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Right now, Zach LaVine has firmly established himself as the cornerstone stud of the Chicago Bulls. Andrew Wiggins, on the other hand, is in the midst of his best season as a pro and has just been named as an All-Star starter for the first time in his career. At this point, it's hard to imagine that along with Karl-Anthony Towns, all three stars were once on the same team with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
LaVine, who was selected 13th overall by the Timberwolves in 2014 before he was traded to the Bulls three years later as part of the Jimmy Butler deal, recently spoke out about his relatively brief tenure in Minnesota. The 26-year-old was a guest in a recent episode of The Draymond Green Show and LaVine got brutally honest about why he believes things did not work out for him with the Wolves:
“I mean we were 18, 19 years old all together sharing the court. Nothing is going to be perfect because you have to go through those bumps and bruises,” LaVine said (h/t Nico Martinez of Fadeaway World). “Realistically, we only had 2-3 years. Everybody wanted the process to happen so fast and let’s be good so fast. It just doesn’t work like that sometimes, but growing up and having those experiences, those are my guys and it was really fun. But, I don’t think they let it marinate enough for us to really see what could’ve happened.”
Fair point from LaVine here. He's also taken a bit of a veiled shot at the Timberwolves front office with his comments here about not trusting the process and wanting to unreasonably expedite that young core's development without giving it ample time.
LaVine then dialed it back a bit as he expressed how he thinks it would not have worked anyway because of the money:
“I think everything happens for a reason, but it would’ve been tough,” LaVine added. “Realistically, it would’ve been tough there for everybody to stay on the team from a financial standpoint because we’re all really top level guys, but we never got to the point to find out if it would work or not.”
Right now, LaVine is set to earn $19.5 million this season with the Bulls and is expected to earn a significant raise this summer once he negotiates a new deal. For his part, the Warriors still owe Wiggins $65.2 million through next season. Towns is currently on a similar deal with Minnesota, earning an average of nearly $34 million per year. Surely, these three stars would not have been able to make this same amount of money had they all stayed together with the Timberwolves. Not to mention the fact that Minnesota probably would not have gotten their hands on Anthony Edwards as the first overall pick in 2020.
As LaVine said in his statement above, everything happens for a reason. He's now leading a Bulls side that has legitimate championship aspirations this term while Wiggins has established himself as a key piece of another title contender in the Warriors. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Timberwolves, who themselves are still struggling to stake their claim as a real threat in the West.
There's no denying that things have been looking up for Minnesota of late. The front office will just need to exhibit a little more patience in this current group — something that was not apparent some five or so years ago.
