The Minnesota Timberwolves didn’t have any draft picks to evaluate in 2021 after trading both of them to the Golden State Warriors for D’Angelo Russell. Therefore, their attention turned to the 2020 class in Summer League that year. The Wolves had taken Anthony Edwards and Jaden McDaniels in 2020, and the pandemic stoppages affected their development.
As the first-overall pick, they immediately tossed the raw but talented Edwards onto the court. He struggled in the first half of the season but started to show star power at the end of the season. They took McDaniels as a project with the 28th pick, and they still had to figure out what they had in him a year later.
“I just want to let him loose, let him be a little bit more aggressive on the offensive side of the ball,” Wolves assistant Joseph Blair, who was in charge of the Summer League team, told the Star Tribune in 2021. “I think that he has a lot in his bag that he hasn’t been able to show up until this point.”
McDaniels has always been a stout defender, but he’s gradually added to his offensive game. He averaged 6.2 points per game as a rookie, 9.2 in his second season, and 12.1 last year. Before last season, McDaniels showed out in Jamal Crawford’s pro-am. Afterward, Crawford told ESPN that McDaniels would show the league what he could do. And he did. The reticent forward from Federal Way, Wash., has become integral to Minnesota’s future and earned himself a payday.
The Wolves entered this year’s draft with only the 53rd pick after trading for Rudy Gobert last offseason. But Tim Connelly watched Leonard Miller drop and pounced. He sent a 2026 second-rounder they acquired from the Utah Jazz in the Russell trade and their 2028 second-rounder to the San Antonio Spurs for the 33rd pick. Minnesota drafted the Toronto-born Miller out of the G League, and he thrived in the G League. At 19, he looks NBA-ready, assuming he’s meaningfully improved his shot.
Assuming that Miller pans out, Connelly and the front office moved off of Russell gracefully. Gersson Rosas initially traded for Russell when he was building the team around Karl-Anthony Towns. He had courted Russell in the offseason, but Russell opted to sign with Golden State. Rosas overpaid for Russell, trading Andrew Wiggins and the pick that became Jonathan Kuminga for one of Towns’ best friends. Rosas fell from grace, and Russell’s high-usage game didn’t fit with Edwards, Gobert, and Towns. Getting Mike Conley, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, and Miller for him is a steal.
There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance with Connelly early in his tenure with the Wolves. New owners Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez pushed to get Connelly, paying him $40 million and offering him an equity stake to become Minnesota’s general manager. Connelly helped build the Denver Nuggets into a champion, but the Gobert trade might be a mistake. He’s a complement to Towns but not necessarily to Edwards, and the latter is the Timberwolves’ best player. Furthermore, the new collective-bargaining agreement will make it difficult for teams to keep three stars, so the Wolves may have to move off of one of them.
The Wolves also signed Naz Reid to a $42 million extension, and they have to sign McDaniels. Cap space will get tight soon, and Minnesota will probably be good enough that they won’t get premium picks. Even if they did, half of them are in Utah. Therefore, they will have to find affordable talent with upside like McDaniels and Miller to complement their core players.
A big-time recruit out of Seattle, McDaniels’ draft stock dropped at the University of Washington because he racked up a concerning number of technical fouls. Miller had many NBA attributes. He rebounded and defended well and was willing to do the dirty work on the court. However, he needs to work on his shot and add weight. Both are projects. But McDaniels has panned out, broken hand notwithstanding, and Miller gives the coaching staff a lot to work with.
The Wolves will likely run back the Edwards, Towns, and Gobert core next year. Therefore, they aren’t going to have very many first-round picks to work with, and the ones they have probably won’t be high in the draft. To build out the roster around four expensive players, five if McDaniels re-signs, they’ll have to develop players they take late in the first or in the second round. McDaniels created a blueprint for them to use, and Miller looks like the first developmental player who can take his path.
