With the first overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, the Minnesota Timberwolves have an extremely important decision to make. It's only the second time in franchise history that Minnesota has the first selection, and what they decide to do with the pick will go a long way toward determining how the team will look for the foreseeable future. However, with less than a month to go until draft day, the Timberwolves haven't identified a top target.
"The analysis is fair," Timberwolves president of basketball operations Gersson Rosas said on Wednesday, via ESPN. "There's no guy that has separated himself from the pack from public or external view, but I'm very confident that as we go through this process, the talent will rise to the top and we'll be confident about identifying one guy as the best guy, the best talented player with the most upside and most ability for our organization."
While there may not be a clear top target for the Wolves, that doesn't mean that the top of the draft is short on talent. Guard LaMelo Ball and Memphis big man James Wiseman have both been consistently mentioned as the top two prospects in the draft, while Georgia guard Anthony Edwards and Dayton forward Obi Toppin are both extremely intriguing prospects. For what it's worth, Kyle Boone's latest mock draft for CBS Sports has the Wolves selecting Ball with the top pick, with the following explanation:
There's not a consensus No. 1 player in this class nor is there a surefire perfect fit for Minnesota, alongside D'Angelo Russell and Karl-Anthony Towns, available to them at No. 1. Going with the prospect with the biggest star potential in LaMelo Ball allows them to bet on talent and hope that his potential meshes with their roster and timeline.
For the Wolves, this draft is all about complementing their core of Towns and Russell, and in turn, all options are on the table when it comes to what they might do -- even a potential trade.
"For us, we typically study the draft from 1 to whatever number we feel like is a draftable player," Rosas said. "And we'll evaluate those guys for trade scenarios, trade back, trade out, for undrafted free-agent opportunities, for minor league opportunities, so we really beat up the draft board as much as can all the way up until the draft.
"But I do, now, at the stage that we're at, about a month out, we have formulated a lot of opinions, but you want to challenge those as much as you can here as you go all the way up to draft night, but our staff has done an unbelievable job."
The Wolves still have plenty of time to identify a target in the draft, or a suitable trade partner, and what they ultimately decide to do could be the first domino in a potentially eventful offseason.
