Barring the calamities that can capsize even the most shipshape of sports franchises, the Minnesota Timberwolves will be a force to be reckoned with during the 2025-26 NBA season. But how big of a dent that force can make in what appears to be the deepest batch of quality teams the league’s Western Conference has ever mustered will depend on more than merely skirting catastrophe.
Last season the Wolves had to win their final three games — and eight of their last ten — to avoid having to qualify for the playoffs via the play-in tournament (in which the seventh-and-eighth-place teams in the conference need to ratify their postseason eligibility versus the two teams directly below them in the standings). The Wolves won 59.8% of their 82 games (49-33), sixth-best in the West. Two more wins would have put them third. Two more losses would have spelled eighth place.
In the season that begins in less than three weeks, a dozen of the 15 teams in the conference have legitimate playoff aspirations.
Dollops of grit, luck and late-season cohesion propelled the Wolves into the Western Conference Finals for the second straight year last spring, creating exalted expectations for the 2025-26 campaign that, given the strength of the conference, provide a microscopic margin-of-error for fulfillment.
The first three weeks of October that comprise the preseason for 2025-26 is a crucial time of repair and renewal: patching holes, sewing seams and fortifying strengths for the exceptionally rugged grind through to unpredictable fortune when the regular season ceases in mid-April.
Using the trove of information from my conversation with head coach Chris Finch and the parade of interviews with Wolves personnel guru Tim Connelly and the players on Media Day and after the first two practices earlier this week, here are the team’s preseason priorities:
Can they improve team defense when Rudy Gobert is off the court?
In the 2,388 regular-season minutes Gobert played last year, the Wolves allowed 107.6 points per 100 possessions. In the 1,578 minutes he didn’t play, Minnesota ceded 112 points per 100 possessions. Both Finch and Connelly are making it a team priority to reduce that nearly four-and-a-half-point gap.
This emphasis feels like a tone-setting reminder rather than a do-or-die box to be checked. The abiding point of it seems to be a desire to recrystallize the Wolves identity as defense-first behemoth, a track-back to the 2023-24 season when they permitted 2.2 fewer points per 100 possessions than any team in the NBA. Gobert was fantastic, winning his fourth Defensive Player of the Year award, and yet in the 1,368 minutes he was off the court that season, the Wolves allowed less than a point more to be scored against them per 100 possessions.
But that 2023-24 team had a pair of defensive aces coming off the bench in Kyle “Slo Mo” Anderson and Nickeil Alexander-Walker. None of the other six members of the Wolves eight regular rotation players permitted fewer points per possession in the minutes each of them played that season. Yes, they were even better when Gobert joined them, but that was only slightly more than half of NAW’s total minutes, and less than half of when Slo Mo played.
The Wolves sorely missed the steady, versatile, intelligent efficacy of Slo Mo’s defense last season, and they will likely mourn the loss of Alexander-Walker this season for the very same reasons. Bottom line, you can’t remove a stalwart off the bench two seasons in a row and expect to sustain the depth you had when both were on the roster.
The real goal here seems to be to avoid further slippage and the obvious focal point is getting the frontcourt pair of Julius Randle and Naz Reid in better sync, both with each other and with their three cohorts on the perimeter.
Finch delivered the particulars for improvement during our interview last month, specifically citing “ball contain, rim protection, keeping the ball out of the paint, not fouling, and being able to rebound better,” adding that when Gobert is on the bench, “We’re just going to have to figure out how to shrink the paint and be more collectively guarding the rim.”
It will be interesting to see what progress is made in that regard over the next three weeks.
How much quality depth can the team’s young core provide?
The discussion over beefing up the non-Rudy defense leads naturally into a discussion about how a quartet of young players can best fill out the bottom of the player rotation in a manner that helps the Wolves “win now” as well as prepare them for the future.
If the Wolves were to mimic last season and limit themselves to eight players in the regular rotation, TJ Shannon would fill the lone void, replacing the departed Alexander-Walker.
“TJ is solidly in the rotation as we speak. I don’t think there is any debate about that,” Finch told me in late September. And for good reason. Shannon has already shown he can play at an infectiously uptempo pace and with physicality, two elements that are key to the team’s success this season.
Finch also has reason to be optimistic about Shannon’s defense and playmaking, although the sample size on those attributes is scant when it comes to meaningful NBA performance. And the plot thickens if Finch really wants to prioritize team defense when Gobert is on the sidelines. Because among the “young core,” Jaylen Clark is best equipped for that role.
Jaden McDaniels and Anthony Edwards are both superlative on-ball defenders. But both of them also start and are regarded as key complements to Gobert. When it comes to “ball contain,” “keeping the ball out of the paint” and “not fouling,” Clark is easily the most accomplished perimeter defender coming off the bench for this team.
Finch acknowledged as much when he told me that, “when you are looking at filling the void left by Nickeil, you have three guys who all give you a different part of what he did. In terms of being a good point-of-attack defender you obviously have Jaylen. As a ball handler you have Rob (Dillingham). And then for additional scoring you have TJ.
Which brings us to Dillingham, the player with arguably the highest ceiling and, at least currently, the lowest floor among the trio of players Finch just mentioned. Short of hiring a sky-writer and grabbing a bullhorn, the coach couldn’t be clearer in communicating what Dillingham needs to do to upgrade his status in the team’s immediate plans: Understand how he can best help the team and then single-mindedly set about accomplishing it.
