What if Cavs, Wolves, Hawks never made their blockbuster trades?

What if the Timberwolves never traded for Rudy Gobert?

The Minnesota Timberwolves haven’t gotten a fair shake of things in their first season with Rudy Gobert, with Karl-Anthony Towns missing most of the season and preventing the Wolves from gaining real chemistry on the court as the playoffs approach. Even so, they have put themselves into postseason position with just over a week to go in the regular season.

What if they had never traded for Rudy Gobert? The Wolves’ front office seemed to conclude they couldn’t win at a high level with Towns as their rim protector, but let’s say that instead of trading for Gobert they simply decided to draft a rim-protecting center to try beside him.

Oh wait, that’s exactly what they did! They drafted Auburn center Walker Kessler in the first round before including him in the Gobert trade, so in this scenario they keep Kessler. He has been one of the best rookies in the league this year, by most metrics better than Gobert, so he would have forced his way into the starting lineup by now and be starting alongside Towns.

Armed with a full bevy of draft picks, when they make the same decision to move on from D’Angelo Russell, they can do so with improved firepower. They send Russell and a pair of future first-round picks to the Toronto Raptors for Fred VanVleet. He would join a much deeper team than the Wolves have now.

Minnesota would be starting VanVleet, Anthony Edwards, Jalen McDaniels, Karl-Anthony Towns and Walker Kessler, with Jordan McLaughlin, Malik Beasley, Kyle Anderson, Jarred Vanderbilt and Naz Reid coming off the bench. Even with Towns’ injury, that group is probably a half-dozen games better this season and in line for home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs, with a lot more draft capital to improve the team down the road and a much younger core.