So much of what spurred the Minnesota Timberwolves to the Western Conference finals last season remains in place. Anthony Edwards is leading the way. Rudy Gobert and Jaden McDaniels are locking down on defense. Mike Conley has his hand on the steering wheel. Naz Reid.
And yet, as Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo and Keita Bates-Diop ambled onto the stage on Thursday morning for their introductory news conference, it marked the beginning of a truly new era of Timberwolves basketball.
For nine years, Karl-Anthony Towns was the face of the franchise, at the center of everything they did, both on the court and off. Now that a stunning trade has been completed with the New York Knicks, there will be an entirely different feel around the organization.
“We don’t trade a person like KAT lightly,” president of basketball operations Tim Connelly said. “We were very specific with what it would take. Quite frankly, the asking price was very high when you see what these guys accomplished last year.”
When one of the biggest trades in Timberwolves history went down last weekend, it was easy to view the decision to move on from Towns as a financial one.
Towns was one of three Timberwolves players on max-level contracts, and he was starting a four-year, $220 million extension that will pay him $49 million this season. For the first time in quite a while, the Wolves were preparing to pay a huge luxury tax bill this season to keep together a team that was so successful last season.
There is no question that the deal will save the Wolves millions in luxury tax penalties. But coach Chris Finch said on Wednesday that the financial aspect was not the driving factor in making the trade.
“First and foremost, I think it’s extremely important to recognize that this is not a money deal,” Finch said. “Glen (Taylor) and our ownership was and is committed to paying large amounts of tax for this team to be highly competitive. That hasn’t changed. This deal in totality checks a lot of boxes. We think it’s a great basketball trade.”
All summer long, after the Wolves advanced out of the first round for just the second time in franchise history, Taylor insisted to Connelly and the front office staff that he was comfortable paying a hefty luxury tax bill, team sources told The Athletic. In addition, those sources said Taylor preferred to retain Towns rather than make a trade that made his team demonstrably worse. He did not want to take a step back this season.
This is particularly important because the Timberwolves and Minnesota Lynx are in the throes of an ownership battle that will spill into the start of the Timberwolves season. Taylor and his adversaries, minority owners Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez, have been giving depositions in recent weeks in preparation for an arbitration hearing set for the first week of November. Lore and Rodriguez have also been bolstering their group to be ready for a high-priced team should they win the fight.
With control of the team very much up in the air, neither side would be wise to make moves just to cut costs and project financial weakness heading into the hearing. It would not be a good look for either side to make cold financial decisions that could jeopardize the team’s competitiveness while trying to position themselves as the strongest option to own the team.
While everyone awaits the arbitration hearing, Taylor remains the final decision-maker in the organization. He was the one who had to sign off on the idea of trading perhaps the second-best player in franchise history — Edwards is coming on strong but only entering his fifth season, so KAT has the longevity on him — before Connelly could execute the idea. Taylor told the front office that the only way he would sign off on trading Towns was if the Wolves found a deal that would help them competitively this season, team sources said.
That was Connelly’s goal all along as well. He is in the third year of a five-year contract and has an opt-out available next summer, so he has no interest in starting a rebuild, which can often be associated with a move as significant as the Towns trade. But Connelly knew it was only a matter of time before he had to make a big trade to alleviate the cap sheet in Minnesota.
This move was financial in that the Wolves will save enough money to pay Naz Reid, who has a player option on his contract at the end of this season. The collective bargaining agreement is making it harder and harder for teams to spend until their heart’s content. Suppose a team spends enough money to go over the second apron, as the Wolves are doing this season. In that case, there are severe restrictions on aggregating salaries in trades, signing free agents and fulfilling the team’s top goal — making sure Edwards has enough talent around him to be competing for the foreseeable future.
Because Randle and DiVincenzo, combined, make about $10 million less than Towns, the Wolves theoretically would be able to drop below the second apron for the 2025-26 season, thereby reopening team-building possibilities that will be crucial to maintaining the depth they have today. Flexibility is the name of the game in today’s NBA economy, and Connelly knew that he had to find a way to claw some of it back for the coming seasons.
Why do it days before training camp opened and not wait until the middle of the season to see how the team performed? The Knicks have coveted Towns for years, but there were precious few other options out there for the Wolves, team and league sources said. The Timberwolves needed established players in return for one of their best, but the market wasn’t strong for a player who has missed at least 22 games in four of the last five seasons and will make $61 million in 2027-28. If Towns got injured or the team tanked in the standings, it could be even harder to find what they viewed as an asset-positive move.
