'It felt like home right away': D'Angelo Russell among 8 newest Wolves
MINNEAPOLIS - D’Angelo Russell hasn’t even been in the Twin Cities 24 hours yet, but he’s already become a fan-favorite among those who follow the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Russell is the headline name among eight new players that are expected to be in uniform Saturday night as the Wolves host the L.A. Clippers at Target Center. Wolves front office head Gersson Rosas made a stunning trade hours before Thurday’s deadline, landing Russell, Omari Spellman and Jacob Evans for Andrew Wiggins and two future draft picks.
Russell arrived to the Twin Cities late Thursday night and met Wolves fans and team personnel. He met the media and hundreds of fans on their downtown Minneapolis lunch break Friday in the City Center.
“You go through things like this and not realize how surreal it is. Once I got off the plane I felt the love. It felt like home right away,” Russell said.
For Rosas, now the face of the Wolves’ front office, it was a move that had to be made. He had to take a gamble, take a risk and invest in one of the most dynamic point guards in the NBA. Russell can score in a variety of ways, he can pass and makes others around him better. He’ll now be teammates with one of his best friends, current Wolves star Karl-Anthony Towns.
Something had to change for the Wolves as they were slogging through a 15-35 season, have lost 13 straight games and haven’t won a game with Towns on the floor since before Thanksgiving. Fans were getting restless, and needed a reason to be excited about the team again. When news of the trade for Russell emerged, fans immediately starting buying tickets and Wolves jerseys.
“You’ve got a play-making guard who fits in great with maybe the versatile and skilled center in the league right now. The ability to execute our vision with those two as the pillars of who we are and how we play, was very enticing,” Rosas said.
Russell, in his fifth NBA season and already an All-Star last year, is averaging 23.6 points per game, 6.2 assists and shooting 43 percent from the field. That includes a 37 percent mark from three-point range, something the Wolves badly need.
It was a long road for Rosas to get Russell to Minneapolis, but it finally happened hours before Thursday’s deadline. They tried to lure him in free agency last off-season before he ended up signing with the Golden State Warriors. Rosas never lost communication, and wouldn’t give up when he was told no. It’s not in his DNA. His effort paid off this week, and the hope is it’s the start of the franchise turning a corner.
“I’m not the type of guy who if you say no to, I’m going to go away. We’re very confident, our staff does an unbelievable job of value propositions and we were very strong in what we believe and what we thought those values were. At the end of the day, we have to be aggressive, that’s by our nature. Just because you tell us no, we’re not going to go away,” Rosas said. “Nothing good is easy.”
It was welcome news for Towns, who has experienced a variety of emotions this season as the Wolves got off to a promising 10-8 start, but the bottom has fallen out since. He missed 15 games with a knee injury, and hasn’t won a game while on the court healthy since late November.
He went through the draft process with Russell, who was taken No. 2 behind him, and now a guard he’s known since his high school days is his teammate.
"It kind of sunk in last night when we were talking after he got in off the plane with a big hoo-rah and just us sitting at my house and really just talking about everything. It’s surreal to really think that instead of us just talking on the phone or playing video games with each other and talking about how our teams are doing and everything, but now we’re getting to do this every day with each other, it’s a surreal moment," Towns said. "He’s never just been a friend of mine. He’s been a brother of mine. Our families are so intertwined and connected. It’s going to be real fun to be able to be out there with someone I call not only my brother, but more like blood to me.”
Fans going to Saturday’s game at Target Center will want to buy a program. The only players still on the roster from when Rosas took over nine months ago are Towns, and Josh Okogie. Gone are Wiggins, Jeff Teague, Gorgui Dieng, Treveon Graham, Robert Covington, Jordan Bell, Shabazz Napier, Noah Vonleh and Keita Bates-Diop. In are Russell, Spellman, Evans, Malik Beasley, Juancho Hernangomez, Jarred Vanderbilt, Evan Turner and James Johnson.
To make it all mesh will take time and there will be bumps, but the Wolves believe it’s the next right step.
“There are big goals here. To have big goals, you make decisions and you stick to those decisions. When the process is right, we can live with the outcome,” Wolves coach Ryan Saunders said.
Rosas said he knew the day he started with the Wolves, May 1, that the roster would need major changes. What the Wolves had wouldn’t work for a team that needed to get younger, and shoot more efficiently from the perimeter.
“We’ve said coming into this season this year was about building our identity, development and evaluation. We’ve done that. In 50 games we’ve realized, and it hasn’t been an easy process and we’ve heard the criticism. Why do you guys play a style that you don’t have the players for? This is why, because we needed to know what we have, and we needed to know what we need,” Rosas said.
That new identity centers around Towns and Russell. We’ll find out in time if can make the Wolves championship contenders.
“For it to come true like this, it’s a dream come true. This is crazy for me to wake up and see the situation I’m in and feel the love of somebody wanting me to be here, it’s a surreal moment for me right now,” Russell said.