There was some cause for celebration in Minnesota on Sunday when the Timberwolves agreed to a three-year, $42 million deal with Naz Reid.
Reid was going to be a sought-after commodity in free agency, so to extend him was certainly huge for the franchise. The problem with this extension, though, is that the Timberwolves will now be paying their three top big men on the roster, Naz Reid, Rudy Gobert, and Karl-Anthony Towns, a whopping $433 million combined.
Towns is owed $36 million next season, after which his supermax extension kicks in, which will net him $234 million over four years, as per Spotrac.
As for Gobert, he will be earning $41 million next season. The Frenchman had signed a five-year, $205 million deal with the Utah Jazz back in 2020 and is owed $131 million over the next three years.
We don’t know the breakdown for Reid’s contract just yet, but it is an average salary of close to $14 million over three years.
Investing nearly $500 million in the frontcourt in today’s NBA isn’t ideal. It’d be one thing if the Timberwolves had the best frontcourt in the league after all this investment, but they don’t. We saw Nikola Jokic dominate Towns and Gobert in the playoffs and even if Reid was available, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference.
The Timberwolves Might Have To Trade Towns Or Gobert
With the new CBA in place from next season, it really isn’t all that feasible to have that much money locked up in the frontcourt. That’s especially the case when there is a big Anthony Edwards extension coming up, as he is certain to get the rookie max extension worth five years, $195 million this offseason. That would mean the trio of Edwards, Towns, and Gobert would all be on massive contracts and that’s not going to work.
With Reid now under contract, one of Towns or Gobert can potentially be shipped off, but the question is which of the two? NBA executives believe KAT will be traded in the coming weeks and he’d certainly be the one who would fetch a better haul among the two of them.
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