Welcome to MinnPost’s first Minnesota Timberwolves mailbag of the 2025-26 season.
As we head into the peak of holiday swirl, the Wolves are at an interesting hinge point. Having feasted on a bevy of cupcake opponents, there is suddenly a lot more fiber on the menu, quality competitors who will help us all determine the actual health and vigor of a team whose mostly unpenalized lapses are an ominous character flaw for a squad with genuine championship aspirations.
On the other hand, two days before Christmas, the Wolves have a record of 19-10, are 8-2 over their last ten contests, including a thrilling victory over the reigning champs and current NBA-leading Oklahoma City Thunder.
Not surprisingly, many of your questions concerned the team’s more diffuse approach to the point guard position. It has been a strategic change borne out of both strength (the playmaking prowess of top scorers Anthony Edwards and Julius Randle, enabling long-range shooter and catalyst Donte DiVincenzo to provide more spacing on offense as the starter at the point) and weakness (the aging of Mike Conley, the slow development of Rob Dillingham and the intriguing combustibility of Bones Hyland comprising the point-guard committee off the bench).
Otherwise, mailbag participants have questions about coach Chris Finch’s ability to develop the “young core” of recent draft picks; offer different scapegoats and potential solutions they want to tease out for the team’s habit of playing down to the level of its opponents; and provide the usual assortment of idiosyncratic and offbeat concerns and questions that makes this such an enjoyable exercise. I want to thank everyone who responded after solicitations on the social media sites Twitter and Bluesky, and of course subscribers to MinnPost’s And One newsletter (sign up here).
Let’s get to it.
What’s the Minnesota Timberwolves’ plan at point guard?
Are our hearts clouding our judgment? Heading into the season, many had questions about the PG position. With a decent sample of games, is it a bigger than we even thought due to Conley’s decline? — Challenge It, Finchy! @challengeitfinchy.bsky.social
Now that it seems real that Conley may be reaching the end, does it seem more likely that (president of basketball operations Tim) Connelly will stand pat with a Ragu (DiVincenzo)/Ant backcourt with Bones and Rob spelling them or that they go out and get, say a Coby White or Jose Alvarado? — Andrew 3000 @shields5248.bsky.social
It seems that the team needs a PG. Also appears that we are in a post-PG era in the association. It’s easy to point to personnel as the problem (and therefore the solution) but what’s the hard answer here? — Sam Kamin @sjkamin.bsky.social
All of these questions were posed before Conley came back from a four-game absence due to injury and sparked a 20-0 third-quarter burst that flipped the game into the win column Sunday night against the Milwaukee Bucks.
That’s been the story all season: An inconsistent cadre of bench personnel help motivate, stagnate or mildly frustrate the offense (or defense) while taking their turn on the back-up point-guard wheel of fortune for the Wolves.
Before we go there, however, let’s establish that the abrupt decision right before the season opener to replace Conley with combo guard DiVincenzo as the starter at the point has been relatively successful. The Wolves have been healthy enough that the quintet — Ragu alongside Ant, Randle, Rudy Gobert and Jaden McDaniels — leads the NBA in total minutes together among 5-player combos with 264. The 10th most-frequent starting unit clocks in at 151 minutes.
Of those ten most utilized quintets, the Wolves starters have the best offensive rating at 123.1 points scored per 100 possessions. It is a synergistic unit: The Wolves don’t score that many points per possession during the total minutes any individual player on the roster performs. The best is the 120.1 points scored per 100 possessions in the 980 minutes logged by Randle, and Ragu is second-best — the Wolves score 118.9 points per 100 possessions in the 919 minutes he plays. He is second on the team to Randle in total assists and third behind Randle and Ant in assists per game, while logging the best assist-to-turnover ratio of his career. It all seems like a good fit.
But the backup point guard situation is necessarily complicated because there are legitimate pros and cons that accompany every member of that patchwork committee.
Conley is the line “classic point guard” on the roster, a sage veteran with profound knowledge about how to run a half-court offense. But he was replaced because the starting lineup already has two ball-dominant playmakers in Ant and Randle — and because age has sapped the resilience and reliability of Conley being able to deliver the entire spectrum of his skill set. As he proved on Sunday, however, when he’s on, Conley can inject poise and adrenaline into his teammates at the same time, at both ends of the court. And even when he doesn’t have it all going, his decision-making remains elite and vital to a roster that tends to shed “court IQ” when the pressure cooks or they simply don’t feel like focusing.
