Why did the team built to beat the Nuggets dismantle itself with 1 blockbuster trade?

By now, you’ve likely heard about the blockbuster NBA trade in which the New York Knicks shipped Donte DiVincenzo and Julius Randle to the Minnesota Timberwolves for Karl-Anthony Towns. The massive deal seemingly came out of nowhere and sent shockwaves throughout the NBA world.

The T-Wolves are coming off one of their best seasons in franchise history and knocked out the Denver Nuggets en route to a Western Conference Finals berth. The team was put together by former Nuggets President of Basketball Operations, Tim Connelly. 

Timberwolves built the perfect team to beat the Nuggets

Connelly helped build the Nuggets’ championship team, then he was poached away by the Wolves and built a team with the goal of beating the Nuggets. He controversially traded for Rudy Gobert, creating a massive frontcourt with Karl-Anthony Towns.

With Towns guarding Nikola Jokic and Gobert protecting the rim, the Wolves were able to wear down the MVP and stifle the Denver offense - something no other team had been able to do. Connelly cracked the code and had his team in position to contend for years with his star duo of KAT and Anthony Edwards.

But then out of the blue, they tore it all down by trading Towns to New York. Randle is a solid player, but he doesn’t have the size or defensive chops to guard a player like Jokic. The Wolves have a great backup big man in Naz Reid, the defending 6th Man of the Year, but he’s also not equipped for the job. So why would the Wolves do this?

The Timberwolves traded Karl-Anthony Towns to save money

The simple answer is money. The Wolves can spin this however they want, and surely they will. But at the end of the day, they saw the tax bill that was coming down the road, and sold KAT just as his four year, $224 million supermax deal is kicking in.

Minnesota essentially decided they would rather be able to keep costs down and be ablet o keep young players down the road than keep the team together that almost just made the NBA Finals. It has to be tough for Wolves fans to stomach, but it’s great news for the Nuggets.

The Nuggets are big winners in this trade

Once the dust settles, this move will knock the Wolves down a peg as contenders. The Thunder are still the favorites in the West, but that team is still young and green and they’ve never proven they match up well with the Nuggets; that was just the Wolves.

But now that Wolves team is a thing of the past. Without KAT, they’ll likely resort to Gobert guarding Jokic, which hasn’t worked well and has left the rim open when Jokic roams out to the perimeter. Connelly surely knows what he’s sacrificing here, but obviously the tax bill that was coming wasn’t in the cards for Wolves ownership.

It’s a decent deal overall depending on how you feel about Towns and his contract, but in terms of how they match up with the Nuggets specifically, it’s a major step backwards.