The Clock, Part 1: What Connelly did

Thursday, September 10, Target Center. The Timberwolves are introducing a forward they signed with the taxpayer mid-level, two years and $12.4 million, which in this league is the kind of press conference that gets a headline for an afternoon and is forgotten by dinner. Then somebody asks Jonathan Kuminga why he's here, and he says the thing I have waited twenty-five years to hear a player say about this team.

"Especially Ant, he called me every single time."

The summer that ends with a player choosing Minnesota for less money is not the summer that got graded in July. The difference starts on June 13, on a night Minnesota wasn't playing, and runs through the trade, the hard cap, and the Saturday in August when they had a deal they couldn't sign.

June

The season ended June 13, on a night Minnesota wasn't playing. That was the night New York beat San Antonio in five for the title, and San Antonio was the team that had ended the Wolves' season in the second round, in six games, after Minnesota had beaten Denver in six in the first. So here's the record before the summer touched it. A 49-win team that won a playoff series and lost to the team that went on to win the West. Two conference finals in the three years before that. Good. And everyone in the building seemed to agree on the next word, too: not good enough.

The first move came before the draft. On the night of June 22, Ayo Dosunmu's agents and Wolves executives worked out a five-year, $112 million deal with a fifth-year player option. Bird rights, no cap room needed, and the first big number on a summer that was going to be full of them.

Three days later, on the morning of June 25, the trade broke. It took until July 10 to close, because it was a four-team deal with Charlotte, Brooklyn and Chicago in it and one of Chicago's pieces couldn't be traded until July 9, but the shape was clear from the first report. Julius Randle and his $33.3 million went to Brooklyn as a salary dump, and the rights to Joshua Jefferson, the 28th pick Minnesota had just made with a pick it got from Detroit, went with him. Naz Reid went to Charlotte. So did Minnesota's 2033 first-round pick, unprotected. So did the right to swap firsts in 2028, in 2029 (protected 6 through 30), and in 2030, on a pick San Antonio already holds a swap on. So did second-round picks in 2029, 2032 and 2033, and the rights to Matteo Spagnolo, a 2022 second-rounder. Back came LaMelo Ball, with three years and $130,746,840 left on his deal, Josh Green on a $14.68 million expiring contract, Isaiah Evans, the 33rd pick, whom Brooklyn had drafted on Minnesota's behalf, and a 2026 second.

That's the trade. Two rotation bigs, an unprotected first seven years out and swap rights on three more, for a point guard, a wing on an expiring, and a second-round rookie.

July

The rest of July was the part nobody grades but everybody feels in March. Mike Conley signed a minimum deal with Boston. Kyle Anderson signed a minimum with Toronto. Joe Ingles had already gone home to Melbourne. Julian Phillips's option was declined and he ended up in Houston. Bones Hyland came back on a one-year minimum, Jaylen Clark on three years and $10 million, Trey Lyles on a minimum with a partial guarantee. Enrique Freeman, Rocco Zikarsky and Zyon Pullin took the three two-way slots. The 59th pick, Trey Kaufman-Renn, decided he'd rather sue the NCAA for a sixth college season than sign, and Minnesota kept his rights.

And Donte DiVincenzo, who tore his Achilles in Game 4 of the Denver series, was going to miss most or all of the season. That's not a transaction, but it's the reason a lot of the wing minutes on this roster were open before anyone signed anything.

August

On Saturday, August 29, the Timberwolves had a deal they couldn't sign.

Jonathan Kuminga had agreed to come to Minnesota three days earlier. Two years, $12.4 million, a player option on the second, the full taxpayer mid-level exception to the dollar. The starting four spot was his. There was one problem, and it was arithmetic.

Add his $6,064,000 to the money already on the books and Minnesota sat $1,603,367 over the second apron, and the second apron, once you use that exception, is a hard cap. Not a tax line. A wall. He could have shaved his first-year salary to squeeze under it, but that would have cost him about $3.3 million over the two years and left the roster frozen at fourteen for the season, and there's no sign anyone asked him to. So somebody had to go, and Saturday was the last day of the summer a team can waive a player and stretch his salary across future seasons. That's why the deadline existed. Not a negotiating tactic. A calendar.

Here's what they did with the $1.6 million problem. They traded Josh Green and cash to Utah for two players: Cody Williams, the No. 10 pick in 2024, on $6 million with a team option, and John Konchar, on $6,165,000 and expiring. Then, that same afternoon, they waived Konchar and stretched him: $2,055,000 a year against the cap for three seasons, through 2028-29. Green out at $14.68 million, Williams and Konchar in at $6,015,600 and $6,165,000, Konchar's hit cut to a third, and the book lands at $210,616,954. Add Kuminga and it's $216,680,954: $5,005,046 under the hard cap, and $7,665,954 over the first apron, which means for the rest of this league year Minnesota can't take back more salary than it sends out, can't use the bi-annual exception, and can't acquire a player by sign-and-trade. One roster spot, about $5 million to fill it with, and no other tools.

