For everything that must occupy Minnesota Timberwolves president Tim Connelly’s brain — the constant critical evaluation of the roster he assembled, the questions about how the salary tax aprons work, and the trades that are one phone call away — he isn’t concerned about getting fired.
“I would rather get fired for trying than sit here and just be in job survival mode,” Connelly told the media during his exit interview last week.
The risk that comes with Connelly’s role as President of Basketball Operations is so great that one mistake could derail Minnesota’s championship trajectory and force him to update his LinkedIn. Swinging and missing on a decision is always a threat for Connelly, but he doesn’t let that threat discourage him from taking swings at risky pitches.
At the same time, after the San Antonio Spurs sent the Timberwolves home in the second round of the playoffs this season, Connelly doesn’t see there being much risk involved in any move he makes. The Wolves once again failed to reach the Finals and regressed from their back-to-back Conference Finals appearances.
Anything is — and should be — on the table for Connelly as he searches for ways to improve Minnesota’s roster.
“If you don’t win, what’s the risk?” Connelly said. “Risky, I think, is when you are a championship-level team and make a huge trade. But I don’t know what level of risk [there is] when you are bounced in the second round.”
As Connelly reflected on this season, he believed the Timberwolves did more good than bad. In particular, he was proud of how the team rallied together during their Game 4 win over the Denver Nuggets in the first round. Anthony Edwards suffered a left knee injury that night, keeping him out of two straight games, and Donte DiVincenzo ruptured his right Achilles tendon, ending his season.
Connelly saw a group of players band together in a difficult time, a selfless bunch whose only goal was to win. But that wasn’t who the Timberwolves were throughout the regular season. Naz Reid called the team moody. Chris Finch said they were undisciplined. And DiVincenzo thought players occasionally were self-centered, caring more about their individual performances than the team’s.
For a team with championship hopes, there must be a collective maturation process from the Wolves this offseason. Connelly believes the players already in the building can do it. And they will need to because Connelly can’t completely fix Minnesota’s maturity issues with one or two moves, regardless of the magnitude.
Still, he will be looking to add smart, hard-nosed, selfless players this summer — players a lot like DiVinenzo, who the Timberwolves will be without for most of next season.
“I think we have to hold these guys to unbelievably high standards,” Tim Connelly said regarding Minnesota’s maturity.
“The roster is not going to be the same. It’s never the same year to year. As we move forward, emotional maturity is something certainly we have talked about constantly, and we have these great moments of it. … Certainly, basketball IQ and toughness are two attributes we are going to look for to continue to augment the core group.”
Connelly likes Minnesota’s core of Edwards, Reid, Jaden McDaniels, Ayo Dosunmu, and Terrence Shannon Jr. There is a foundation between those players that can keep the Wolves competitive with Edwards for a long time. Joan Beringer and Rocco Zikarsky are also intriguing long-term pieces.
But in the present, Connelly hasn’t assembled a roster that doesn’t fit well together.
Individually, it’s a talented roster. But collectively, the Timberwolves were immature this season and didn’t fit together in a way that maximizes their top-end talent. In this year’s playoffs, that fit looked detrimental to Minnesota’s championship hopes.
The on-court chemistry between Edwards and his co-star, Julius Randle, disappointed Finch this season. He saw two players who could create quality offense for one another, but didn’t do so often enough, given their clashing playstyles.
“I hoped that it would be a little bit better,” Finch said. “It kind of feels like it’s maybe ‘your-turn-my-turn’ a bit rather than having like a two-man game, such as Denver has with [Jamal] Murray and [Nikola] Jokić. They like to create a lot of their own offense, and that sometimes makes it a bit of a tough partnership just because you’ve got to remember to also have that ability to … keep the ball moving.”
Finch believes the Wolves need to make life easier for Edwards moving forward by increasing the amount of on-ball creation and shooting around him.
Randle is a capable on-ball creator around the rim and in the mid-range. He’s elite at passing to three-point shooters off rim attacks. However, he shot 32% from three this season and 24% in the playoffs, making it easier for the Spurs to trap and neutralize Edwards during critical moments in the second round as Randle spaced off the ball.
The Timberwolves appear to have reached their ceiling with him on the roster.
Rudy Gobert’s inability to score outside of the paint or be a legitimate threat to score out of the short rolls with Edwards gums up Minnesota’s offense even further. But the 7-foot-1 center took home his eighth First Team All-Defense selection this season.
Gobert is still essential to Minnesota’s defense. Randle is not. The 6-foot-9 forward can leverage his strength in one-on-one defense, but he appears to mentally check out far too often for a team with maturity issues. That will likely play a factor in how Tim Connelly goes about improving this team around Edwards this summer.
But everything — shy of trading Edwards — is on the table.
“We have a lot of confidence in our guys,” Connelly said. “But again, it would be disingenuous for me to sit up here and say we are happy with the sixth seed. We are happy with not being a homecourt playoff team. We are happy that our last three closeout games have been lopsided. We have to be realistic with what we have, which is way more good than bad, but know that we aren’t good enough right now.”
Connelly made a legitimate push for Kevin Durant last summer. Had Minnesota been on Durant’s list of preferred trade destinations, there is a high chance he could have landed with the Wolves. Then, at this season’s trade deadline, Connelly pursued Giannis Antetokounmpo, who was open to playing with Edwards, but ended up remaining in Milwaukee for the rest of the year.
Antetokounmpo will likely be on a new team before next season.
Adding that evidence to Connelly’s track record of big trades, and signs point toward the President of Basketball Operations being unsatisfied with this roster. And with how this season ended, there is no reason why he shouldn’t be. Perhaps Connelly believes that this team does need another big trade to shrink the gap the Wolves extended between themselves and the Spurs and the Oklahoma City Thunder this season, and win a championship soon.
The two likely trade pawns this summer are Randle and Gobert. However, even though Connelly likes Minnesota’s young core, bringing in a top-level star may require him to break that group up. It’s hard to see the Milwaukee Bucks, for example, sending Antetokounmpo to Minnesota without exciting young talent like McDaniels or Reid, unless the Bucks acquire blue-chip talent elsewhere in a multi-team trade.
Moving young talent to bring in older talent is always risky. But Connelly has proved he isn’t scared of that risk. He would rather lose his job than avoid that risk.
And entering a summer with a cornerstone star, players who don’t fit together, a championship window that is still open but smaller than it once was, a risky trade is and should be on the table for Tim Connelly.
“We’re open to it,” Connelly said. “Certainly, we are not driven by it. We are not going to have a blind appetite for risk just because. But until you win it all, I think you’ve just got to keep playing hands.”
