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The Minnesota Timberwolves concluded their 2025-26 season with the unfortunate but clarifying benefit of knowing they weren’t good enough – physically, emotionally, fundamentally – to genuinely compete for a championship.
Their season was bracketed by a pair of mistakes from head coach Chris Finch borne of trying to thread a needle that had its eye closed. Bottom line, the Wolves spent six months lackadaisically heading to a promised land that always had its fingers crossed.
After the San Antonio Spurs pummeled the Wolves by at least 29 points for the third time in six games to win their second-round series four games to two Friday night, Finch owned up to the obvious gaffe of switching coverages so that Julius Randle would draw the primary assignment of guarding Victor Wembanyama, providing Rudy Gobert with the freedom to float and roam on-and-off double-teaming Wemby by ostensibly matching up with rugged Spurs guard Stephen Castle.
Wemby was indeed limited by the strategy, scoring just four points with one rebound, zero assists and two turnovers in his first quarter stint. But Castle, who won a championship in college at UConn and was named the NBA’s Rookie of the Year last season, understood he was being challenged to make open three-pointers, and calmly splashed three, along with a driving dunk and a layup plus the foul, in the game’s first eight minutes. It cued up the 139-109 rout.
Finch acknowledged the gamble in the gambit and rued that a byproduct seemed to be that “we lost some of our aggression – we needed to come out more aggressive. That’s on me.”
The next morning, Finch kicked off a series of exit interviews by candidly responding to questions for 19 minutes. He volunteered that an “original sin was created” when he abruptly changed the starting lineup right before the season opener, installing Donte “Ragu” DiVincenzo in the backcourt beside Anthony Edwards and bringing 19-year veteran Mike Conley off the bench.
“Putting Ant to the point guard spot on the eve of the season, it certainly helped with Donte but it kind of hurt putting everybody in the best position there, Ant included. It kind of threw off the rhythm and the style in which we had to play. And that ate into the continuity, so you did have conflicting goals here.
“It was a really abrupt decision. And it was something that I made fairly unilaterally,” Finch continued. “I did talk to Ant and Mike and all the key stakeholders and they were all on board. It was also an effort to try and preserve Mike. But it hurt Mike’s effort to find any consistency throughout the season. And of course we had the mission of trying to play some of the younger guys, too. All that stuff didn’t seem to be compatible in real time. And that kind of set us back a little bit.
“It set everybody back. Mike wasn’t able to find any consistency and the young guys were probably put in a position where too much was asked of them in that role. I went with my gut. The primary thing was, we needed a really good Donte. And we got that. But it did come at a cost to things we were trying to navigate throughout the season.”
A procession of players then came to the podium – most importantly the two second-timeline regulars Naz Reid and Jaden McDaniels, who have been alongside Ant his entire career – firmly endorsing the idea of a more classic point guard organizing the offense.
But the (absent) elephant in the room was Julius Randle, the lone member of the Wolves’ top 10 players in minutes per game who didn’t speak to the media on the night of the elimination loss to San Antonio or the morning after.
Yes, replacing Conley with Ragu diminished the role of a true floor general on the court this season. But Conley’s role had already been significantly truncated when Randle, along with Ragu, were added to the roster in a trade for Karl-Anthony Towns right before training camp last season. When Finch put Randle in the starting lineup with Ant, it gave the Wolves two ball-dominant playmakers and caused Conley to play as much off the ball, as a catch-and-shoot threat from outside, as he did running the half-court offense. The 2025-26 season was the second year in a row where Conley’s minutes, usage and assists took a significant step down.
Flash forward to Friday night’s elimination game, unquestionably the nadir of Randle’s tenure with the Wolves.
Yes, he did a decent job guarding Wemby, grabbed seven rebounds, didn’t turn the ball over once and got the Wolves on the scoreboard dribbling between Castle and Wemby for an emphatic slam-dunk less than two minutes into the game.
But he missed his other seven shots, splitting a pair of free throws late in the first quarter to finish with three points. His lone assist was a pass to McDaniels in the corner that McDaniels finished by driving between two defenders and finishing a heavily contested shot on the other wide of the basket.
During Randle’s 23:42 on the court last Friday night, the Wolves were -34, which means they were +4 in the 24:18 he sat in a blowout loss.
Consequently, the Wolves would seem to have a pair of interlocking priorities if they are going to try and remedy their fundamental flaws. One is further developing or bringing in a Conley-like point guard, who could apportion shot opportunities to players other than Ant while ensuring Ant still eclipses 30 percent usage by getting the majority of his buckets and dimes without the energy drain of initiating the offense.
The other is moving on from Randle, who is a poor fit in at least two ways. He is a second ball-dominant playmaker alongside Ant, and thus makes it difficult for a more classic point guard to have any meaningful influence over the command and flow of the offense. And on a team that already has a frontcourt player, Rudy Gobert, with nonexistent range outside the paint, Randle’s inaccuracy from long-range (32.9% on three-pointers during his two seasons with the Wolves), clogs spacing.
