Karl-Anthony Towns Is Clear Choice for T-Wolves' No. 1 Pick in 2015 NBA Draft
The Minnesota Timberwolves can't lose in this scenario.
Each of the last two No. 1 overall picks is already on the roster—Anthony Bennett from 2013 and Andrew Wiggins from 2014—and Flip Saunders will soon make it three.
After all, the pingpong balls bounced fortuitously for the Wolves Tuesday night, giving Minnesota the first selection in the 2015 NBA draft. Amazingly, it's the first time since 2004—when the Orlando Magic took Dwight Howard out of Southwest Atlanta Christian Academy—that the team with the best odds actually held on to the top pick.
So, who is sitting atop Minnesota's draft board? Soon enough, he'll be moving to the Land of 10,000 Lakes and getting ready to join a roster already brimming over with young talent.
While there are plenty of intriguing options with that first selection, one player stands out above all the rest. Not literally, as he measures in just under 7'0" and gives up an inch or more to a few other future NBA players.
But in terms of talent and fit, Karl-Anthony Towns is the obvious choice.
Eliminating All But Two
Despite finishing the 2014-15 campaign with the Association's worst record, the Wolves are actually in an enviable position. While the Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks and some others are attempting to figure out how they should build a contender around an aging star, Minnesota has no such temporal restrictions.
Instead, there's potential at each and every position.
Kevin Garnett and Gary Neal are unrestricted free agents this summer, while Robbie Hummel and Arinze Onuaku are restricted. Lorenzo Brown is working with a team option.
Everyone else on the roster is still under contract, and most players have tremendous upside.
Do the Wolves need anyone at point guard? Definitely not, as Ricky Rubio will be back in the lineup during the 2015-16 season and Zach LaVine is just waiting to break out—especially after the stellar ending to his rookie go-round.
At shooting guard, Kevin Martin is the established veteran who can drill shots from deep, but there are two young guns capable of lining up at the 2. Wiggins is the first, and Shabazz Muhammad is the second—don't forget about him, even though surgery on a ruptured ligament in his middle finger cut his last season short.
Small forward? The same two young contributors both play there, and they'll likely occupy the two wing positions next to one another for quite some time.
Bennett may not have lived up to the No. 1 billing thus far, but he's still only 22 years old and has plenty of time left to keep improving. Adreian Payne is also intriguing at the 4, but the spot may well end up belonging to Gorgui Dieng, whose improving mid-range jumper could help make the transition to a full-time role as a power forward even easier.
The Timberwolves' biggest need is at center, as the 29-year-old Nikola Pekovic may not have much of a future in the starting five. Not only does he no longer fit with the youthful roster, but his right Achilles injury led to surgery and he's now concerned about his future.
"Of course I am [worried]," the Montenegrin center told Kent Youngblood of the Minneapolis Star Tribune in early April. "I'm pretty much worrying about how this is going to affect my life in 10 years. I mean, I'm still thinking about basketball [too]. But when you deal so much with something like this...It's a big deal, I think."
That uncertainty makes drafting a center even more obvious.
D'Angelo Russell and Emmanuel Mudiay are both talented enough to be selected at No. 1, but only if the right team is picking. That's not Minnesota, as there are plenty of high-upside, young guards already in place. The Wolves aren't the Philadelphia 76ers, who have a pair of talented big men already on the roster.
The same line of thinking applies to wing players, which rules out Justise Winslow and Mario Hezonja. Really, the only two logical choices are Jahlil Okafor and Towns, and the latter is a much better fit.
Okafor vs. Towns
Minnesota needs to improve on both sides of the ball.
According to Basketball-Reference.com, the Western Conference bottom-feeders scored only 102.9 points per 100 possessions, which gave them the No. 25 offensive rating in the NBA. But defense was even more problematic, as the Wolves' 112.2 defensive rating left them in the worst spot by a rather sizable margin.
