At this time a year ago, the Minnesota Timberwolves were shopping Kevin Love and beginning yet another rebuilding project of indeterminate length. Even before giving up one of the best players in the NBA, Minnesota already had the longest playoff drought in the league. They turned Love into Andrew Wiggins, the No. 1 overall pick in 2014 and the Rookie of the Year, but they still had to suffer through a miserable season, as waves of injuries to their remaining veterans forced them to play skeleton units comprised of inexperienced players with little chance of winning games on a nightly basis. That’s how a team goes 16–66 and racks up the most ping-pong balls headed into the lottery.

They wouldn’t take any of it back now, though, after becoming the first team with the worst record in the NBA to win the lottery in over a decade. GM/coach Flip Saunders will have options at No. 1, but it’s hard to see a scenario where he doesn’t end up going with Karl-Anthony Towns.

Towns and Jahlil Okafor spent most of the season in a tight race for the top spot on most draft boards, but Towns began to pull away in the final months, as he assumed a bigger role in Kentucky’s offense and helped lead the Wildcats to an undefeated regular season. While you can make a statistical case for either of the freshmen big men, Towns’ ability to protect the rim and spread the floor is the perfect fit with the young core the Timberwolves have in place. They will consider the top-ranked perimeter players — guys like D’Angelo Russell, Emmanuel Mudiay and Justice Winslow — but Towns to Minnesota makes too much sense not to happen.When projecting their games to the next level, the biggest advantage Towns has over Okafor is on defense. That’s the main concern of the Timberwolves, who had a defensive rating of 112.2 last season, dead last in the NBA. Towns was the anchor for one of the best defenses in recent NCAA history; with Willie Cauley-Stein spending a lot of time chasing smaller players around the perimeter, it was Towns’ job to defend the low post and shut down the paint. Okafor isn’t nearly as athletic and he’s more of an offensive-minded player at this point in his career, which you can see in their defensive numbers.

Towns has all the tools to be a high-level defensive player. At 7 feet, 250 pounds with a 7-foot-3 wingspan, he has the size to hold his ground in the low post, the quickness to move his feet and defend on the perimeter, and the length and athleticism to play well above the rim and clear the defensive glass. You can see his activity in these GIFs — he’s flying around the court and generally making things extremely difficult on everyone he’s going up against. Despite giving up 25-plus pounds to Okafor, Towns is the more effective rebounder, one of the areas of the game where you see the difference in athleticism between the two.

Where Okafor has the edge over Towns is on offense, especially in the post, as he is one of the most accomplished back-to-the-basket scorers to come into the NBA in a long time. His efficiency numbers were off the charts at Duke, although that was an almost ideal situation for him, being surrounded by four players who could shoot 3s and open up the floor. Towns’ offensive numbers weren’t quite as high, but he wasn’t playing in nearly as much space at Kentucky, or with perimeter players who could make plays like Winslow, Tyus Jones and Quinn Cook. He also was the more versatile scorer, getting points in more ways than Okafor, who was only effective in the paint.

What makes Towns such a fascinating prospect is that he’s the rare big man who can protect the rim while also being able to step out of the paint and open up driving lanes to the rim. Most rim protectors are like DeAndre Jordan or Tyson Chandler, guys you don’t have to guard more than 3 feet away from the basket. While Okafor has the ball-handling and passing ability to run offense out of the high post, he’s not a good jump shooter and the defense can collapse in the paint when he doesn’t have the ball in his hands.

You can also see the difference in their games in a graph of their free-throw percentage and block percentage numbers in comparison to the starting centers in the NBA. Towns is in the top right while Okafor is in the bottom left, even though blocks are much easier to get at the NCAA level.

The decision for the Timberwolves becomes even easier when you look at the rest of their roster. Okafor replicates some of what Nikola Pekovic already does at center, and there’s no way you could play those two floor-bound, non-shooting Goliaths together in the modern NBA. Towns can start his career playing as a power forward next to Pekovic, and he can slide down to center as he gets older, especially since Pek’s medical future is so cloudy. Playing Towns at center also allows Minnesota to utilize all their young players on the perimeter — guys who want to get out and run, not hold the ball, enter it into the low post and play station-to-station basketball.

