Our NBA insiders are debating the biggest topics in the league. With trade season fast approaching, which team should look to hit the reset button?
Chris Mannix: All right, Howard, Thanksgiving is in the rear view, the Dec. 15 (unofficial) start of trade season is a couple of weeks away, and Christmas will be here before you know it. With a few exceptions (Indiana, Sacramento), teams are starting to get a pretty good idea of who they are and who they aren’t, specifically contenders. So survey the landscape for me—which team do you think needs to hit the reset button?
Howard Beck: Well, clearly it’s time to blow up the Brooklyn Nets! Oh wait, I already did that one. (Yes, I stand by every word, even if they have played slightly better of late.) There are easily a half dozen teams that are disturbingly underachieving. But if I’m picking one team to use the reset button from my old Atari 2600, it’s the Timberwolves, who spent all of their draft capital to get Rudy Gobert and yet are no better today than they were at the same point last season. I know, it’s super early for Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns as a duo, but the chemistry in Minnesota is just glaringly awful. And it’s not just about the difficulty of pairing the two bigs (though, let's be clear, all the concerns raised over the summer seem well founded). The Towns–Anthony Edwards dynamic has been suspect ever since Edwards began to blossom. (And then there’s D’Angelo Russell, a tough fit just about everywhere, other than a brief joyride in Brooklyn.) I’m sure the Wolves want to give this group as long as possible to figure it out, but I’m not convinced they’ll ever get there. Edwards is the future. Gobert has to stay to anchor the defense (and to justify the massive investment of all those picks). Which means it’s time to do two things: See what you can get for Russell now, and start gauging the market for Towns. They can’t actually trade KAT until next July, because of the supermax extension he signed last summer, but it’s time to start laying the groundwork.
