The Minnesota Timberwolves' reported rift with Karl-Anthony Towns won't be reason enough to ship him out of town. After initial reports by ESPN's Brian Windhorst that the team explored a trade for Blake Griffin this past season, his colleague Adrian Wojnarowski explained how unlikely the possibility of a trade really is.

“I think their owner would trade management/the coach before he would trade Karl-Anthony Towns,” Wojnarowski said during an appearance in The Ryen Russillo Show. “I don’t think they would allow that. I just don’t believe they’d allow that kind of decision. And I don’t know that they’d want to trade him.”

Wojnarowski went on to explain that an Andrew Wiggins trade is a lot more likely to take place than one involving a double-double machine like Towns, having already a similar player in Jimmy Butler, whom the organization traded for last summer.

“To answer this first, Minnesota’s bigger issue is not…he’s Karl-Anthony Towns, they’re not moving him, Towns is eligible for his extension this summer,” said Wojnarowski. “You know Jimmy Butler… it’s more of a question of Andrew Wiggins. That to me would be, if someone was going to get moved — and I’m not saying anyone’s going to get moved — I think Andrew Wiggins is the one you’re going to look at first. Because…you don’t have to make a decision on Towns and Jimmy Butler and one of those guys having to take less on an extension, because you can’t have three [max] guys.”

The controversy becomes on who to keep. Towns might have had a few trifles with the team, especially after they fired his strength and conditioning coach after the season without telling him, but having an elite talent at the center position is a luxury not many teams have.

Butler is as married to the system as Thibodeau is, making him the harder of the three to get moved and making Wiggins the definite odd man out.