The Minnesota Timberwolves Thread: Timberwolves, Anthony Bennett part ways

Okafor appears to want to play for the Lakers so badly, it's as if he's ready to cede the draft title to Towns right now.

"He's obviously a great player, he's definitely deserving of being the No. 1 pick," Okafor said of Towns.

So far, it appears Towns is ready to accept that crown and go to Minnesota. He is the only potential top-four pick who has not yet worked out for the Lakers, and they have had difficulty in pinning him down for a visit, which could mean that he already knows he's going to join the Timberwolves, so what's the use?

Okafor suffers from no such uncertainty, saying, "I'm coming from Duke University ... where the entire atmosphere is about winning. ... That's what the Laker organization is about, that's what I want to be part of."

When this columnist had the nerve to ask about his defensive deficiencies, Okafor had the wit to fire back.

"I hear the criticism, but we won a national championship at Duke, so it wasn't that bad," he said, grinning. "Coach K was fine with the way we played defense."
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I don't think that's an answer though.


Story: http://www.newsobserver.com/sports/article23639860.html#storylink=cpy
 
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Just saw that. It's impromptu, so I'm curious if it's actually something or nothing.
 
Jerry Zgoda @JerryZgoda 1m
Flip definitely has seen Towns work out, last week in Thousand Oaks, Ca. Saw Russell work out there same day, too.
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Guts Call Coming for Lakers: Insiders Say They're Not Getting Towns

Mark Heisler, Forbes

In the Lakers’ dreams, Minnesota, picking No. 1 in the NBA draft, would take Jahlil Okafor, dropping Karl Towns to them at No. 2, which looked possible but less so now.

Minnesota GM/coach Flip Saunders, who had been leaning toward Okafor, is said to have turned pro-Towns after seeing him last week in Los Angeles.

The splash sent ripples throughout the NBA. Says an insider: “There’s no doubt, the T-Wolves are taking Towns.”
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Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/markhei...ecause-insiders-say-theyre-not-getting-towns/
 
^ Interesting.

I don't doubt the Wolves end up taking KAT (they would continue to be the laugh of the league if they didn't), but IMO the whispers from insiders claiming they know what the team is doing is irrelevant as usual. Saunders is not letting a single thing leak, and even though he is buddy/buddy with half the media he has not uttered a word. Next week we will be hearing "it's definitely Okafor."
 
1.Karl Towns
PF/C (Kentucky - Freshman)
19.5 years old | 7'0" | 248 lbs

2014-15 NCAA (39 GP)
10.3 PPG 6.7 RPG 1.1 APG 31.9 PER



31. Guillermo Hernangomez
C (Sevilla - International)
21.0 years old | 6'11" | 255 lbs

2014-15 Eurocup, ACB (50 GP)
10.1 PPG 5.7 RPG 0.6 APG 20.8 PER








36. Jarell Martin
SF/PF (LSU - Sophomore)
21.0 years old | 6'9" | 239 lbs

2014-15 NCAA (33 GP)
16.9 PPG 9.2 RPG 1.8 APG 21.9 PER





https://youtu.be/b00ZizYLYW4


Draft Express, June 16: http://www.draftexpress.com/nba-mock-draft/2015/
 
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Towns an Bennett and Wiggins will be start game 1 of the season.
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Bennett is really wishful thinking :lol

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — The Minnesota Timberwolves announced Tuesday their three-game preliminary for this year’s NBA Summer League in Las Vegas.

The Timberwolves will open the summer league against the L.A. Lakers on July 10. That match-up puts the teams with the No. 1 and No. 2 pick in this year’s draft against each other. They’ll also face the Chicago Bulls July 11 and the Utah Jazz July 13.

The NBA Summer League will feature 24 teams in a 67-game schedule from July 10-20 at UNLV. After all teams play their three preliminary round games, they will be seeded in a tournament that starts July 15.

The Timberwolves, along with the other teams, are guaranteed at least five games.
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Okafor is currently in town and working out today.
 
I just need to hear his name called before I can relax.. Flip got me worried 
laugh.gif
 too much anxiety. Now I know what cavs fans felt like the last 2 years
 
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I will say this now: If Godfather Saunders decides he really is passing on KAT he needs to trade the pick.

