It is time for another season of the best basketball on the planet.
Time to watch Minnesota Timberwolves superstar Anthony Edwards climb another step toward the peak of his career with the ankle weights of higher expectations, expanded duties and more formidable opposition. To see Ant’s ring-less veteran teammates Mike Conley and Rudy Gobert wield their minds as much as muscle to induce optimum team value from their performance.
The Wolves of 2025-26 are a seasoned basketball team with a continuity that reinforces competitive comfort. Ant, Naz Reid and Jaden McDaniels are about to embark on their sixth season together, and are each under contract for at least three seasons beyond this one.
After spending the summer of 2024 preparing to play for the New York Knicks only to be uprooted in a trade to the Wolves a couple days before training camp, Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo are no longer patchwork additions to the player rotation, their roles and relationships further integrated into the framework of a team they helped propel into a second straight appearance in the Western Conference Finals. Randle in particular has a new two-year contract (with a player option for a third season) and a coach in Chris Finch who put his reputation on the line proving that Randle belonged aside Ant as the dominant playmakers on the roster.
All-purpose combo guard Nickeil Alexander-Walker was the lone member of the Wolves top eight to be sacrificed due to salary constraints, and he will be missed more acutely than is now apparent. NAW was a blessing to team chemistry and consistency. He put gristle in the defense, condiments in the offense, and soulfulness in the locker room. He was honest, vulnerable and compassionate with his emotions and relentless with his energy. He never missed a game during his two-plus seasons with the Wolves, and the blossoming of his career was appropriately rewarded with a $60 million, 4-year contract (his option on the final season) in Atlanta.
Related: Q&A: Timberwolves’ Coach Chris Finch on team’s young depth – know your role, keep it simple
NAW’s departure has loosened up last season’s eight-player rotation, a gambit that even Finch conceded was a necessary evil for the sake of fast-forwarding the acclimation of Randle and DiVincenzo. But the preseason performance of TJ Shannon has staked a claim on the eighth slot so thoroughly that young players of proven value (Jaylen Clark) and enormous potential (Rob Dillingham and Joan Beringer) are still likely to scrap for time via situational matchups. Preseason is often an unreliable barometer, but Shannon’s defense and playmaking were organic enough to feel like genuinely latent parts of his skill set rather than a flukey small sample size against opponents still in training camp.
Divining the right rotations, minutes and situations for the four players just mentioned as part of the Wolves “young core” — Shannon, Clark, Dillingham and Beringer — was one of the goals for preseason set forth by Finch and President of Basketball Operations Tim Connelly. The others were improving team defense when Gobert wasn’t on the floor, elevating the team’s inclination and efficiency to push the pace and score in transition, and fostering the “intangibles” of sustained commitment and unselfish team play that will be crucial if they have any hope of getting beyond (or even back to) the conference finals and seriously competing for a championship.
All of this is complicated by a lopsided talent level among teams in the Western Conference as opposed to squads in the East. Every season brings surprises pro and con, and the caprice of injuries and less tangible maladies can (and usually does) waylay at least a few of the 30 teams each year. But as of now, I’ve got ten or eleven teams in the West that would stand a good chance of avoiding the play-in by finishing among the top six if any one of them were in the Eastern Conference. When you mix that much quantity with quality, two or three more wins over 82 games could dramatically alter a team’s place in the standings.
In other words, there is very little margin for error, especially for a team like the Wolves, who have generated an unforgiving level of expectation — from the coaches, players and fan base alike — after two successive trips to the conference finals.
That pressure is a double-edged sword that shouldn’t be overlooked as an “X factor” in how the 2025-26 season evolves.
Here are some of the other things that have piqued my curiosity and molded my perspective in preparation for another season of Wolves basketball.
The maturation of Edwards
This overwhelms all the other factors. Unless Ant makes the hardest leap of all — going from a top-ten player to one of the two or three best in the league — the Wolves will not take their own difficult step of advancing to the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history.
The ways and means by which this happens has never been so promising or so specific. Ant turned 24 in August, a year or two away from the typical prime seasons of even athletic guards, who tend to ascend earlier than big men. But one of the reasons Connelly said he made the blockbuster trade for Gobert three years ago was to provide enough surrounding skills to get Ant plenty of experience in the crucible of the playoffs at an impressionable age. That bet has paid off, as precious few star athletes have logged 42 postseason games before turning 24.
Furthermore, the silver lining of getting whupped four games to one in two successive conference finals has clarified where the Wolves fail at an elite level — and what Ant can do about it.