It's a clever piece of business. What it actually cost, and why they took Williams back instead of dumping Green for nothing, is Part 4's question. The point, for now, is the shape of the summer. Every dollar was spoken for, the picks were spent, and the last move of the offseason was a cap-mechanics scramble to fit a $6 million forward. That's not a team keeping its powder dry. That's a team that decided.

And the forward they scrambled for had a bigger offer somewhere else. The Lakers put roughly $12 million a year over three years on the table, Chicago and Portland made their pitches, and he picked Minnesota for less money and fewer years, on purpose: a shorter deal, per ESPN's reporting, so he could control his own future. The recruiting wasn't a front-office memo. Connelly flew to Miami for a four-hour meeting. The general manager, Matt Lloyd, said afterward the team had 94 phone calls with Kuminga's agent between July 15 and the day they signed him. Ant called him all summer, and LaMelo was calling through free agency too.

What went out, what came in

In dollars for this season: $75.8 million came in across seven players and $80.8 million went out across seven. In picks: the 2033 first outright, swap rights on three more firsts, and three seconds.

What everyone said (receipts)

The market priced it first. Strip the bookmakers' margin out of the six-book median from September 9 and Minnesota is 3.16% to win the title, sixth in the league, tied in a cluster with Denver, Cleveland, Detroit and Toronto, behind Oklahoma City and San Antonio as co-favorites, then the Sixers, the Knicks and Boston. Third or fourth in the West, depending how you break the Denver tie, and ahead of the Lakers. For a team that lost two of its three rotation bigs and an unprotected first seven years out, that's not a panic price.

The grades were a different story, and they were all over the place, which tells you something about the summer on its own. ESPN gave the offseason a C+ and, in a longer preview, called the shift a big gamble while acknowledging the rationale, "particularly the team's desire to ensure Edwards' happiness." Yahoo gave it a C. Bleacher Report gave it a D+ in early July, then a B+ three weeks later after the rest of the league's moves came in, then declared in August that going all-in for Ball was a mistake Minnesota would regret. CBS gave it a B and called itself an optimist on Ball. NBC, a B. The Big Lead, an A-. The Athletic's trade grade was a D+, with a line asking whether David Kahn was wearing a Tim Connelly mask, which, if you're a true Wolves fan, you have to admit is a good line. Both of those reach me secondhand: the piece is paywalled and I'm taking the grade and the quote from Heavy's account of it. The Ringer thought the roster was now too small to contend.

Read them all and the disagreement isn't really about the players. It's about one question: is LaMelo Ball, who played 72 games last season and 105 in the three before that, a player you bet a franchise's future picks on? The people who said no gave a C. The people who said yes gave a B. Nobody with a national byline gave the whole summer a straight A and nobody gave it an F, because everybody could see both halves of it.

And two hot takes crystallized out of the noise. One: this is the best backcourt in the West, Ant finally has a point guard, and the starting five is one of the best in the league. Two: they traded a proven frontcourt and a decade of draft flexibility for an injury-prone guard and a bunch of guys who need the ball, and it was unnecessary. You've heard both. You've probably said one.

September 10

Thursday, Target Center, again: a forward on a two-year deal, in a building that had spent the last Saturday of its summer shipping out a piece of a seven-week-old trade to fit him under a wall. And the thing he wants to tell you is that the best player on the team called him every single time.

Here's the part I think everybody grading this summer glanced over. The Lakers offered him more money and more years. Chicago and Portland wanted him. He picked Minnesota, for less, on purpose, and the people who talked him into it were a president who flew to Miami, a general manager who counted 94 phone calls with his agent, and the two guards he'll be sharing the floor with. In twenty-five years of watching this team I cannot think of a young starter with a bigger offer on the table who chose Minnesota. That's the Edwards effect, and it's new. Would he have picked us without LaMelo already here? I don't know, but LaMelo was on the phone with him through free agency, and that's worth noticing.

So the summer that got graded as a gamble on LaMelo Ball didn't end the way the grades were reading it. It ended with a player choosing to be here, and with a front office that spent its last Saturday making room for him under the wall. The gamble is real. But if you're asking what changed in Minnesota this summer, start there. Connelly and Edwards have changed what it means to be asked to play basketball here, and that was true before a single game had been played.

Why we're not stopping there

Here's the thing about the market's 3.16% and the media's C+. They're both priors. The market is the best single summary of what a lot of money thinks in September, and the grades are what smart people think a week after a move, before anyone has played a game. Both are worth knowing. Neither is an answer, and neither one tells you why.

That's not what this site is for. So we spent a month on it. We rebuilt every roster in the league, priced every move Minnesota made, with and without each of the others, ran the season 200,000 times under four different ways of measuring players, and then tested the things people say decide playoff basketball to see whether any of them are actually true. Some of what we found is good news for the Wolves. Some of it isn't. And one of the biggest things we found had nothing to do with the offseason at all, and everything to do with what a defense can do to Anthony Edwards when he's the only creator on the floor.

That's Part 2.