Only the Timberwolves would screw this up and take a player #1 that 29 of the other 30 NBA teams would not.
 
Projecting The Top 50 Players In The 2015 NBA Draft Class

View media item 1590338

By NEIL PAINE and ZACH BRADSHAW, FiveThirtyEight.com

No sooner had the closing buzzer sounded on the Golden State Warriors’ championship victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers than it was time for the NBA world to turn its attention to the draft, which will be held in Brooklyn on June 25. This year’s crop of prospects hasn’t arrived with anywhere near the fanfare of the vaunted class of 2014, but it may be even deeper. And there are plenty of big decisions to make — for example: Should the Minnesota Timberwolves take Kentucky’s Karl-Anthony Towns or Duke’s Jahlil Okafor with the No. 1 overall pick?

To help with the process of sorting out Towns from Okafor and the good prospects from the bad, ESPN’s Stats & Information Group built a model1 to predict how well a college player2 who is ranked among Chad Ford’s Top 100 prospects will perform — according to Statistical Plus/Minus (SPM) — during seasons two through five of his NBA career (we use that time frame to encompass the years that a player is under team control at below-market salaries and to avoid penalizing young players for putting up poor rookie numbers on a bad team).

Like other statistical draft projection systems out there, this model uses a player’s college numbers,3 demographic data such as height and weight, and his top 100 ranking, as a proxy for what the scouts think of him. (Check out all the data on GitHub.) But unlike most draft models, our method acknowledges that NBA data on draft prospects is strongly left-censored, because very few prospects actually get a chance to play in the NBA at all, much less stick around long enough to get a meaningful sample of playing time. It’s an important distinction because any method that simply regresses NBA performance against college predictors has already made the assumption that the player possesses whatever attributes will allow him to move past the league’s playing-time gatekeepers — an assumption that could mask important distinctions between successful and unsuccessful prospects.4

Specifically, the model assesses the probability that a player’s early-career SPM will land him in each of four categories:

Superstar: We’re talking players like Anthony Davis here (about one of these per draft class).
Starter: This bucket includes solid players like Shane Battier and Kyle Lowry (about 10 per class).
Role player: These are the Jarrett Jacks and Tony Allens of the world (25 per class).
Bust: Hello, Michael Beasley! (This bucket consists of everyone not in the first three, including replacement-level players who will never actually appear in the NBA.)
And what factors are most important in determining which players fall into each category? As was the case when we forecast NFL quarterback success, a prospect’s scouting ranking is far and away the most important variable in predicting his NBA future. But there’s still a lot of noise around a projection based on the opinions of scouts alone:

bradshaw.paine-NBAdraftModel-chart2-2ndtry.0616

Aside from a player’s scouting ranking, the most significant predictive factors are either demographic or based on the program from which he came: his age, weight and the schedule-adjusted offensive and defensive ratings of his school. As for individual college statistics, the most important are 2-point shot attempts per minute, assist percentage and offensive rebounding percentage, followed by usage rate, shooting efficiency from the floor (as measured by effective field goal percentage) and steal percentage.

In other words, snagging young, athletic prospects who pass the eye test with flying colors is ideal. But there’s also value in looking for underrated players who can create shots for themselves (particularly inside the arc) and others, skillful rebounders (offensive rebounds are often better indicators of actual rebounding talent — and not team role — than defensive boards), efficient shooters or gifted ball hawks.5

With those factors in mind, here’s how the model assesses the college entries from this year’s class of draft prospects, sorting by their projected SPM for years two through five after the draft:

paine-bradshaw-nba-draft-model

In a case of dueling freshman big men, the overriding debate of the 2015 draft is probably whether the Timberwolves should take Towns or Okafor. Our model says the answer is pretty clearly Towns, who has more than twice as great a chance of becoming a superstar as Okafor — and about a 20 percent lower probability of becoming a mere role player or bust. Okafor is much heavier for his height — a no-no according to the model — while Towns is a superior defender and passer, a good combination for a big man in today’s NBA.

