Tom Tibodeau Says He's Not Worried About The Karl-Anthony Towns Extension, Well Where Is It?

(Star Tribune) – Thibodeau said he’s “very optimistic” the Wolves will sign Towns to a contract extension before the regular season starts. They have until October’s end to sign him to an extension that could be worth $187 million.

If they don’t sign him by then, he’ll become a restricted free agent this summer.

The Wolves signed Wiggins to a max extension last October not long before the season opener.

“We know how important Karl is to the future of the organization,” Thibodeau said.

So this excerpt is from a larger story in the Star Tribune about how Thibs went to the Minnesota State Fair (very legit State Fair btw) and talked about a wide variety of issues surrounding his team. It was during this meet and greet with Wolves fans that his role was clearly to calm everybody’s nerves when it came to the future of this franchise. He talked about how they shouldn’t worry about the Jimmy Butler being a free agent thing, that winning will take care of that (winning what exactly?) , he denied that everyone within this organization hates each other, and tried to spin zone the narrative by talking about how good this team was when everyone was healthy. That’s true to some extent, they were for sure a top 4 team when Butler was healthy, but for some reason as soon as the season ended we started to get leaks of all the things you don’t want to hear about your favorite team. The star players hate each other, people are not signing extensions, guys demanding a trade, just nothing good.

The conversation then swung to by FAR the biggest news in regards to the Wolves this summer, and that’s the KAT extension. Or better yet, the fact that it’s almost September and he still has not signed it. One would wonder what the hell the hold up is with this, considering they just went through this with Wiggins things should be pretty straight forward one would think. Basically just give KAT whatever options he wants and call it a day. I know personally I would be a little nervous about the lack of a signature by now, but I want to remind MIN fans to take a deep breath. For example, Wiggins didn’t sign his extension until October of last year, but for me that was always more of a debatable deal. Pondering if you should commit to a player like Wiggins is something you should take your time with. But KAT? This is a no brainer and honestly something they should have had ready for him the second he became eligible. I know for us on the internet that have zero clue what actually goes into the language of these extensions it’s easy to get a little restless. I would say if for whatever reason the two sides are unable to reach an extension, the Timberwolves HAVE to seriously consider trading him. I think in reality there’s a 0.00000000001% chance this even gets to that point, but the longer and longer we wait it does make you think. I get being cautious of Wiggins, I do not understand taking the same approach with your franchise’s best player.

When you’re talking about $187M if he makes an All NBA Team or wins DPOY, or $158M if he doesn’t over 5 years, it’d be silly for Towns to turn down this extension in my opinion. Butler is a different story, he has one last shot of his prime to actually win, and if he has an attractive situation he can jump ship to, all the power to him. It’s pretty crazy that the Timberwolves are going to have over $300M committed to Wiggins/Towns when things are all buttoned up, and let’s say Towns only gets the $30M extension, without factoring in Butler, this team will already have around $102M in committed salary to just 7 players. That’s about half the roster and with the cap only being around on $109M, the Wolves are for sure staring down the barrel of being a repeat luxury tax offender.

So yeah, maybe Thibs is doing his best to convince the public he’s not worried about their future, but maybe he should be.