Timberwolves: the offseason so far
the record
The desk keeps a day-by-day record of everything that happens to the Minnesota Timberwolves: results with the players who decided them, injury changes, roster moves, reports, milestones and the schedule ahead. The story of the offseason is written from that record every week; the timeline below is the record itself, each line linked to the page that proves it.
The projection
all 30 teams →The season depends most on Donte DiVincenzo (12.9 wins without him), LaMelo Ball (9.4 wins without him), Rudy Gobert (7.3 wins without him), Bones Hyland (2.0 wins without him) and Anthony Edwards (0.7 wins without him): on/off from 2025-26, details under Injuries. Computed Thu, Sep 10; the method is on the methods page.
Day by day
1 days on the recordThe franchise today
Updated 2026-09-09Now
Chris Finch enters his sixth full season as head coach of a Timberwolves team built around Anthony Edwards, the No. 1 pick in 2020 who averaged 28.8 points, 5.0 rebounds and 3.7 assists last season and now earns $48.9 million. Jaden McDaniels, drafted the same year, and Rudy Gobert, acquired from Utah in 2022, anchor a defense that finished 8th in the league last season, while the offense ranked 13th, part of a 49-33 season with a +3.1 net rating, 10th in the NBA, at a pace of 101.5. Minnesota beat Denver in six games in the first round before falling to San Antonio in the conference semifinals. Donte DiVincenzo, who arrived in the 2024 trade that sent Karl-Anthony Towns to New York for Julius Randle, remains in the backcourt, joined now by Ayo Dosunmu, Cody Williams and Jonathan Kuminga. The roster changed again on July 10, 2026, when Minnesota landed LaMelo Ball and Josh Green in a four-team trade that sent Randle to Brooklyn and moved Naz Reid and Mouhamadou Gueye to Charlotte. Ball, who averaged 20.1 points and 7.1 assists, now earns $40.8 million. Payroll sits at $215.3 million across 15 contracts, above the $209.0 million first apron and pressing toward the $221.7 million second apron, with the cap at $165.0 million and the tax line at $200.4 million. Minnesota's own first-round picks through 2030 are mostly gone, left with swaps and protections.
Identity and rivalries
The Timberwolves play through Gobert's rim protection and Edwards' shot creation, a defense-first identity that carried them to consecutive conference semifinal runs and a trip to the 2024 conference finals, their first in 20 years. Edwards has drawn comparisons to a young Michael Jordan for the way he has taken over playoff games, and the franchise builds its year around his ceiling. Denver is the rivalry that defines the current era: the Nuggets eliminated Minnesota in the first round in 2023, needed seven games to survive them in the 2024 semifinals, and were the team Minnesota beat in six games in last season's first round. Every meeting still carries that weight. San Antonio, which ended Minnesota's season in the semifinals last spring, is the newer measuring stick.
Home, owners and numbers
The Timberwolves play at Target Center in downtown Minneapolis. Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez control the franchise after winning a 2025 arbitration case against longtime owner Glen Taylor, who chose not to appeal on April 2, 2025, clearing a sale first agreed to in 2021; Michael Bloomberg joined their ownership group on June 6, 2024. Kevin Garnett is the name most tied to the building and the franchise, the No. 21 he wore through his 2015 return and 2016 retirement still synonymous with the team, alongside Flip Saunders, who coached and ran the franchise across two stints before his death in 2015 at age 60.
What they are chasing
Minnesota is chasing a way back to the conference finals it reached in 2024, after back-to-back exits in the West finals to Oklahoma City and then the semifinals to San Antonio last season. The trade that brought in LaMelo Ball and Josh Green also cost the team Naz Reid's frontcourt depth, and on September 8, 2026, Minnesota was reported to have checked in on free agent big man Sasha Vezenkov, an open question fans are still arguing over. With payroll at $215.3 million and already above the $209.0 million first apron, another is whether the Timberwolves can add pieces without crossing the $221.7 million second apron, and whether the new Ball-Edwards backcourt fits with Gobert and McDaniels well enough to get past where the old core stalled.
The Minnesota Timberwolves joined the NBA as an expansion team granted on April 22, 1987, alongside the Orlando Magic, Charlotte Hornets, and Miami Heat, with original owners Harvey Ratner and Marv Wolfenson. City councils across Minnesota picked the name "Timberwolves" over "Polars" by nearly 2-1, made official January 23, 1987. The team debuted November 3, 1989, losing to the Seattle SuperSonics 106-94, played its first season at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, and moved into Target Center in 1990, drawing a then-record crowd of 49,551 for a home finale against Denver. Early years were rough: a league-worst 15-67 under Jimmy Rodgers in 1991-92, followed by seasons of 19-63 and 20-62 under GM Jack McCloskey, whose draft picks included Christian Laettner and Isaiah Rider. A near-move to New Orleans in 1994 was stopped when Edward Villaume raised $88.5 million and recruited Glen Taylor as lead investor to keep the team in Minnesota; Kevin McHale became general manager.
The 1995 draft of Kevin Garnett, under new coach Flip Saunders, changed the franchise. Garnett and Stephon Marbury, acquired in a 1996 trade for the rights that sent Ray Allen to Milwaukee, powered eight straight playoff berths from 1997 to 2004. Garnett made the All-Star team repeatedly, averaging as high as 23.0 points and 13.4 rebounds in 2002-03, when he finished second in MVP voting. The Wolves lost in the first round seven straight years, including a six-game defeat to the three-time champion Lakers in 2003, before general manager Kevin McHale and VP Rob Babcock built a roster around Sam Cassell, Latrell Sprewell, and Ervin Johnson for 2003-04. That team went 58-24, the top seed in the West, won the franchise's first division championship, and reached the Western Conference Finals, with Garnett named NBA MVP and First Team All-NBA.
The franchise also carries a memorial: guard Malik Sealy was killed by a drunk driver in the summer of 2000, and his number 2 remains the only number the Timberwolves have retired.
After 2004, the team missed the playoffs starting in 2005 and traded Garnett to the Boston Celtics in 2007. Garnett returned in a February 2015 trade, finishing his career in Minnesota before retiring in the 2016 offseason. The playoff drought that followed his departure lasted 14 years, ending in 2018. The current era began with the number one overall pick of Anthony Edwards in 2020 and the 2021 hiring of head coach Chris Finch, a pairing that has produced four straight playoff appearances and two consecutive trips to the Western Conference Finals.
Ownership changed hands again in 2025, when Glen Taylor completed the sale of the Timberwolves to Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore, an agreement dating to 2021, unanimously approved by the NBA Board of Governors in June 2025 at a purchase price of $1.5 billion.