Tim Connelly’s job is hard. He’s basically playing a never-ending high-stakes poker game against 29 other lead executives. That poker game also becomes an AP math test, watched in real time by everyone with internet access and an opinion. Every move he makes faces opposition, as with his recent LaMelo Ball trade. Millions of people and bots complain about the infinite potential moves he could or should have made instead.
Since he took over as Minnesota’s President of Basketball Operations in 2022, Connelly has been busy.
- He traded for Rudy Gobert weeks after taking the reins in the front office.
- Seven months later, he traded D’Angelo Russell for Mike Conley and Nickeil Alexander-Walker.
- He bet big on Rob Dillingham during the 2024 NBA Draft.
- Connelly sent shockwaves across the league on the eve of training camp in 2024 by sending Karl-Anthony Towns to New York for Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo, and a first-round pick that became Joan Beringer.
- He cut bait on Dillingham and Leonard Miller in return for Ayo Dosunmu.
- And his most recent move, trading back five picks in the 2026 draft to offload Julius Randle’s salary to Brooklyn while picking up Ball, might burn Wolves Twitter to the ground once and for all.
Four years into his tenure, the impact of Connelly’s trigger finger is still incomplete. We’re still three years away from the final pick in the Gobert trade being used. The San Antonio Spurs won’t make their first pick in the Dillingham trade for another four years.
But the optics are suboptimal. Towns just won a championship with the Knicks. Meanwhile, he had to attach a sweetener to the main player he traded for, Randle, to get his $33 million salary off of Minnesota’s roster. DiVincenzo, the other guy in the trade, will be out for most or all of the 2026-27 season rehabbing his torn Achilles. And the Wolves missed out on the Giannis Antetokounmpo sweepstakes because they have little to no draft capital to entice a team to trade a superstar, even one who reportedly would have signed an extension in Minnesota if the Wolves pulled it off.
With Giannis in South Beach, the NBA content machine is already coming for Anthony Edwards. They need an offering to their slop gods to offset the $100 million they pay Stephen A. Smith just to say things. And despite being 24, having three years left on his contract, and only ever saying he’s happy in Minnesota, Anthony Edwards is the sacrificial lamb on a smaller market team.
Signing Ayo Dosunmu to a five-year, $112 million contract with space opened up by dumping Randle’s salary can only keep the Twitter orcs from breaching the walls of Helm’s Deep (aka Target Center) for so long. And now, news that the Timberwolves are trading fan favorite Naz Reid, their 2033 first-round pick, first-round pick swaps in 2028, 2029, and 2030, and three second-round picks for LaMelo Ball will continue to divide the fan base. That will inevitably draw even more vultures picking around the Wolves if things go poorly.
Connelly will be expected to make more moves. But so far in his tenure, the math isn’t quite mathing.
We haven’t seen the type of grade fluctuation on Connelly’s trades with the Timberwolves since I was forced to meet my science and math requirements at the University of Minnesota.
- The Gobert trade was called the worst trade in NBA history at the time, and four years on, it’s at least back to neutral.
- Trading D’Lo for Conley and NAW is an unequivocal success.
- Claiming Dillingham as the point guard of the future proved a disaster, slightly mitigated by the pivot to Dosunmu.
- People thought the Towns trade was worse than the movie I was watching in the theater when the trade went down, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis.
- And now, seemingly dumping Julius Randle for nothing is the last straw for many Timberwolves fans.
You can judge each individual move however you want, but when you look at the aggregate, things start to feel a little lopsided. When you look at who remains on the roster and who Connelly has sent packing, it essentially breaks down to the following, give or take my smoot brain and short attention span’s interpretation of a string of more than 15 trades in.
IN OUT
Rudy Gobert Karl-Anthony Towns
Lamelo Ball Naz Reid
Mike Conley Julius Randle
Ayo Dosunmu Walker Kessler
Donte DiVincenzo D’Angelo Russell
Joan Beringer Rob Dillingham
Rocco Zikarsky Patrick Beverley
2026 33rd pick Leonard Miller
2026 59th pick Bryce McGowans
A few million dollars 2023 First Round Pick (Keyonte George)
$33 million trade exception 2025 First Round Pick (Will Riley)
2026 21st overall pick (Karim Lopez)
2027 First Round Pick
2028 First Round Pick swap
2029 First Round Pick (Top 5 protected)
2030 First Round Pick
2031 First Round Pick swap
2033 First Round Pick
Second Round Picks in 26, 27, 29, 32, 33
That’s a whole lot of star power and draft capital for Rudy Gobert, LaMelo Ball, Conley, Dosunmu, DiVincenzo, Clark, getting off Randle’s contract, and the hope that Beringer is the next Giannis.
Yes, this recap leaves off a few assets the Wovles got back in individual trades. Nickeil Alexander-Walker was a great seventh man in Minnesota. Still, they lost him for nothing in free agency, and he was named the league’s most improved player in his first season in Atlanta.
I’m thinking most Timberwolves fans would rather have a roster of Anthony Edwards, Towns, Kessler, Jaden McDaniels, Naz Reid, Keyonte George, Will Riley, and their own firsts in 2027, 29, 30, and 31 than Gobert, LaMelo, Conley, Donte, Beringer, and Ayo via the Rob Dillingham experiment with just a first-round pick in 2028 under team control.
Obviously, the roster would be completely different if you just altered one of the previous trades. Still, the outside is starting to look undeniably better than the inside.
In trading for LaMelo Ball, Connelly has pushed his chips to the center of the table, hoping that Edwards, Ball, McDaniels, Dosunmu, Gobert, eventually-healthy DiVincenzo, Shannon Jr., Beringer, Clark, and second-round pick Isaiah Evans make for a winning hand.
Anthony Edwards isn’t going anywhere. Rudy Gobert is still an elite defender. LaMelo is an elite offensive engine. Jaden McDaniels will have an increased role going forward. Ayo Dosunmu broke out during the playoffs. DiVincenzo will heal. And Terrence Shannon Jr., Jaylen Clark, and Joan Beringer all have more to give in the future.
Things are far from over for the golden age of Timberwolves basketball. But Connelly is playing with a deck increasingly stacked against him.