During the preseason, his coaches and teammates this year are challenging him to enhance his focus, tighten up places where his game and/or his mindset is flawed, and at the same time accept a more complementary role in certain situations.
It begins with consistency. Everyone knows Ant rises to the occasion when the stakes are high — and too often becomes inattentive when optimal engagement doesn’t seem vital. A Tuesday night game in mid-January against an inferior opponent, or an afternoon contest on the weekend, frequently brings out the indifference in his performance.
More specifically, Ant has always leveled up to defend star playmakers, but lapses against lesser assignments. His off-ball defense can be prone to wavering concentration or infidelity to schemes and rotations. On offense, he too often surveys before he attacks after receiving the ball, allowing opponents to organize and stack their coverages against him. There is also a little too much freelancing when he has the ball, especially in crunch time.
The message this preseason was that these bad habits come with indirect costs as well as more tangible damage. It puts a small but meaningful drag on the momentum of teamwork, and thus ongoing confidence and capability. It matters most deep into the playoffs, when the opponent is more likely to be that has fostered synergy throughout the season.
Put simply, Ant is being challenged to be at his best more often, to be a dogged role player as well as a star; to disrupt the playmaking of more ordinary foes with a similar vigor deployed in higher leverage situations, and to seal off the weakside cuts and make crisp rotations according to scheme. On offense, he needs to quicken the pace and seize the openings and options that pressure generates, getting off the ball when necessary, and moving without the ball when he does.
In crunchtime, he needs to hone a couple of go-to moves in places that help his teammates space the floor, give him room to get a shot off even when covered, but also provide ways to pass or draw fouls in the flow. He also needs to recognize and accept that there will be times when the crunchtime shots will arise out of post-up plays for Randle in the low block, or pick-and-roll action between Conley and Gobert.
None of these requests are inappropriate and if Ant can adhere to most of them much of the time it will almost certainly improve the team at both ends of the court.
But it is also a tall order that needs to be put in perspective.
The glory of Ant is much more than a bundle of stupendous skills. Finch himself noted in our annual preseason conversation last month that Ant plays with a joy and confidence that is contagious, that provides hope and desire to teammates, who want to be part of the ride.
Related: Q&A: Timberwolves’ Chris Finch on the joys — and challenges — of coaching Anthony Edwards
Ant’s charisma contains multiple tablespoons of glee, the pure, childish kind that everyone wants to sip. His love of the game, his support for his teammates, his desire to be coached, are bound up in that precious personality trait, which strengthens his character.
How much can Ant “mature” before some of that glee inevitably evaporates? Nobody knows, probably including Ant. But it is a subtheme running within the largest x factor of the 2025-26 season.
Is there really another level of improvement under the current plan?
When you reach the conference finals twice in a row, you sweat the details, caulk the seams, lean into the continuity that has generated such success, and be wary and judicious about any significant tweaks.
During the preseason, the Wolves indeed attempted to push the pace and emphasize transition offense, with mixed results. They also focused on reducing turnovers that lead to transition points in the other direction and put even more pressure on their defense, whether or not Gobert is on the court.
But Chris Finch is realistic about the virtues and vices of his team. He acknowledges that, especially among the starters, it is not the ideal personnel to race up and down the court. And when I asked him directly, before the preseason game in Chicago last week, if the reliance on isolation plays involving Ant and Randle, along with the stolid presence of Gobert in the half-court offense, naturally created an atmosphere for a high level of turnovers, he agreed that it did.
Last season, Conley, Randle and Ant led the team in assists. On Media Day, Finch said that trio will likely repeat that status this season. Conley has always had one of the best assist-to-turnover ratios in the NBA, but the arrival of Randle and prominence of Ant necessarily reduce that role. Meanwhile, under certain circumstances, Gobert can be a potent weapon on offense (on screens, rolls and putbacks) but the ways he can score remain limited.
The status quo isn’t shabby, especially after Randle’s role was more clearly defined and refined after the All Star break. The Wolves scored more than 120 points per 100 possessions after the break, third-best in the NBA, while winning 18 of 26 games.
But it is reasonable to ask if a starting five of Ant, Randle, Gobert, Conley and Jaden McDaniels can provide enough punch to overcome its relative lack of points in transition and its high turnover frequency; enough to be among the final teams left in the brutally competitive West.
The pros and cons of a stable rotation
In the four full seasons Finch has been head coach, the Wolves have made the playoffs and had unusual locker room harmony, with buy-ins up and down the roster.
