Tim Connelly must have been spent after the draft because his top assistant suggested he was up late preparing for the draft. “I think Tim Connelly has slept about 16 minutes in the last four days total,” said Matt Lloyd, Minnesota Timberwolves senior vice president of basketball operations. “It’s an exciting two days.”
Connelly consulted with Minnesota Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey about how they handle multi-day drafts. For the first time in NBA history, the league expanded the draft to two days, and Lloyd left the draft with an appreciation for how Adofo-Mensah handles the three-day NFL draft. “I give those guys at the Vikings a lot of credit for getting through a two-day or multiday draft,” Lloyd said. “That is a monster.”
It’s impossible to know what Connelly, Adofo-Mensah, and Falvey said during their meeting of the minds. However, Connelly strayed far from Adofo-Mensah’s core principle. After taking the Vikings job in 2022, Adofo-Mensah told USA TODAY, “You never want to go full Rams.”
On Wednesday, Connelly traded a top-1 protected 2030 first-round pick and a 2031 first-rounder to the San Antonio Spurs for Rob Dillingham, who San Antonio had taken with the eighth overall. He did so two years after trading five picks to the Utah Jazz for Rudy Gobert. Connelly hasn’t expressed disdain for draft selections. However, he’s traded as many as possible to assemble a roster he hopes will contend for a championship.
After the Los Angeles Rams won a championship in 2021, general manager Les Snead wore a shirt that said “F Them Picks” at the Super Bowl parade. “F them picks,” he reiterated in front of a ravenous crowd. “We’ll use them to win more Super Bowls.” However, LA went 5-12 the year after and lost in the first round last season.
Football teams need seven rounds of picks to fill out their roster. They need cost-controlled players because the stars take up so much cap space. They also play one game each round to determine a champion, so they often need to keep a core together for years to win the Super Bowl. Therefore, picks are incredibly valuable in the NFL.
Adofo-Mensah’s “never go full Rams” interview became infamous because he said the quarterback was his only hesitation with not tanking and resetting the Vikings roster. He said they didn’t have a Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes, and the draft is the best way to get a game-changing quarterback. However, people interpreted his comments as a shot at incumbent quarterback Kirk Cousins. Meanwhile, his core point was that he wanted to retain picks because they’re the best way to build a perennial contender.
“If it were a seven-game series, yeah, best team wins,” Adofo-Mensah said. “That’s ultimately why when you’re team building, you never want to go full Rams. Because you need to give yourself three chances at it, four years at it. I know that’s hard for fans to hear.”
Adofo-Mensah was honest about his situation, and he’s been reticent with the media because of the backlash he received. However, Adofo-Mensah acknowledged that he wouldn’t go “full Rams” because football teams only play one game in each playoff round.
Adofo-Mensah acknowledged that his situation differs from other sports because football teams don’t play series in the playoffs. They play best-of-seven series, where the best team often advances. Connelly built the Timberwolves to beat the Denver Nuggets, and they eliminated Denver in the second round this year. However, the Dallas Mavericks matched up better with the Wolves and eliminated them in the Western Conference Finals.
The better team arguably won each series.
Therefore, Connelly is justified in going “full Rams” with the Timberwolves. They are in the second apron of the NBA’s salary cap, and they can’t stay there forever without incurring meaningful penalties. They also have Anthony Edwards, the NBA equivalent of Mahomes or Brady. Connelly must maintain a competitive team to retain Edwards through the end of his max deal, which expires in 2028-29.
If the Timberwolves fail to build a perennial contender around Edwards, he may push to leave Minnesota. However, he’ll likely stay in the Twin Cities if he believes he is on a championship roster. San Antonio’s best-case scenario with the Dillingham trade is that the Wolves drop in the standings when Edwards’ contract is up, and those 2030 and 2031 picks end up in the lottery. Connelly is trying to maintain a winning roster around Edwards to keep him in Minnesota indefinitely, so the picks are less valuable than a plag-and-play player like Dillingham.
“I can’t think of any time that you can get that high without losing a core piece,” Connelly said regarding the trade, adding that he understood San Antonio’s logic in swapping out a pick now for a pick down the road. “And certainly, it’s a real asset we gave up. It can inhibit deal-making moving forward. But knowing the restrictions you start to enter when guys rightfully get paid, yeah, we just looked at it, and we think, ‘How can we get a guy that can be this impactful?’”
Most challenge trades are player-for-player, such as the Atlanta Hawks trading Luka Doncic to Dallas for Trae Young on draft night. The Mavericks won that one. Utah traded Gobert to the Wolves, knowing they could end up with five lottery picks if the trade failed. We won’t know until 2030 whether San Antonio or the Wolves got the better end of the Dillingham trade. All we know right now is that Connelly isn’t afraid to move draft capital to pursue a championship.
