Could Tim Connelly's Latest Timberwolves Pivot Be His Best Yet?

When Tim Connelly took over as President of Basketball Operations in May of 2022, the Timberwolves had a solid core in place. The Wolves had just won 46 games and pushed the up-and-coming Memphis Grizzlies to six games as the No. 6 seed in the Western Conference.

Anthony Edwards had completed his second season, averaging 21.3 points per game alongside three-time All-Star and two-time All-NBA Third Team big man Karl-Anthony Towns. Chris Finch had just completed his first season on the bench as head coach.

In other words, the Wolves were ascending, and Connelly could have sat back and enjoyed what surely would have been another above-.500 season and a second consecutive playoff berth -- which would have been the first time the Wolves would have managed to make the playoffs in two straight years since 2002-03 and 2003-04.

Instead, Connelly chose to rock the boat, and do so quickly. As it turned out, he went on to rock the boat several times over the ensuing four years, and the Wolves have still been a playoff team every single season with the arrow continuing to point upwards heading into 2026-27.

It's been a remarkable four-year run, with enough pivots to make a certain 90's/early 2000's sitcom proud. Let's dive into the big decisions Connelly has made along the way.

The Rudy Gobert trade first raised the Wolves' floor

Connelly had only been on the job for about six weeks when he pulled the trigger on a massive blockbuster, shipping four first-round draft picks, one first-round pick swap, the newly-drafted Walker Kessler, and four players to the Utah Jazz in exchange for three-time All-Star and three-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert.

The trade was almost universally panned due to the acquisition cost. There were some concerns regarding the ultra-large frontcourt pairing of Towns and Gobert, but the idea of not only giving up four picks but a swap and the guy you'd just selected in the first round seemed crazy.

In a vacuum, did Connelly overpay? Sure. But the acquisition cost wasn't in a vacuum. It was within the context of immediately raising the Wolves' floor and ensuring that Anthony Edwards was in the playoffs every single year.

Connelly looked at the 46-win team from 2021-22 and saw smoke and mirrors. The defense finished No. 13 in the NBA, but was No. 29 in both defensive rebound rate and opponent free throw rate. They also allowed opponents to shoot at a 53.8% effective field goal percentage, which was 17th in the league.

Ultimately, this was a defense that was in the bottom half of the league in three of the vital Four Factors and was buoyed by their over-performance in forcing turnovers, an area in which the Wolves were second-best in the league.

The offense was solid, leaning on a fantastic season from Towns, an emergent all-around scoring season from Edwards, decent volume-scoring from D'Angelo Russell, and strong shooting from Malik Beasley and Taurean Prince. The 2021-22 Wolves ran a ton, too, finishing No. 1 in pace as they relied on the defense to force turnovers and give the offense more bites at the proverbial apple.

Said another way: Finch and the coaching staff had leveraged their personnel to create high-variance defense through a scheme that required frequent blitzing, a lot of gambling on the perimeter, and a frenetic pace of play—all keyed by the likes of Jarred Vanderbilt and Patrick Beverley. When it worked, the defense was effective and the offense benefited. When it didn't—mostly against well-coached and/or teams chock-full of veterans—the Wolves struggled.

Connelly knew it wasn't sustainable. He also knew that, at least long-term, Edwards and Towns each needed a reliable veteran to introduce them to consistent, high-level winning. And, more tangibly, a floor-raiser. Enter Gobert, at the expense of future flexibility—but without much damage to the current roster.

Veterans Russell and Prince remained on the squad, and Connelly added Kyle Anderson and Austin Rivers via free agency. He knew that Gobert was a walking top-10 defense, and while the offense may take a step back in the short-term, it was always going to be reliant on Towns, along with the development of Edwards and Jaden McDaniels.

Wolves hit another level with Gobert and Conley additions

Russell had been acquired by the previous regime as a pick-and-roll partner with his buddy Towns, and while D-Lo is a talented offensive player, the decision-making and defensive consistency have always left something to be desired. Connelly knew that he wasn't the answer as the straw to stir the Edwards/Towns drink, and he jettisoned Russell at the 2023 All-Star break.

Russell went to the Los Angeles Lakers in a three-team deal, with Utah sending Mike Conley and Nickeil Alexander-Walker to the Wolves along with two second-round draft picks. Value-wise, this was Connelly's master stroke in Minnesota.

Conley and Gobert's pick-and-roll familiarity from three years spent together in Utah proved immediately helpful to an offense that had been stuck in mud all season. They still finished as a bottom-third unit, but stabilized down the stretch as the Wolves navigated their way into the play-in and ultimately, the No. 8 seed as a 42-win regular-season team.