Given that when he arrived the Wolves had the worst winning percentage of all the squads in the major teams sports, the last two seasons have been especially impressive. Over that span, the Wolves have been 105-59 in the regular season and 18-13 in the playoffs. And in each of those seasons Finch and his staff were preoccupied with the fallout from a blockbuster roster shuffle — the Gobert deal with Utah and the trade of Karl-Anthony Towns to New York. In 2023-24, Finch molded a frontcourt of Gobert and KAT (whose injury the previous season delayed their familiarity after Gobert was acquired) into the NBA’s premiere defense. Last season, he plugged in DiVincenzo and rejuvenated Randle by starting him every game he was available, without ruffling Naz Reid, the good soldier who was rewarded with a long-term deal this summer.
The point is, Finch’s instincts on his use of personnel have proven to be top-notch. Along the way, he flirts with potential shifts in the status quo — more offensive usage from McDaniels and the deployment of Naz at the small forward as part of a super-sized frontcourt have been articulated in my preseason interview with him two years running. During Summer League in July, he also vowed to get more minutes for the young core by expanding his rotation.
But when the games count after preseason ceases, Finch has stuck with his tried-and-true. There have been brief exceptions — the insertion of DiVincenzo at point guard over Conley for a stint late last fall, and the occasional changes in the crunch-time lineup in certain situations at different points last season. But for the most part, the Wolves under Finch develop their bench personnel on the side and wait for injuries to allow them meaningful playing time.
This drives some elements of the fan base crazy — especially stans of Dillingham, the lottery pick who plays the key point guard position now occupied by Conley, a greybeard on the last year of his contract, yet still gets scant minutes.
For most of last season, I ripped Finch for continuing to start Randle over Naz despite what seemed like a poor fit and a problematic contract situation. But Finch’s faith in Randle hit the jackpot down the stretch and in the first two playoff series. And Connelly followed up by signing both Naz and Randle to hefty contracts in the offseason.
This year’s itch is how the Wolves can and should tap into the versatility of McDaniels. When both Randle and Gobert went down last winter, McDaniels thrived in a small-ball frontcourt with Naz, proving himself an above-average rebounder and rim protector — big man duties — and easily toggling back and forth with Naz at power forward and center.
The Wolves didn’t win many games in that stretch, but the value of McDaniels not only as a force in the paint, but as a playmaker and scorer (as Finch has long suspected) was on display.
Flash forward to the preseason. Partly in an attempt to get Ant more engaged on defense, McDaniels has rarely been deployed as the wing-stopper, a role he parlayed into a spot on the All-NBA Defensive Team two seasons ago. There have also been times when plays have been run for Jaden this preseason.
But there is no denying the fact that the current starting lineup leaves little room for McDaniels to flex on offense. Three of his teammates are ball-dominant and the other has a limited range of skills and positioning on the court. McDaniels’ place in the offense would best be filled by a capable catch-and-shoot long-range gunner.
That’s not McDaniels. But it could be Naz.
Swapping Naz in for McDaniels would give Finch both of his preseason flirtations — a supersized frontcourt and more playmaking opportunities for McDaniels with the second unit. It would require Ant to be the wing-stopper, a major shift and risking an Ant overload, but it would ratify the message of him prioritizing his defense.
When talking about the difficulty of extending his rotation, Finch customarily says that he has three talented bigs (Randle, Gobert and Naz) who eat up 96 minutes among them, leaving six other players in a 9-man rotation vying to fill the other three positions. Flipping the roles of Naz and McDaniels would mean a backup frontcourt of McDaniels and Randle or McDaniels and Naz, with Shannon as the small forward.
What I’ve just outlined is highly unlikely to occur. The greater point of it is that Connelly has done a remarkable job of creating a formidable second timeline, led by Ant, Naz and McDaniels, with Shannon, Clark, Dillingham and Beringer in tow, that could make the Wolves a legitimate contender for the next five years or more. But the temptations of developing that timeline collide with the pressure to maximize winning now, to finish the job after two years on the brink of something really special.
Longtime Wolves fans should re-read that preceding paragraph and let it sink in how remarkably different it is from the history of the franchise that doesn’t involve Kevin Garnett.
Those who prefer a “ring or bust” mentality have a drama to gnaw on for the next six months (barring injury or some other catastrophe). Those who love pro hoops, whether the Wolves are good at it or not, can look forward to another double dip of quality play most nights, as the barrel of crabs that is the Western Conference starts to scrabble — for the league, tonight; for the Wolves, Wednesday night in Portland.
Can’t wait.
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