Remember when the Timberwolves traded with the Atlanta Hawks to get Adreian Payne in 2015?
It wasn’t exactly a brilliant move considering Minnesota had to give up a first-round pick to get a guy who barely played and when he did play he was bad.
In 99 games, Payne averaged 4.1 points and 3.1 rebounds with a shooting percentage that would make a bricklayer proud (40 percent).
The pick the Wolves gave Atlanta was a lottery-protected first-round pick in 2017, and since the Wolves sucked last year they kept it and used it to trade for Jimmy Butler.
So here we go again. If the Wolves beat the Nuggets tonight they’ll make the playoffs and lose their 2018 first-round pick to the Hawks. If the Wolves lose, they’ll keep the pick.
Hawks fans want the pick so bad that they’ve turned the official Atlanta Hawks subreddit into a Timberwolves subreddit through the end of the day, and they’re rooting hard for the Wolves to win.
The odds of Minnesota moving up if they land in the lottery would be slim, so they’d likely end up with the 14th or 15th pick in what’s supposed to be a loaded draft class.
And hey, 14 straight years missing the playoffs also means 14 straight years of more exciting draft nights.
If the Wolves keep the pick this year they will lose it to Atlanta if they make the playoffs in either 2019 or 2020.
