WSJ: T'Wolves won the NBA Draft

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The Timberwolves were somehow able to swing a blockbuster deal for Chicago Bulls forward Jimmy Butler that secures them a core of Butler, Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins for years to come. They’re not beating the Golden State Warriors this year. But they’re now one of the few teams in the NBA that have the makings of something that might—might—be able to beat the Warriors in the next several years. They were much closer to a championship on Thursday night than they were Thursday morning. The Timberwolves using the draft to their advantage even before they made a single pick was not what anyone would’ve expected when the event began. It was the one twist in an event that went almost exactly the way the world’s millions of draft experts predicted. Paul George didn’t get rented by a title contender. Kristaps Porzingis didn’t get traded, so Madison Square Garden didn’t burn down. The presumptive lottery players didn’t fall too far, and the fringe players weren’t picked too soon. Even their suits didn’t have a remarkable number of buttons. It was a night of total normalcy, and that’s what made it so abnormal. There is a high bar for drama in the modern draft. The downside of so much speculation about so many wild scenarios is that something unforeseen occurring almost by default means it has to be something truly nuts. But the upside is the NBA can still be truly nuts.

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They already had foundational pieces in Towns and Wiggins, the No. 1 picks of the 2014 and 2015 drafts, in part because that’s the way a team like the Timberwolves had to be assembled. Minnesota is a lovely place with charming people. Minnesota is not a destination for NBA free agents. At least not yet. The Timberwolves’ most reliable way of getting players like Butler, Towns and Wiggins was drafting them—or trading for them with players they had already drafted. That’s why it wasn’t a surprise that Minnesota improved on draft night. The only surprise was how. The Timberwolves didn’t have to make a brilliant decision by the time they were on the clock. They already had Jimmy Butler.

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