Drafting Okafor would certainly help the team's scoring ability, but it would also make improving Minnesota's point-preventing prowess particularly problematic.
As Jonathan Givony explained in detail for DraftExpress, the center's work on that end of the court is a big issue:
"More concerning is how badly he struggles stepping outside of the paint in pick and roll situations, where he looks sluggish and slow-footed, showing poor awareness and being late to react on the fly. As gifted as he is offensively, he is almost just as poor on the other end of the floor. Duke was forced to play a very conservative style of defense on the pick and roll, with Okafor going way underneath screens to give himself a big enough cushion to recover and not get burned, which is certainly not ideal against the better guards he'll face in the NBA. He struggles hedging screens on the perimeter and certainly can't be asked to switch onto smaller players, as he already struggles in one on one situations against big men.
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Not being particularly explosive, he offers very little in the way of rim-protection, which is a concern in today's NBA game where practically every team's defensive plan revolves around having a big man in the paint who can serve as an anchor, clean up mistakes and not allow easy baskets.
It's that last part—and keep in mind that what's above is only an excerpt of Givony's criticisms—that has to scare off the Wolves. This is a team that has no hope of protecting the rim right now, and adding a centerpiece with similar issues would only compound the problem.
And not just any problem. According to NBA.com's SportVU data, Minnesota was easily the worst team at guarding the hoop during this last season. Here are the bottom five:
| Minnesota Timberwolves | 23.2 | 57.9 |
| Los Angeles Lakers | 21.8 | 54.6 |
| Boston Celtics | 22.4 | 53.9 |
| Miami Heat | 21.9 | 53.8 |
| Sacramento Kings | 21.0 | 53.5 |
That's...not good.
The Wolves were 3.3 percentage points worse than the No. 29-ranked team in the league, and that gap is just about as large as the one between the Lakers and San Antonio Spurs, who allowed a lower percentage than all but 11 teams.
Pekovic getting healthy isn't going to change this. He allowed 56.5 percent shooting at the rim. While Dieng might improve, he's starting from a rather low point, as opponents shot 55.8 percent against him in this area.
Getting an interior stopper is critical, and that's Towns' role.
Not only does he have the length and quick feet necessary to be successful out on the perimeter and switch in many situations, but his timing is absolutely superb. That's how he was able to average a stellar 4.3 rejections per 40 minutes during his freshman season for John Calipari, per Sports-Reference.com.
Granted, he's not perfect. He bites on fakes rather often, is sometimes caught out of position and can get into a bit of foul trouble against tougher opponents.
But this is a 19-year-old prospect. Perfection shouldn't be expected.
What should be expected is upside, and it might not be matched by that of any player in this class—especially because he could close the offensive gap between himself and Okafor by improving quickly in coming years.
The Duke product is quite obviously the better scorer right now, but he might never be able to stretch out the floor in the space-heavy modern NBA.
Towns could, as Bleacher Report's Jonathan Wasserman explains:
"Towns also flashed rare shooting potential for a big man, having knocked down 81.3 percent of his free throws and making a handful of pick-and-pop jumpers. Okafor's 51 percent free-throw mark highlights his lack of comfort shooting with two hands on the ball.
And though not as polished as Okafor in the post, Towns' gradual improvement as a back-to-the-basket scorer suggests there is more development to come.
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Even if Towns doesn't make massive improvements to his scoring game, that shouldn't deter the Wolves from making him the first player to shake NBA Commissioner Adam Silver's hand on June 25.
The rest of the roster is certainly going to improve on offense, especially if Wiggins and LaVine keep playing like they did during the stretch run. Minnesota has a great chance to become more adept at scoring through sheer internal development and better luck with the pesky injury imp that seemed to nip at everyone on the 2014-15 roster.
However, the same can't be said about the defense. No one under this franchise's control is suddenly going to morph into a rim-protecting stud.
And if Okafor is picked, that will remain true.
Adam Fromal covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @fromal09.
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