Instead of this draft being a battle of big men at the top, then, the model thinks a pair of small forwards — Duke’s Justise Winslow and Arizona’s Stanley Johnson — are more likely to succeed in the NBA than Okafor is. Winslow, in particular, is fascinating: His overall projection is better than what the model gives to both mega-hyped wings from last year’s draft (Andrew Wiggins and Jabari Parker), although it’s driven not so much by his ceiling as by the low likelihood that he will bust out. While Wiggins and Parker both had roughly a 35 percent bust probability, Winslow’s is 23 percent, perhaps because he has no glaring statistical red flags.

In that sense, Winslow’s profile might be symbolic of this draft class as a whole. While there figure to be fewer future superstars available this year than in 2014’s rookie crop, it might be a banner year for solid, above-average players. Even taking into account the superior star power of a year ago, the model projects this year’s class to contain about 10 percent more players who grade out as a future NBA starter or better.

And those kinds of players might be the place to look when shopping for draft bargains. Kentucky center Dakari Johnson, for example, ranks 30th according to the scouts (using the same version of Ford’s top 100 that we used in the model, from late May) and has barely any chance of becoming a superstar (2 percent), but he ranks sixth overall in the model because he has a 37 percent probability of turning into a starting-caliber player and only a 19 percent chance of becoming an outright bust. It’s a similar story for Kansas’s Cliff Alexander (16th overall), as well as a pair of Arizona forwards — Johnson (third) and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson (ninth) — all of whom defy the scouting grades because the model views them as such low-risk propositions.6

But watch out for Murray State’s Cameron Payne and Notre Dame’s Jerian Grant, a pair of point guards ranked among the top 20 by the scouts. The model sees little chance of either turning into an above-average player, with about a 75 percent probability that at least one of them becomes a total bust. Red flags are also raised for Georgia State shooting guard R.J. Hunter, whose No. 217 scouting ranking belies a staggering 87 percent probability of becoming a role player or bust.

Of course, not even advanced algorithms can turn the NBA draft into a perfect science. For instance, this model can’t directly account for work ethic, leadership and a bunch of other harder-to-measure factors that can shape a prospect’s pro career. But among the things that can be measured — whether statistically or demographically — a method that looks at what’s traditionally correlated with pro success (without overfitting) is a good start toward an NBA front office’s unenviable job of separating strong prospects from weak ones.
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KAT apparently isn't working out for anyone else...

AP:

Kentucky big man Karl-Anthony Towns worked out for the Minnesota Timberwolves on Saturday, less than a week before the Wolves pick first in the NBA draft.

Towns arrived in the Twin Cities on Friday night. He took a tour of the Wolves' new $25 million practice facility and dined with owner Glen Taylor, President Flip Saunders and several other team officials.

Towns is considered the heavy favorite to be chosen No. 1 overall on Thursday night, and the Wolves are the only team he has worked out for during the pre-draft process.
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Mark Medina ‏@MarkG_Medina Jun 19 - Lakers still have no progress on getting Karl-Anthony Towns in for a workout, and are doubtful that will change
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Also, Jay Bilas says he would take Okafor #1.

Bilas said he wrestled with whom he would select as the No. 1 pick–he currently has Okafor with an asterisk. “Karl-Anthony Towns does more things well than Okafor does well,” Bilas said. “Okafor does one thing well in a dominant fashion that Karl-Anthony Towns doesn’t: Oakfor’s low post scoring is dominant. There are not as many question marks with Towns. His only question marks are how good is he going to be in these areas. I also happened to think D'Angelo Russell is the best pure basketball player in the draft. He’s the best pure player. It’s not a perfect Steph Curry comparison but the game comes easy to Russell which is kind of like Curry.”
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Lastly:

Marc Stein @ESPNSteinLine - ESPN sources say that, in advance of Thursday's draft, Minnesota has made former No. 1 overall pick Anthony Bennett available via trade
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Welp now Bennett is on the trading block...... :( that sucks. He and Thomas Robinson may never get a shot.
 