But the bigger impact was on the following year's team, as a full season of Conley and the revelation of Alexander-Walker as a rotation-caliber guard boosted the Wolves to 56 wins and the No. 3 seed in the West.

Conley's presence only accelerated Edwards's offensive growth, and the overall roster depth had improved tremendously from the previous season. Plus, Gobert was healthier (he had spent the offseason of the trade playing in Eurobasket and was cleary not close to 100% in his first season in Minnesota) and more comfortable playing in the Twin Cities.

The Wolves made it all the way to the Western Conference Finals, sweeping Phoenix and upsetting Denver along the away. The second apron loomed, however, and that necessitated yet another offseason blockbuster from Connelly.

No beats skipped following the Karl-Anthony Towns trade

With the Timberwolves butting up against the second apron and Towns' super-max extension set to kick in, the Wolves shipped the star big man to the New York Knicks in a two-for-one that brought back former All-Star Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo.

It was a move that came on the eve of training camp in September of 2024, and while a KAT trade was expected eventually due to the realities of the second apron, it was a mild surprise that it happened when it did.

Despite the roster upheaval immediately before the season, Finch, Edwards, and Gobert guided the Wolves to a second consecutive Western Conference Finals berth. Randle was far from a seamless fit, but his game elevated at just the right time as the bruising forward exploited a size and physicality advantage against a haphazard Lakers team in the first round and a Steph Curry-less Warriors squad in the conference semifinals.

But Randle was inconsistent on both ends of the floor, and the issues were magnified throughout the course of the 2025-26 season when there was an overall "moodiness" surrounding the locker room.

Ultimately, a team that had taken a step back from 56 wins in 2023-24 to 49 wins in 2024-25 was expected to bounce back and land north of the 50-win watermark. With another year to gel and the likes of Edwards and McDaniels to continue elevating their games, it was a fair assumption, but it simply didn't happen.

In a basketball-only vacuum, would the Wolves have wanted to trade Towns? No, of course not. He was easily the best player in the deal, but the realities of the cap situation necessitated it. And blaming the Gobert trade isn't overly productive, either; if the Gobert trade doesn't happen, would the Wolves have even sniffed 56 wins and the conference finals in the first place?

Enter Connelly's most recent pivot.

Pushing all the chips in for LaMelo Ball

If the Gobert trade was the ultimate floor-raiser, consider the Ball deal its equivalent, albeit with much greater variance.

Again, Gobert is a walking top-10 defense, having presided over top-third unit in an incredible 10 of his last 11 seasons between Utah and Minnesota. Ball has only played in 70 or more games twice in his still-young career, but in both 2021-22 and 2024-25, the Charlotte Hornets had top-10 offensive units.

Last season, the Hornets were the best offense in the league from January 1 through the end of the regular season, and Ball was the driver—so much so that the enigmatic guard received votes for All-NBA Third Team. If he's on the floor, he's very likely to be a similar level of floor-raiser on offense as Gobert is for the defense.

The calculation for Connelly and the Wolves is clear: if Ball equals a top-10 offense, Gobert equals a top-10 defense, and Edwards is a top-six player, then this will be one of the best four or five teams in the league given relative health.

Clearly, the depth has taken a hit, as the Wolves lost Randle, Naz Reid, and Conley and brought in no new depth that played for an NBA team last year (rookie Isaiah Evans and Trey Lyles, who played in Europe last year, are the only likely rotation additions), and it's still unclear how Connelly and Finch plan to solve the power forward-shaped hole on the roster.

But through it all, here's the track record of the Finch/Ant Wolves, with all but the 2021-22 season including Connelly in charge of the front office:

	Reg. Season Record	Playoff Finish
2021-22	46-36	Rd. 1 as No. 6 seed
2022-23	42-40	Rd. 1 as No. 8 seed
2023-24	56-26	WCF as No. 3 seed
2024-25	49-33	WCF as No. 6 seed
2025-26	49-33	Rd. 2 as No. 6 seed

Yes, two straight sub-50-win seasons and only earning home court advantage in the first round once isn't ideal, but a regular-season winning percentage of .590 since fall of 2021is nothing to sneeze at—especially when given the context of franchise history.

While missteps can be found along the way, it's hard to argue with the overall results. The Ball acquisition is only a gamble insofar as there isn't another pivot short of trading one of the key members of the core; the draft pick cabinet is entirely bare.

But if Ball remains healthy, there's no reason to think that this year's version of the Wolves won't get back north of 50 wins and be in the thick of the home-court advantage race in the West.

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