The $256 million question in Minnesota

Naz Reid is sticking around the Timberwolves. Will Karl-Anthony Towns?

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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Young Woman in a Black and Green Bonnet; Mary Cassatt; 1890

The Minnesota Timberwolves reached a new contract with Naz Reid ahead of free agency, forking over $42 million over three years, the last season being a player option. Reid’s agents would know better than I, but I did expect him to get a little more than that in free agency. One can argue he was the Timberwolves’ most consistent center last season, despite the team paying two other All-NBA talents at center a combined $77 million next season.

That means that the Wolves will have about $90 million tied up in centers next season.

Of course, Karl-Anthony Towns plays power forward next to Rudy Gobert, and Reid backs both up interchangably. This has been one of Minnesota’s swerves in the nascent Tim Connelly era: going big where much of the rest of the league has gone small and agile. The issue isn’t necessarily the strategy — it’s the talent level. Anthony Edwards is a rising star who can score and set up teammates at a high level, and who should be an elite perimeter defender in the right circumstances. Gobert is still a top-flight rim protector. Towns remains an all-time shooter for a big man. There’s just … a certain something wrong with the whole collection. Never was that more evident than in Denver’s pure beatdown of Minnesota in the playoffs, albeit with Jaden McDaniels missing the series after breaking his hand as the regular season wound down in a game in which Rudy Gobert also punched Kyle Anderson.

Maybe that’s the issue here? The vibes are just a little dodgy? Or more than a little dodgy? Also: it was Denver, who beat down everybody they faced in the playoffs. It was telling, though, that Gobert couldn’t do anything with Nikola Jokic and Towns couldn’t punish the much smaller Aaron Gordon on the other end. In a series where the size truly helps, it was a shot or two from a sweep.

Are the Timberwolves really going to run this back after a deeply disappointing No. 8 seed finish in the West? Mike Conley’s 2023-24 contract has hit the guarantee date. It looks like Taurean Prince might be the odd man out after Reid contract, and the team will likely focus on bringing in a back-up point guard. Notably, the Wolves did not make a coaching change — that was one move I thought would be on the table, especially since Connelly didn’t hire Chris Finch.

The question on the lips of Wolves observers is whether the team will look to move Towns, or at least gauge the market for him. And to me the answer is obviously yes. Towns is a spectacular scorer and shooter — there’s no question about that. But the Timberwolves have appeared in exactly three playoff series in his 8-year tenure, and he’s been largely neutralized in two of those series. (He was better than people remember in the Memphis series in 2022.) Last summer he agreed to a supermax extension with the Wolves that carries through 2027-28. That’s a long time! He has two All-NBA third team nods in eight seasons, and he’s on the books for $256 million over the next five years.

I don’t know. That seems a bit rich for his services.