Some of the highlights from the interview:


On what the Timberwolves team plane is like:

“You walk on, the vets are on the right playing cards and stuff. Me and Andrew [Wiggins] usually sleep … I hop on a plane, I either watch a movie or sleep. The coaches are a little bit more toward the back, they’re talking and doing their scouting reports and stuff.”

On what Nikola Pekovic does on the team plane:

ZL: “Pek watches movies, watches all types of different movies. Big ol’ movie guy. He watched like the whole series, the 1-2-3 of The Godfather.”
Grantland: “Is that the first time he had seen it?”
ZL: “No. He watches them all the time. Big movie guy.”


On Kevin Garnett’s whereabouts on the team plane:

“He sits one row behind the players section or like, right all the way in the back … [he usually] listens to music or just mess with everybody … either [he over-ear headphones on] or they’re off and he’s just talking to everybody. He comes up to me and talks with me every once in a while.”


On Kevin Garnett, the person:

“Coolest dude in the world, really cool. You know, at first, I thought he was going to be intense all the time, but he’s a real down-to-earth guy man. He helps. He’s one of the biggest mentors on the team. He’s just a really cool dude, but he’ll turn it on on you in a minute.”


Has Garnett yelled at anyone yet?

“I haven’t seen him yell at anybody.”


On if Garnett could be a good coach:

“I think so. I think he could be a good owner too. I don’t think he… he was telling me he didn’t want to coach either, but I could definitely see him being an owner.”


What’s living in Minnesota been like for you? Do you like have a really horrible winter story?

“It was a little bit of a culture shock coming from Los Angeles. I really didn’t go outside when it was winter – from my apartment, to my car, to the arena garage, back to my room. That was pretty much my daily thing.”


Is the winter pretty much the majority of the season?

“Yeah, it’s pretty long [laughs]. A couple below negatives, where you go outside and it hurts to breathe. But the summers are beautiful, yeah, the summers are nice, and hopefully it’s not that bad of a winter this time.”


On if he will be at the Minnesota State Fair again this year:

“That was actually really fun. It was extremely hot outside, so, I was definitely wearing the wrong attire there that day. Yeah, that was fun, I’ll see if I can go do it again … deep-fried everything, yeah it was crazy.”


I’ve feel like people from Minnesota are generally great though:

“They’re so nice. Yeah, they’re incredibly nice.”


[/B]What’s it like being on the court with Rubio, preparing for passes from anywhere at any time:[/B]

“Keep your hands up. He’s throwing me plenty of alley-oops in practice. I feel like we’re definitely going to be special – me and Wig on the wing, you know like that. He’s a dynamic passer, when he gets into dribbling position too. So he’s definitely special.”
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Philly looking to package 35+37, maybe for No. 23? : http://www.libertyballers.com/2015-...-draft-rumor-sixers-blazers-talking-pick-swap


If there's any substance to it, then it can at least give us an idea of what Flip Saunders could be contemplating this very second ('what can 31 + 36 get us up to').

Good news: If 35 + 37 could fetch Sam Hinkie and the Sixers the 23rd pick, then 31 + 36 might even be able to squeak into the late teens (19-21).

Bad news: The Timberwolves have at least one competitor in trying to move up if they do indeed try to come draft night. You figure there are others, but now that one is semi-confirmed, at least I'm sure the rumor could be accurate with the general idea of what's being offered and thrown around.
 
Interesting. Saunders has said already it's unlikely he keeps both second rounders. Glen Taylor (of course) thinks a little differently.

Darren Wolfson:

Asked if keeping 31/36 is the safe bet. "Most likely will (keep)," Glen (Taylor) said. "But we will explore (moving up)."
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I've always said they should take and stash some Euros with those but if that's not going to be a full option I'd much rather see them use them for something other than the standard "Wolves sold their second round pick for cash" or "Wolves trade second round pick for future second round pick."

As far as moving up and taking another first rounder I really don't see how this team can fit two more rookies on the team, unless they were to somehow steal a Tyus Jones or similar. Budinger, KMart, and others could very well be moved before camp to create room but Saunders I don't think is looking to have another year with his team getting even younger.

That #31 pick HAS to be used wisely this year.
 
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