The sticky part of getting the Wolves unstuck
Here’s the problem with the Wolves’ situation.
They messed up the Jimmy Butler trade:
When Jimmy Butler was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers, the Wolves broke the cardinal rule of trading a superstar player: get young players with high potential and draft picks in return. Instead of accruing assets and looking for a replacement star, the Tom Thibodeau went with two high-end role players, only one of which is still here.
That decision has now backed the team into a corner: they badly need a second star. And because they didn’t get anyone with that potential from Philly, nor any draft picks to use as assets to get one from somewhere else, their only real asset is the one high-end role player, Robert Covington.
Had the Wolves grabbed, say, Covington, Markelle Fultz, and a draft pick from the Sixers, we’re having a completely different conversation about this team. Even after utterly failing to handle the Butler drama, Thibs still had a chance to right the ship by doing right with the trade. He chose not to, and the new Wolves regime is still trying to dig out of that hole.
Covington only has value to certain teams:
The complication with the Jimmy trade fallout complication is that, while Covington is highly valued at this trade deadline, he only has value to a certain subset of team, and only a subset of that subset has anything of real value to offer the Wolves in return.
Take the Rockets, for example. It’s easy to see RoCo’s value to them: he’s a catch-and-shoot bomber from three and top tier defender…the perfect player to slot in between James Harden and PJ Tucker.
But what do the Rockets have that would have any value to the Wolves? They’ve made it clear they’re more than willing to trade their first round draft pick, but that pick is likely mid-20s in a weak draft class. Austin Rivers is their best younger-ish player, but he’s far from what the Wolves need and the personality would be a very poor fit with this locker room. Any other non-Harden/Westbrook/Capela player would be, at best, a lateral move for Minnesota. In most cases, a clear step back.
That’s the real crux of the trading-Covington-path; the teams that want him are teams looking to contend, meaning they won’t be willing to part with their top players. Conversely, bad teams have no use for Covington. RoCo will not get the Wolves a top player like Bradley Beal. But those top players are the only ones that do anything for the Wolves.
The D’Angelo factor:
The paragraph above is exactly why the Wolves have been relentlessly fixated on D’Angelo Russel - the Warriors are the one team that would have interest in RoCo and would maybe be willing to part with a young star to get him, because they’re looking to win next year, not this.
This, of course, comes with its own set of complications. For one, the Warriors shouldn’t (and don’t appear to) have any interest in making a DLo trade until this summer. They’re slated to land a top draft pick, and packaging that with DLo would net them significantly more than DLo alone. Suppose that, say, the Sixers bomb out of the playoffs and the Warriors have the pick for Anthony Edwards in June. They could trade DLo for Covington now, but maybe they could trade DLo and Edwards for Ben Simmons in July. Given that they’re not winning this season, it almost obligates them to simply wait until the draft to see if something like that becomes possible.
For the Wolves, this then creates a quandary of taking what they can get now versus waiting for something much better that may never become a reality. Trading Covington next week for, say, a late pick and Delon Wright, would be a step forward. A very small, modest step, but a step nonetheless. While waiting until the summer could get them D’Angelo….or not.
And we can debate about his value relative to that max contract, but make no mistake: from a pure “how good is he at basketball” angle, no team inquiring about Covington can offer any player remotely as good as DLo.
Maybe it’s best for the Wolves to wait too:
The Wolves are losing. A lot. And if that doesn’t change, they too will be slated for a top draft pick.
Even in a shallow draft, a top 3 pick is a major asset. Again, the contending teams aren’t parting with a star for RoCo, and bad teams have no use for him. But bad teams would have a use for James Wiseman. Covington won’t get the Wolves Bradley Beal. But Covington and Wiseman might.
Given that RoCo is on a bargain contract for two more years, there’s no rush to trade him. Contending teams will come calling about him at this time next year too. From that perspective, it makes more sense for the Wolves to simply put their heads down, stomach being bad the rest of the season, and see if the lottery breaks their way in May.
There’s no obvious answer for the Wolves other than “don’t make the roster worse”. The Thibs Tax is still far too steep for there to be any easy fixes for this team. Ultimately, they’re simply going to have to make a choice and live with the results. But they only have one true positive value asset on the roster, so they’re only getting one shot at a big move. They have to make it count.