Rob Dillingham won’t turn 21 for another two weeks and he stands six-feet, one-inch and weighs 175 pounds. Those are congenital obstacles of youth and size for the NBA. Throw in the fact that he has been drafted by a franchise very close to the “ring or bust” end-stage of roster construction, and that Finch has calculated Dillingham’s risk/reward ratio in a manner that makes the coach leery of deploying him in high-leverage, peak-development moments and you’ve got air pockets in the fuel lines of his performance.
Bones Hyland vs. Rob Dillingham
Is Bones the answer in solidifying the point guard position? I’d like the Bones experiment to run to near the trade deadline before TC (Connelly) pulls the trigger. This team always takes half a season or more to jell it seems. — Pete Friedlieb
DDV is a better player than Bones. However I think Bones should start and let DDV become a ‘go-to guy’ off the bench. The ‘second unit’ needs his scoring, grit and experience. Bones can take some of the ball-handling duties from Ant. Why am I wrong about this? — Chris Mau
Bones is clearly a better player than that turnover factory Dillingham. Do you agree with me that Finch knew this all season and now that it is time to get serious, Dillingham will sit and Bones will play? — Jerry Gale
Once Ant comes back, would you see value in keeping Bones as a starter and having Naz and DDV come off the bench? — Jeff Goldenberg
When Ant and Conley were simultaneously felled by injuries, Bones Hyland was promoted to a key reserve role and then even as a starter beside Ragu in the backcourt. It is a wonderful feel-good story and Bones has been surprisingly effective at integrating with both first and second units. As the love-hug questions above indicate, he has quickly become a fan favorite.
But relative to most, I’m a Bones skeptic. Like Conley and especially Dillingham, there are flaws and seams in his game that affect his role on this roster. He has admirably matured through adversity in recent years but is not close to being a classically poised player. The downside of his infectious passion is that his decision-making is palpable and volatile, the opposite of subtle, and his defense is worse than either Conley’s or Dillingham’s.
Finch lauded him recently as a pass-first point guard but the eye test says that is not his nature. Nevertheless, he’s valuable as a bucket-getter and a tempo-pusher, and as “gamer” on a roster marred by lassitude.
To recap, then, going forward I’d keep Ragu as the starting PG, which means any trade would involve a quality backup. But even then a trade is dicey, given that the Wolves are already nudged next to the second apron of the salary cap, with no significant draft-pick capital to sweeten trades.
On the other hand, Connelly has proven he’s a fearless trader and if he believes he can improve the team, then upgrading and/or rearranging the playmaking squadron is a fertile area. But fraught. Only Ant should be untouchable, but under the circumstances, he’d better be right.
Without a trade, a deft patchwork that matches the backup committee members with the game situations that best suit them would be “ideal,” but probably not realistic. Finch likes to keep a happy roster by clarifying roles and being honest with players left out about what they need to do to improve. The Finch-Dillingham dynamic is flawed. When Finch got tossed early in the OKC game, Dillingham responded with uncommon, ultimately helpful aggression in clutch fourth-quarter minutes. But Conley, Bones and Dillingham are all going to wax and wane enough to reinforce and rebut everyone’s opinion. I’d play Dillingham over Bones and prize the value of Conley’s poise above all, but Finch is the one who has to live with the consequences.
Why isn’t Jaylen Clark getting more minutes?
Why isn’t Clark getting more minutes? Is it his offense? He hasn’t earned it yet? — Zach Steuven
I’m a Finch bobo. But I think he looks a bit hypocritical about preaching defense in the preseason and then not giving Jaylen consistent minutes and leaving him off the floor. Is Jaylen a plus player overall? — Jeff Germann
Finch has recently become exasperated with folks asking him why 11 players aren’t getting enough minutes. But he sowed the seeds for it by praising his “youth core” of Terrence Shannon Jr., Clark and Dillingham — plus this year’s top draft pick, Joan Beringer — during Summer League while vowing to expand his rotation.
