Tim Connelly often stands near the tunnel that the Minnesota Timberwolves players walk under to exit the Target Center floor. It’s the one that Jaden McDaniels punched before this year’s playoffs, breaking his hand. Connelly often greeted Naz Reid after games, giving props to a player who provided rebounding and energy all season. Unfortunately, McDaniels and Reid missed the playoffs with injuries, and the Denver Nuggets eliminated Minnesota in five games.
Connelly’s approach to player relationships creates an interesting juxtaposition. In some ways, the former Nuggets general manager lords over the players like any other GM. Connelly decides whether or not to extend their contracts. He can trade them to another team. And with younger players, he has a say in whether they play in the G League or the NBA. Still, he works to establish a personal connection with them. That’s worth noting in a league where GMs flip players at a whim, throwing teams together in the off-season and at the trade deadline.
Connelly also had a lot of success drafting and developing players in Denver. He was the core architect of their championship team this year, creating some cognitive dissonance given how his first year went in Minnesota. How can the guy who gutted the 2021 core and traded a haul of draft picks for Rudy Gobert be the same person who built the Nuggets from the ground up? Why would someone who’s had so much success in the draft trade four first-round picks and a pick swap for a 30-year-old center?
The Athletic’s Jon Krawczynski profiled Connelly in May 2022, shortly after he signed his five-year, $40 million contract with Minnesota. Krawczynski focused on Connelly’s ability to draft and develop players and the stability he fostered with the Nuggets. It made sense. Denver is the 16th-largest market in the US; Minneapolis-St. Paul is the 15th. Both are cold-weather areas, making it challenging to recruit free agents. And the Nuggets have had a historic lack of success, despite being an ABA franchise that joined the NBA in 1976. He built the Nuggets into a winner. Why couldn’t he do the same with the Timberwolves?
Under Connelly’s leadership, the Nuggets have made the playoffs in each of the last four seasons, including the Western Conference finals in 2020. He drafted Nikola Jokić in the second round and hired coach Michael Malone in 2015, saw Jokić blossom into a two-time MVP and built a deep roster around him that included draft hits Jamal Murray, Monte Morris, Bones Hyland and Michael Porter Jr.
That eye for talent and development, coupled with a reputation as being an outgoing and gregarious leader, piqued the interest of Lore and Rodriguez.
It’s kind of funny to hire an executive known for drafting and developing players, then sign off on a deal that moves a substantial amount of draft capital for a player on the wrong side of 30. But that’s what happened. I’ve long suspected that the Gobert trade was a new ownership move, the result of the excitement and ambition that comes with an ownership change. Lore and Rodriguez don’t own the Wolves outright, but Krawczysnki outlines how much say they have in Minnesota’s affairs. They’re willing to raise and spend $1.5 billion to buy the Timberwolves, and they probably don’t want to wait around for them to get good.
There are two ways to build a winning team in Minnesota: trades and the draft. The old regime used trades and draft picks to build a 46-win team that reenergized the fanbase in 2021. People who loved the Timberwolves in the Kevin Garnett days embraced a scrappy group led by Karl-Anthony Towns and Anthony Edwards. The Wolves had traded for three heart-and-soul guys, Patrick Beverley, Malik Beasley, and Jarred Vanderbilt. They developed McDaniels and Reid into impact players. And they had started to maximize Edwards’ talent.
That group had a ceiling. Eventually, Edwards would have to take over as the star player. D’Angelo Russell was too high-usage. Beverley was getting older, and Beasley and Vanderbilt were one-dimensional players. But that team could have been tweaked rather than completely overhauled. We still don’t know the Towns-Gobert pairing’s upside. Towns only played in 29 games last year; Gobert missed time early. But a fanbase that almost universally loved the 2021 team became divided on last year’s group. And the Wolves likely can’t keep it together anyway because of the NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement.
The irony is that Connelly showcased his strengths in this year’s draft. He traded this year’s first-rounder (16th overall) as part of the Gobert package, leaving Minnesota with only the 53rd pick. However, Connelly traded two second-rounders to the San Antonio Spurs for Leonard Miller, who many experts believed would be a mid-first-round pick. He also used one of the second-rounders he got in the Mike Conley-Russell swap to get Miller, making that trade look even better. Then he used the 53rd pick to take Jaylen Clark, a solid perimeter defender who pundits projected to be an early second-round pick before his Achilles injury.
To recap, Connelly turned Russell into Conley and Nickeil Alexander-Walker, who shined in the playoffs. Then he used one of those picks to grab a player at 33 who some draft experts thought could have gone in the middle of the first round. Later, he got value on a player coming off an injury. Connelly exhibited a good process, even if we won’t know the results for a few years. Furthermore, he extended Reid for three years, $42 million, making an undrafted player part of Minnesota’s future. And McDaniels, who the Wolves got at 28th overall in 2020, is in line for a significant payday.
Connelly didn’t develop Reid and McDaniels, but he helped them take their game to the next level last year. He’s committed to Chris Finch, who became Minnesota’s second-winningest coach last year. And he got value in the Russell trade and found some hidden gems in the draft. All are part of the winning recipe in Minnesota. His next task will be learning the Towns-Gobert pairing’s upside and what he has to do if they’re not the right players to pair with Edwards. And if not, how does Connelly get the necessary draft picks to maximize his strength as an executive?