I’ve been focusing on the big men because Minnesota already has one of the most exciting young perimeter trios in the league with Ricky Rubio, Zach LaVine and Andrew Wiggins, so there’s no reason to bring in someone who will just take the ball out of their hands. Rubio signed a $55 million extension last summer and is the current face of the franchise. Wiggins is the future face of the franchise. LaVine had an up-and-down rookie season and is most known for winning the Dunk Contest, but he showed flashes of greatness as the year went on. All three guys should be improved by playing with a big man who can get out and run, have their back on defense, and spread the floor for them on offense.

Maybe the most exciting part about the future in Minnesota is how well all their young pieces fit together. They should be one of the most fun teams in the NBA next season, with Rubio leading the break, LaVine and Wiggins on the wings and Towns right behind them. They will still be a really young team that will make a lot of mistakes and struggle to execute in the half-court, but that won’t matter when they are running and gunning at every opportunity, taking advantage of their young legs and putting out a highlight reel every night. Towns has the athleticism to run with those guys and he can even lead the break himself. When you see a 7-footer who can dribble, move and finish like this in the open court, it’s hard not to get excited.

Even the young players in Minnesota who aren’t as well regarded fit in well with the core they are putting together. They gave up a future No. 1 pick for Adreian Payne, another shotblocker who can knock down perimeter jumpers and open up driving lanes for the basket. Playing with Towns as a small-ball ccenter should also be the best chance for Anthony Bennett, the No. 1 overall pick in 2013, to resurrect his career. There are questions about both players, particularly Bennett, but this is a guy who would still be a senior in college next season if he hadn’t declared for the draft as a freshman. There’s no reason to write off a guy with his pedigree when he’s still significantly younger than a lot of players in this draft.

They also have the option of pairing Towns with Gorgui Dieng, another defensive-minded big man with a mid-range jumper. That doesn’t even count Shabazz Muhammad, another perimeter player who can stretch the floor and run the break, and who started to come into his own in his second season in the league

A quartet of Rubio, LaVine, Wiggins and Towns with either Bennett, Payne or Muhammad gives you a plus athlete at every position, three guards who can slash to the lane, and two big men who can step out and attack close-outs with the dribble and finish at the rim. If you close your eyes and project a few years down the road, they could have more than a passing resemblance to the wing-heavy Golden State Warriors.

The biggest decision GM Flip Saunders (and ownership) may have to make is whether head coach Flip Saunders remains in that role.

Over the last few seasons, former Minnesota VP of Basketball Operations Fred Hoiberg, now the head coach at Iowa State, has become one of the most buzzed-about young coaches in the game. What makes Hoiberg such an attractive coaching candidate is the modern offense he runs at Ames, spreading the floor with five shooters, keeping the ball moving and creating good looks out of the flow of the offense without needing a lot of set plays.

Karl Towns is the perfect fit for this kind of offense. Regardless of whether or not Hoiberg ends up coming to replace Saunders, the Timberwolves will want a guy running that type of five-out, spread pick-and-roll going forward. Towns barely ever got to run the pick-and-roll at Kentucky. Playing in a two-man game with Rubio should get him plenty of easy looks around the basket.

If Saunders does give up the head coaching position, it will be one of the most sought-after jobs in the NBA. The chance to coach guys with the talent of Towns or Wiggins doesn’t come around very often, much less both of them at the same time. Minnesota would have the No. 1 overall pick in the last three drafts, and they would be playing those guys with one of the best passers and floor generals in the league in Ricky Rubio. Towns also is a very good passer, and he will have better options to find from the post than he did at Kentucky.

If there’s a concern about Towns, it’s that he’s a young guy who isn’t always locked into the game mentally and who can be too eager to make things happen, which is why he spent a lot of time in foul trouble as a freshman. That’s the other thing about Towns to Minnesota — there’s no better person to teach a young big than Kevin Garnett.

You never want to compare a young player to a future Hall of Famer, but when a 7-footer is an elite athlete with a fundamentally sound game who can slide between the 4 and 5, it’s hard not to make the comparison. Towns is going to have Garnett in his ear every day, teaching him how to play on both sides of the ball, how to be a professional on and off the court, and showing him what it takes in terms of work ethic and intensity to be one of the best players in the NBA.

The sky is the limit for how good Karl Towns can be, and Minnesota is the perfect situation for him. If the Timberwolves draft Towns at No. 1, they will be a team to watch for a long time to come.