D’Angelo Russell has finally found a home with the Timberwolves

After spending the first few years of his career bouncing around the league, D’Angelo Russell may finally have found a place to flourish with the Minnesota Timberwolves.

The 2020 NBA Trade Deadline was not exactly quiet, though it still felt inconsequential. The majority of the league’s contenders opted to stand pat, and the few that did make trades were mostly just tinkering without altering their cores too much. Many of the teams that were active at the deadline made moves just for the sake of motion or in hopes of avoiding the luxury tax. One trade still stood out though, as a team that had been the contender over the last half-decade sent off its best active player to a team that has been anything but a contender for pretty much the entirety of its three-decade existence. The Golden State Warriors trading D’Angelo Russell to the Minnesota Timberwolves may not end up being the most consequential trade of this season, but for the Wolves, it may be a much-needed first step towards becoming a consistent playoff team for the first time since Kevin Garnett’s tenure.

D’Angelo Russell has been on the move a lot throughout the first five years of his career. Usually such a start to a young player’s time in the NBA is a bad sign, as team after team decides to wash its hands clean of him in the hopes of cutting their losses. However, in Russell’s case, it has had much more to do with the teams themselves and their own goals than with anything he has done or failed to do.

After being selected by the Los Angeles Lakers second overall in the 2015 NBA Draft, he was caught in the madness of Kobe Bryant’s retirement tour throughout his rookie year. He was then traded following his second season in Los Angeles as the team’s new front office pairing of Rob Pelinka and Magic Johnson decided that they wanted to install Lonzo Ball as the franchise’s young point guard rather than Russell, who had been drafted by the recently exiled Mitch Kupchak. As a member of the Brooklyn Nets, Russell came into his own a bit, free to discover his talents in a pressure-free environment. In his second year in Brooklyn, the flashes of potential he had shown throughout his first three seasons were more fully realized and he became an All-Star, vindicating himself in the process.

Yet, once again, a shift in priorities by management made Russell expendable. When the Nets signed Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving over the summer, they no longer had any need for Russell and sent him to the Warriors, who were eager to avoid losing Durant for nothing. Immediately, speculation arose that Russell was not going to remain in the Bay for long since they already possessed perhaps the most formidable backcourt in the NBA, at least when healthy. That speculation turned out to be well-founded with Russell being traded yet again to Minnesota.

The Wolves started the season hot (relatively, at least) going 10-8 through their first 18 games and finding themselves in the midst of the Western Conference playoff race. However, they have been in a bit of a tailspin ever since, going 6-29 after those promising opening weeks. The acquisition of Russell is not a cure-all for Minnesota, but it does at least give this team a solid second star to play alongside Towns — a role that Jimmy Butler did not desire and that Andrew Wiggins could never quite fill.

Now, the task for Gersson Rosas gets trickier, as there are no major moves left to be made for Minnesota in the immediate future. Instead, the focus will need to be more on filling out the team around the edges with a bunch of solid role players — interior defenders who can protect the paint better than Towns, shooters to space the floor and provide driving lanes for Russell and Towns, and wings to replace what Robert Covington so ably added to the team.

Russell and the Timberwolves’ franchise center, Karl-Anthony Towns, are already close friends, and if we’ve learned anything about NBA players in the last decade, it’s that many of them really want to play on teams with people they are friends with. Hence LeBron teaming up with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami, along with this past summer’s pairing of Irving and Durant. And with the Wolves truly desperate to find a way to hold onto Towns once he becomes a free agent in a few years, trading for one of his closest friends is no substitute for fielding a winning team, but it’s still a solid first step. Towns, Russell and the Phoenix Suns’ Devin Booker have all expressed their desire to play together someday, and while it’s impossible to imagine the Wolves being able to field a tantalizing offer for a player of Booker’s stature, or for the Suns to even consider trading him, Towns and Russell have to be happy that at least they are together for the next few years.

Losing a first-round pick to acquire Russell will hurt the team’s maneuverability moving forward while also eliminating the chance to get a great prospect in the 2021 or, potentially, the 2022 NBA Draft. But the Wolves cannot afford to wait, and they cannot waste another year or two of Towns’ youth struggling to even enter the outskirts of the playoff picture.

It can be hard to find a home. Finding a place where one can rest and feel accepted, like their best traits are appreciated and their worst ones are forgiven is, for many, a lifelong struggle. For Russell, he has not yet found that place yet in Minnesota, but it appears that he may have finally found a place he can call home — even if it’s not the most promising locale considering the team’s past and present struggles. Hopefully, he and Towns can work together on the court just as well as they do off of it, forming a dynamic young duo that can grow and develop together while giving opposing defenses fits for years to come. D’Angelo Russell is finally on a team that actually wants him, that sees him as a part of their long-term plan instead of just as a stopgap while waiting for something bigger and better. For Minnesota, he is that bigger and better something.