Dillingham made it to the NBA as a woefully undersized teenager because of his quickness and creativity on the ball. He is understandably loath to diminish those virtues, which is what he hears when Finch talks about tweaking those skills in a manner that puts pace in the game for driving and kicking out, enabling others, while doing most of his scoring off-the-ball through cutting and spacing for layups and catch-and-shoot opportunities. Dillingham has bought in to the reality that he needs to surmount his defensive shortcomings by working as hard as possible being a 170-pound pest.
Finch is on the record saying he will play a nine-man rotation, and hints that he’ll toggle that final slot due to matchups and other circumstances to get 10 players engaged. Ideally, Shannon, Clark and Dillingham all perform well enough to force his hand, because talk of expanded rotations has been cheap during this tenure.
Last but not least on this subject is the wild card, teenaged rookie Joan Beringer. The seven-foot Frenchman has less than five years of organized basketball experience yet wowed the front office before the draft and ratified that excitement with incredibly precocious defense in Summer League. Finch has already said he will spend time with the NBA club as well as get some seasoning in Iowa. It may require an injury or two for him to get an opportunity to break out, but more eye-opening play in the preseason would enhance those chances.
Will the team continue to struggle with transition play?
One of the most valuable components of offensive efficiency in the modern NBA is getting the ball quickly down the court after an opponent’s turnover or missed shot, scoring before the defense has time to organize.
For at least the past two seasons, the Wolves have blatantly squandered these opportunities. Despite a defense that has been better than the league average in generating turnovers and missed shots, the Wolves have been indifferent to pushing the ball in transition. There is a “transition” play-type measured on the stats page at nba.com. Two years ago, the Wolves finished in a tie for next-to-last (28th-29th among the 30 teams) in the frequency that transition plays factored into their offense. That the Wolves ranked fifth in the amount of points-per-play they scored when they did execute in transition, added salt to the wound.
Last year it was more of the same. Just 15.3% of the Wolves offensive plays were in transition, the lowest in the NBA. Their points scored per transition play was merely average, at 1.14 points per play, but that is still much higher than most any other play-type, such as isolation, or pick-and-rolls.
Finch again complained about it in our conversation last month, and as the coach is finally doing something about. On the first day of practice, instead of multiple players, including scorers like Anthony Edwards and Julius Randle, hanging back to receive the ball after the rebound, they have been instructed to get up the court while the ball goes to point guard Mike Conley.
This kills two birds with one stone. Ant is obviously one of the best finishers and overall scorers in the NBA, and Randle isn’t that far behind. Getting them on the move against a defense disorganized in transition is crucial. Secondly, after spending much of last season being usurped of much of his half-court play-making in favor of ball-dominant teammates like Randle and Ant, Conley erupted in his classically calm manner during Media Day. That he be the one to survey the floor and push the pace in the right way via adroit passing to his teammates on the run is a no-brainer.
The preseason will display whether or not the Wolves have finally gotten a clue.
What are the vibes?
It is a clichéd truism that every team is full of sugarplums and fairy tales at the very onset of the season, where no games have been played and all are thus undefeated.
But within that spectrum of unbridled optimism, there can be hints of genuine discord or unity, an aura of cooperative purpose or thinly camouflaged disgruntlement.
Right now, the 2025-26 edition of the Timberwolves are making a pretty good show of being primed for synergy. The loss of NAW was painful but inevitable under the constraints of the salary cap and folks like Randle and Naz joined the other five members of last year’s core rotation in gaining financial security. The ownership squabble has been resolved and the late arrivals from the KAT trade just before training camp last season, Randle and Donte DiVincenzo, are fully acclimated.
The team has absorbed a compelling mix of hardware and humble pie. They have reached the conference finals two years running but have been essentially humiliated by a superior opponent once they got there.
Among many examples, two stand out, both involving the superstar, Ant, who for the past couple seasons has been an MVP-in-waiting, inching closer to that status without arrival.
In his Media Day appearance, Ant stated that “The most important thing I have learned is that teams that go deep into the playoffs, they are together. They care about each other. It is easy to say we’re brothers… but I think it starts in the summer time. It starts with being together.”
That night, the entire team went out to dinner. According to Conley, the discussion came around to team commitment. “Are we coming here to put on a show, perform? Or are we trying to win a championship?” said Conley, the 38-year-old vet entering what could be his final NBA season. “And the consensus was we are trying to win a championship.”
To put teeth in the purpose, Conley said that Ant was challenged to be more consistent and dedicated, especially on the defensive end. Ant confirmed the scenario.
If exercised, this would be an enormous leap forward. Ant has long been one of the top defenders in the NBA — when motivated. Excuses about the load he carries on offense, and the limits on his endurance, have been made in the past. But apparently not this season.
You never want to rely on “vibes” as a bankable reason for optimism. Seeing is believing. And if it occurs, and sustains, instead of being a “remember when?” source of derision down the road, the dinner and the Media Day sugarplums might be regarded as the straw that steels the camel’s back on the long, brutal march through the Western Conference this season.
The post 4 questions the Timberwolves hope to start answering with Saturday’s preseason opener appeared first on MinnPost.
Want more insights? Join Working Title - our career elevating newsletter and get the future of work delivered weekly.