The problem is that the Wolves flipped their preseason prognosis of Conley as the starter in favor of Ragu, Shannon and Dillingham have both underperformed, while Bones has both been an ideal teammate and locker room presence while overperforming. Meanwhile, Clark has given Finch what Clark always gives — steady, disruptive defense.
When reality hits, Finch has always preferred a taut eight-player rotation, which frankly is ideal for getting a team ready for a deep run in the playoffs (provided the entire octet stays healthy). But deciding the eighth (and ninth) members of the rotation has become complicated by the events described above.
But back to the legitimate questions — why isn’t Clark getting solid, double-digit minutes if defense is the priority? I’m not sure, because I think he should be.
I think Finch believes his defense can coalesce and thus improve over time without that heavy dose of Clark. And I do think Clark’s offense is limited by his shooting, that his defense has been scouted to the point where it has been less disruptive lately, and that regular minutes for Clark are being siphoned away by the ongoing promise of Shannon’s high-paced upside, Hyland’s boomlet of goodwill off the bench, and above all Finch’s appropriate respect for Conley.
I’d still secure Clark in the rotation. Finch has hinted that hard decisions are coming regarding a smaller and thus more clearly defined rotation, but that has been delayed before and may well be again. Because the hodgepodge of player performances makes it harder and guarantees that any decision won’t be universally popular.
But at this point it is important to remind people that Finch has a track record. Every year he’s been in Minnesota, his teams have gotten better over the course of the season. Criticizing Finch is like criticizing Ant. Even when your foundation for doing so seems firm, subsequent performance will make you look silly.
How long will Coach Finch give players to figure it out?
I know Coach Finch believes in the principle of giving players the freedom to ‘play,’ Where is the team at now, relative to (players needing to play) with freedom versus playing in a structure; especially in relation to them not playing with a point guard much of the time? — Erik Aamonth
We know that Coach Finch likes to take the ‘let them figure it out’ approach. What happens when the players are repeatedly not figuring it out? — Mark Snyder @snyde043.bsky.social
These two questions get at another legitimate concern for which the unsatisfactory answer may be patience.
Before the thrilling upset of the Oklahoma City Thunder, who came into Target Center last Friday with a record of 24-2, the Wolves yet again exercised terrible judgment on offense in an ugly loss to the sub-.500 Memphis Grizzlies (who, to be fair, came in having won 8 of 11 games) last Wednesday. In his postgame presser Finch conceded that he should have imposed more structure down the stretch.
But the fact is that Finch is committed to going against his own preferences because he has determined that it gives him and his team the best chance at a championship. The offense features two isolation-heavy playmakers in Ant and Randle, both of whom don’t move nearly enough when they don’t have the ball. Upon his arrival in Minnesota, Finch’s three-pronged catechism was move the ball, move without the ball, make quick decisions.
Randle and Ant have rendered that philosophy moot in most of the team’s half-court sets. Supplanting Conley with Ragu adds to the random nature of the process. It is less beautiful basketball than the ball-movement “flow” Finch once preached, but the Wolves are eighth in offensive efficiency this season after being eighth last season with Randle and Ant taking hold of the reins. In the two prior seasons, the Wolves were 17th and 15th, respectively, in points scored per possession.
I’ve done plenty of griping about the Wolves’ immaturity thus far this season, but as I said at the beginning, the team has come through it with a 19-10 record and we’re at a hinge point now. If you are reading this on Tuesday, the Wolves play the Knicks at home, and go to Denver for a game with the Nuggets on Christmas night.
Bottom line, the Wolves (and the cupcake schedule) bought themselves plenty of time to wait and see. Even so, an annoying amount of things remain unresolved, considering this is a veteran roster coming off back-to-back conference finals appearances.
If the team starts losing, expect much more structure and fewer options in the content of the rotation, the discipline of the offensive schemes and the decisions about which timeline takes precedence in terms of upside development.
These are the problems, solutions and processes that accompany a successful franchise.
In the And One newsletter, I’ll do a lightning round of the more idiosyncratic questions. Those who haven’t subscribed yet (it’s free) can do so here.
Otherwise, happy holidays to all who follow this fabulous game. See you in 2026.
The post Timberwolves mailbag: Your questions on point guard, playing time, and Coach Finch’s ‘let them figure it out’ approach appeared first on MinnPost.
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