When New York put DiVincenzo in the deal over Mitchell Robinson, the Wolves agreed to the deal. They added three players to dramatically bolster their depth, taking some of the pressure off of rookies Rob Dillingham and Terrence Shannon Jr. to produce right away for a team that has designs on making a championship run. Two of those players, the Wolves believe, can make them better than they were last season.
Randle spent the previous five seasons in New York, becoming an All-NBA forward who helped restore credibility in the Knicks organization. He said he was initially shocked by the trade when it came down last Friday. But by the time he woke up on Saturday morning he was “really, really excited.”
“It was a breath of fresh air,” Randle said. “I’m excited to bring everything I learned there over the past five years and help these guys out. My only thing here is I just want to help. I want to help Ant, I want to help Rudy, Naz all these guys, I want to help win a championship. So that’s the only thing that matters.”
Finch coached Randle for a season in New Orleans and believes the Wolves can get even more out of him than he showed in New York.
“Really, really enjoyed working with him,” Finch said. “Great pro. Loves being in the gym, comes in with a smile on his face every day. He’s hungry for feedback. Really pleasant.”
Randle will slide right into Towns’ spot in the starting lineup. Finch will be looking to utilize Randle’s playmaking and ability to get out in transition to compensate for the shooting drop-off — Randle shot 31 percent from 3-point range last season compared to KAT’s 41.6 — and add space into the offense.
“When I left Finch in New Orleans, I wanted him in New York with me because he’s just such a great coach,” Randle said. “I’ve always thought he was a genius.”
Finch said he considers DiVincenzo, a player the Wolves tried to get in free agency last season, to be “plug and play.” He shot more than nine 3s per game after the All-Star break last season, giving Finch the kind of volume shooter who can pull the trigger off the move that he has not had since Malik Beasley. And DiVincenzo plays defense.
“His basketball IQ and his ability to cut and move and play off the ball is something that we really need,” Finch said. “That’ll benefit us right away.”
DiVincenzo also is the only player on the Wolves roster who has won a championship, doing so with the Milwaukee Bucks in 2021. The Wolves pursued him hard in free agency in 2023 and made it a priority that he be included in this trade to get them to part with KAT.
“Whatever lineups coach puts out there, the IQ of this team, the versatility of this team just makes anything possible,” DiVincenzo said. “I think that was a big part of why I’m so excited.”
One part of the trade that will have to be explored further is Randle’s contract situation. He can be a free agent at the end of this season, and he made it clear that he envisions Minnesota as a place he can be for a long time.
“You want to be somewhere where you feel wanted,” Randle said. “I feel wanted here. I feel like everybody has embraced me. Tim has been great, played for Finch, I believe in Finch and, ultimately, yeah, I do want to be here.”
The pieces they received in return have the Wolves confident that they can still be a contender in the Western Conference. At Monday’s media day, before the trade became official, Connelly said that the team is still talking about competing for a championship as the season begins.
That’s not to say that Towns will be easily replaced in Minnesota. He spent nine years with the Timberwolves, made four All-Star teams, two All-NBA teams and was crucial in incorporating both Gobert and Edwards into primary roles with the team. Finch called Towns “one of the most skilled players I’ve ever coached.” He was the team’s best shooter and played a pivotal role in the Wolves beating the Denver Nuggets to advance to the conference finals.
Towns also was very welcoming to Finch, who came in from outside of the organization to take over as coach from the fired Ryan Saunders, a KAT confidante, in the middle of the 2021-22 season.
“I think the most important thing in my relationship with him and our time together was just how gracious he was, welcoming and accommodating, open and coachable,” Finch said. “Right off the bat, I think he kind of set the tone for me and our environment. For a guy who has faced so much change in his career at that point in time, he didn’t have to be that way.”
The deal was essentially agreed upon on Friday, but the Knicks needed another four days to work out a handful of sign-and-trade contracts to get the trade into compliance with the collective bargaining agreement. After saying goodbye to a small group of fans at a youth soccer tournament on Saturday, Towns hopped a flight on Sunday to catch up with his new team.
To the Timberwolves Family:
Nine years ago, I arrived in Minnesota as a young man with a dream. Little did I know that this place would become my home, and its people would become my family. Your love, support, and unwavering loyalty have fueled my journey and inspired me to be… pic.twitter.com/PP1pGzvGcx
— Karl-Anthony Towns (@KarlTowns) October 2, 2024
“It’s always hard. It just is,” Finch said. “You don’t think about the human side of things when you’re contemplating these types of moves, but when they happen, that’s the first thing that comes to mind.”
The Timberwolves won’t have to wait long to see their old friend. They play a preseason game against the Knicks in New York on Oct. 13.
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(Photo of Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo: Nathaniel S. Butler / NBAE via Getty Images)
