Timberwolves might lose former 1st-round pick for unfortunate roster reason originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
The Minnesota Timberwolves could find themselves in a roster crunch that isn’t their own doing.
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The NBA is looking to expand, and if that happens, it means an expansion draft.
An expansion draft (likely for Seattle and Las Vegas) would result in a fun process for neutral fans, albeit one that the top teams’ fans might not like. Each team will get to protect a certain amount of players (potentially eight) that can’t be selected.
Anyone who isn’t protected can be chosen by a new franchise, although probably only one player taken from each team.
The Timberwolves, who are not alone in this problem, might have more than eight players they’d like to protect. That’s what happens in building a deep roster.
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With no expansion, it’d be a non-issue.
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With expansion, it means the Timberwolves could lose a strong player. The Sporting News’ Stephen Noh projects that it would be Terrence Shannon Jr.
“The Wolves have been reluctant to trade Shannon, who hasn’t played a ton for them but has shown some scoring prowess in his second year,” Noh wrote in a new mock expansion draft that he put out this week. “They might lose him for nothing. They’re another good team that has more than eight players they’d like to protect. “
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Shannon has lots of offensive talent and could reach a potentially higher ceiling if he had more usage with an expansion team than he does with the star-driven Timberwolves.
That doesn’t mean Minnesota would want to lose him, but it might be an unavoidable problem if an expansion draft does indeed arrive.
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