I’ll also toss in a pet peeve: Like Ant, Randle can be a near-elite defender when he wants to be. But he is more often a matador than a disrupter at that end of the court, which is exactly the sort of behavior that corrodes a team’s resilience and quality control over the course of a long season.
Which brings us back to Finch. He has been the most successful coach in franchise history because he trusts the players enough to give them the freedom to create. But this season felt like an abuse of that trust. When it came to dedicating themselves to developing and then internalizing the habits that foster a championship caliber mindset; one that complements and synergizes the collective talent, the player talked a good game, then frequently went out and demonstrated they were lying about it. It is noteworthy that after the Game One loss to Denver in the first round, Finch called it out by saying exactly that, their palpable reaction was more focus, activity and resilience.
More of this. And if the dynamic stays the same, either Finch or the players most responsible for the dysfunction need to go.
The person who makes all these suggestions happen – or, more accurately, makes his own suggestions for improvement happen – is president of basketball operations Tim Connelly, who will be conducting his own press conference midday on Tuesday. But he’ll offer more clues than answers about what happens during the offseason, only slightly honing what we speculate and guesstimate.
The two birds I’d like taken down with one stone is some kind of transaction that brings in a point guard in exchange for Julius Randle. He has an oblong skill set that is not an easy fit, as the Wolves have learned, so it is unclear what the market will bring for him, assuming Connelly, Finch and the front office want that change.
Rudy Gobert, who had a fantastic series against Nikola Jokic in the first round and was often played off the court versus the Spurs (hence the Castle-matchup gambit), would likely have more value on the trade market, but would leave a more egregious void in the team’s identity and makeup. Still, you usually have to give value to get value, and the Wolves draft capital is scarce (ironically due to the acquisition of Gobert).
In-house candidates for the point guard slot probably begin with Ayo Dosunmu, who openly campaigned for it during his postgame interview Friday night. But Ayo also made it clear that he is looking forward to exercising his status as an unrestricted free agent and teams with more salary cap flexibility than Minnesota could make retaining Ayo an agonizing, and perhaps impractical process. DiVincenzo, who had none other than Mike Conley praising the improvement of his playmaking beside Ant this season, will sadly not be a factor as he spends the last year of his contract rehabilitating from the Achilles tendon he tore in the Denver series. Bones Hyland had a disappointing postseason. This year’s draft cupboard – the 28th pick in the first round, the 59th pick in the second round – would require serendipity to provide meaningful assistance in the near future.
Regular readers know I dislike fantasizing about trades – the people who have the power to make it happen wisely keep their cards close and the rest of us, from agents down to clickbait websites, are furiously spinning their mostly ignorant point of view. But I will say a player that has a workable salary, a dinged up reputation and some admirable seasons under his belt is Dejounte Murray in New Orleans. What would it take to get him? My uninformed opinion on that is next to useless.
We are going to hear a lot of chatter about Giannis Antetokounmpo. Credible sources say Connelly was engaged in talks with Milwaukee over Giannis at the trade deadline last winter, and coupled with his pursuit of Kevin Durant during the offseason last summer – not to mention his trades to get Gobert and to depart from KAT – he’ll kick the tires on any quality vehicle on the lot.
Once again, regular readers are well aware of my position on Giannis. Acquiring him would greatly deplete roster depth in exchange for the top-heavy talent of an Ant-Giannis duo, and that type of maneuver has not gone well for “super-team” aficionados lately – you have to go back to LeBron and Anthony Davis winning a chip in the Covid bubble six years ago for a genuine success story. Since then, teams with a depth of homegrown talent, brimming with athletic wings who can space and pace and switch on defense, are the ones playing for the hardware.
I’d rather put my faith in Ant, Naz and Jaden McDaniels taking yet another step in their seventh season together. They are all nearing what should be the prime of their careers and it is time for Naz and McDaniels in particular to be challenged with more load-bearing responsibilities – and accountabilities if they can’t handle it.
As Finch pointed out in his exit interview Saturday, Ayo and TJ Shannon are prototype wings in the modern NBA – players aggressive in their movement and decision-making, who can get to their preferred spots on the court and do damage with the drive, pass, or pull-up jumper. If and when Connelly decides to leverage Randle and/or Gobert in a trade, that’s more depth to throw against the class of the league, OKC and San Antonio.
Finally, a couple of friendly notes. There have been some annoying traits about this season’s Wolves, but there has also been a lot of exciting, at-times beautiful, high-quality basketball. The Timberwolves just finished splitting a dozen games against a 54-win opponent and then a 62-win opponent, despite having their most effective role player, Ragu, go down with an injury. Ant came back from his own significant injuries much faster than the doctors predicted, and Ayo also forged his way through.
The Wolves carved the heart out of Denver, winning four games in four very distinctive ways, with grit and camaraderie. And they had San Antonio and their generational star Victor Wembanyama provide them with a lesson, much as the OKC Thunder did a year ago, about what happens to a team that cheats on its own intentions.
I enjoyed every moment of it and want to thank MinnPost and all of my readers, be they occasional or loyal, for providing me the forum to revel and spout about this glorious game of hoops.
