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Can the lottery-lucky Wolves finally turn the ship around?

David Sherman / NBA / Getty Images

The Minnesota Timberwolves have been here before.

Winning the NBA Draft Lottery is a gift from the basketball gods, but doing so twice in a five-year span isn't exactly a badge of honor. The Wolves keep getting high draft picks because they keep authoring miserable seasons. Save for a brief reprieve when Hurricane Jimmy Butler swept through town, they've been in the lottery every year since 2005.

They've found some great players with those high picks, namely Kevin Love (who went fifth overall in 2008) and Karl-Anthony Towns (first overall in 2015). But their countless lottery trips and favorable pingpong-ball bounces have yet to amount to an iota of sustained success.

Part of that can be chalked up to hugely disappointing top-five picks like Wesley Johnson (2010), Derrick Williams (2011), and Kris Dunn (2016). There was the infamous 2009 draft in which they managed to pick two point guards (Ricky Rubio and Jonny Flynn) ahead of Steph Curry. And, of course, there was the letdown of No. 1 pick Andrew Wiggins, who technically wasn't drafted by Minnesota but was acquired in the Love trade before ever suiting up for the Cavaliers.

Minnesota won the 2020 draft lottery Thursday night, once again securing the No. overall 1 pick - and with it, the pressure to find a franchise-altering talent that can help salvage a ship that's been ramming into iceberg after iceberg since Kevin Garnett leapt overboard.

After winning the 2015 lottery and drafting Towns, the Wolves were burgeoning NBA darlings: a team with a gifted young nucleus and seemingly boundless potential. Wiggins was still viewed as a future superstar. He and Towns went back-to-back on Rookie of the Year awards. People looked at Minnesota and saw the late-aughts Thunder reborn.

But somewhere along the way, between the hiring of Tom Thibodeau as coach and front-office boss, the draft-night trade for Butler in 2017, and the messy fallout that ensued after their lone successful season, the team's path veered sharply off course. The Wolves' doe-eyed prodigies mutated into jaded malcontents.

The team reinvented itself multiple times over the past few years. Butler forced a trade, leaving ill will and hurt feelings in his wake. Thibodeau was fired, replaced by young Ryan Saunders as coach and by highly regarded Rockets executive Gersson Rosas as president of basketball operations. The return in the Butler deal - Robert Covington and Dario Saric - eventually begot Jarrett Culver and Malik Beasley. Wiggins was traded, along with Minnesota's top-three protected 2021 first-rounder, in exchange for D'Angelo Russell. After an encouraging 10-8 start to this season, the Wolves finished 19-45. It feels like the team is stuck in quicksand; the more the Timberwolves move around, the further they sink.

But no matter how dire things look for one of the NBA's most destitute franchises, there will be hope as long as Towns is there. While his defense and level of night-to-night engagement can leave a lot to be desired, this is a 24-year-old big man who can handle the ball, pass, score at all three levels, and shoot off the bounce. He shot 41.2% from 3-point range on eight attempts per game this season, and his true shooting percentage (64.2%) was the best in the league by far among players with usage rates above 25%.

Georgia's Anthony Edwards. Icon Sportswire / Getty Images

Significant defensive challenges will be involved in playing Towns and Russell together, but those two have a chance to be an extremely potent pick-and-roll combination at the offensive end. Beasley, who shot the hell out of the ball after coming over in a deadline-day trade, can be another building block on the wing, provided he and the team reach an agreement in restricted free agency. Culver, for whom Minnesota traded up to draft sixth overall last year, had a disappointing rookie season, but he still has defensive upside and could become a valuable role player.

But the Wolves really, really need to nail this pick, and that won't be an easy task in a draft with no can't-miss prospects. Were they drafting purely for need, they should be looking for a defense-oriented wing or power forward. Anthony Edwards, who appears to be the consensus No. 1 pick, doesn't exactly fit that description, though he appears to have the physical tools to be a plus defender and may be the most talented player in the class. (Of course, those are things you could've said about Wiggins as well.)

James Wiseman would likely have too much positional overlap with Towns. LaMelo Ball would be a huge risk given his lack of a functional jump shot, but his physical tools and playmaking chops are tantalizing. Maybe Onyeka Okongwu or Obi Toppin can capably fill the power forward vacuum. Or maybe Edwards can be the two-way, 2-guard star that Wiggins was supposed to be. Again, none of these are easy calls. For that reason, and because the Wolves absolutely cannot afford to miss, winning the lottery has, in a strange way, put the team's front office in an unenviable position. Its mandate, basically: "Make the right decision, even though there isn't one."

With the ostensibly competent Rosas in charge and longtime owner Glen Taylor exploring a potential sale, there's a glimmer of hope for a brighter tomorrow in Minnesota. But that hope has been teased several times over the past decade-and-a-half, only to amount to just that: a tease. For the sake of the franchise and its beleaguered fan base, let's hope this time can be different.

Joe Wolfond is a features writer for theScore.

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