating with with.