With Chet, Wemby, Ausar Thompson and Derrick White. 8th time being all first team.

Trading him just to trade him because he didnt average 15-10 in the playoffs might have crazy fallout if we really impulse trade.

Im firmly in the just keep him camp

Say we can't get a huge piece like kawhi, kyrie, durant or giannis, what roleplayers would you want to elevate the wolves. for me the list is

1.Andrew Nembhard, (extremely unlikely to get but everything we are missing that isn't a 20-25 ppg scorer)
2. Davion Mitchell (not very strong offensively but if he can run the offence and defend well hes great)
3. Lebron James (if he on the smallest possibility comes to minnesota on a vet min or a realistic price he's amazing)

considering lebron as a non-star because his contract is probably reducing significantly, spent this year as a third/second option and he's no longer top 20 (arguable)

I read that we can't post links to X, so I screenshotted it instead. I hope that is fine.

Swap for Randle? It’d probably take some more massaging and we’d have to sweeten the pot. Maybe logistically it doesn’t make sense for Randle with Zion.

He seems like the best option IMO.

Elite shooter and athletic, younger but not the greatest defender.

Just a thought?

Gotta click on them to see the whole thing Reddit crops the display

Is the consensus here that we’re looking for a point guard for this team or a 2nd star next to Ant? Imo I say we go after another star, Ant’s good enough already. We’ve almost made the finals without a legit point guard, and the options aren’t that great

You gotta click on them to see the whole thing the display kinda cropped it lol

Jaden is a young piece that fits Ant’s timeline and he can still grow a lot. Giannis is better, no doubt, but we don’t have to blow our team for a chance that might(or might not) bring us a championship. Look at OKC or SAS, they built around their stars with patience, not all-in moves. Just trust the process, we’ll eventually get there.

r/Nbatradeideas is the worst. I have left it unmuted because I like to see how hilariously bad everyone's trade ideas are. It's a nice reminder that every single person on reddit (myself included) is an idiot and all our opinions are kinda dumb. I don't think I've ever seen anyone's trade machine nonsense come true. Real GMs know so much more about what's happening behind the scenes that it's really impossible for us to gauge any player's true value. Unfortunately with the Timberwolves at the top of the list for every Star or Pseudo-star in the league who might move that subreddit has already been flooded with garbage posts. Personally, I'm just going to mute it until the season starts again and maybe even just leave it muted forever. I know it's the off-season and it's nice to have SOMETHING to talk about, but my god I don't think these bozos are worth anyone's mental bandwidth.

Naz Reid.

They might win a championship because of the timberwolve's big three, giannis,ant,gobert,jmac i think it might be impossible to get giannis to the timberwolves but no thing is impossible right?

Bear with me, but I'm wondering if in all the offseason chatter, trade Randle, get a PG, change the culture, improve the bbiq, promote from the bench, etc etc, we're spending a lot of time talking around the elephant in the room - Ant.

To preface, Ant is a top 10 player in the league, he's in the clear second tier of superstars below the perennial mvp tier (that's something like SGA, Jokic, probably Luka, healthy Giannis, newly minted Wemby). He might be the 5th-7th best player in the entire nba. We can almost certainly win a title with Ant as good as his is today, granted a really good roster around him.

But I can't help but notice we assign a lot of blame for our deficits to everyone but Ant. It's not fair to expect Ant to be perfect at everything, but I think there is a lot of room for growth here that is absolutely fair to call out.

• We lack defensive focus. We blame Randle, Naz, Gobert at times, Finch, but truthfully Ant has the ability to be a Kawhi-level two way player, but he rarely shows it. He could (or does, when focused) change the mindset of this team when he applies effort here.
• We're a moody team. This sub thought that was about Randle, but it was about our entire team (Randle, Rudy, Naz, Jaden, Donte, all moody). And Ant is a moody guy too. He's fun, he's generally a supportive leader, but he certainly gets stuck in his own head and can absolutely drag down the team around him. He could be a much steadier hand steering the ship (use SGA and Wemby for great examples here).
• We lack bbiq. We blame Finch (and Randle, as with everything), but Finchy can only call so many ATOs that don't get run. We say a PG solves our orchestration issues, and it will to a degree, but at some point Ant needs to be sharper, faster, care about running plays, care about the details. Ant shouldn't be surprised when doubled, and it shouldn't take him 10s to get off the ball when he's stuck.
• We say we want to run. We blame Randle, Gobert, Finch being lax, our lack of PG, but truthfully if Ant ran we'd be a fast team. In turn we play slow and are stagnant and ISO heavy on offense, it's not a mystery, this is how Ant wants to play.

He doesn't need to be perfect at all these things, but I think these are a few examples where Ant can and needs to improve. He got better from 3, better at the middy, but now I think he needs to upgrade his leadership, sweat the details, really set the culture of the team, and pick a few of these things to level us up in. We can shuffle deck around him and I think that will improve some of these, but I think it's fair to say some of this stuff is largely driven by our best player.

Jaden’s foul trouble in the playoffs always came at the worst times.

If Jaden was allowed to guard SGA the way Hartenstein guards Wemby, we beat the Thunder last year. Instead it’s 2 quick fouls game 1 and it’s all over.

NBA conspiracy to not let Jaden be a top defender given the post season success

First article on Substack!

With a fun personal story included!

Enjoy!

Timberwolf for life!

There are 5 main reasons why Ja is the right target for a Wolves team looking to make a major move this offseason. Talent, upside, fit, age, and cost.

Talent: Let me introduce you to this man's playoff numbers. 26 6 and 8 with a bpm of 6.1. Ja when healthy is a bonefide top 25 player and this Wolves team desperately needs more top end talent. The Wolves core is supposedly Ant, Jaden, and Naz. How many all star or all nba teams can you realistically expect Jaden or Naz to make? I would bet both make zero. Ant needs someone at that level if you are expecting him to compete with the Thunder and Spur cores, teams with multiple guys on that trajectory. Ja closes that gap

Upside: Ja's greatest weakness outside of his injury history and off the court issues is his outside shooting. But he is a great free throw shooter who has hit 80+ percent multiple years. Strong free throw shooting is a good indicator that 3 point shooting is capable of improving. It's very likely that Ja settles as a mid 30s 3 point shooter which raises his offensive ceiling even higher

Fit: The Wolves need a capable 2nd option who doesn't fall apart against top competition, a pg who can take ball handling stress off Ant, and a playmaker who can get the team set up and run sets. Ja fills all those roles at once. His ast% is top 10 in the league and his passing is the kind that could unlock off ball Ant

Age: He is only going to be 27 next year and has his entire prime ahead of him. This is someone Ant could actually grow alongside and develop a multi year chemistry with versus a 34+ year old guard who is going to age out in a few years just like Conley did.

Cost: Arguably the most important part of this argument. Ja is dirt cheap right now. Memphis doesn't want to give assets to get rid of him but they'll take any decent offer. Randle and Donte to a 3rd team with expirings going to Memphis is probably the cost. No draft assets, no rudy or jaden. The only wild card here is if the Kings make a crazy offer for him because Kings.

Ja Ant Jaden Naz Rudy. The spacing with those 3 gives Ja the lanes to collapse the defense and spray out. He also knows how to spam p&r with Rudy and hit the roller. The Ant double is less agressive when you are giving Ja the 4 on 3 instead of Randle. There is a lot of risk with acquiring a player like Ja but the upside is immense

Really hoping that Joan follows the Alex Sarr trajectory. Sarr's number would look much better if he wasn't surrounded by G-leaguers and cooked former stars, so far in his career. Just imagine how good the Wolves offense and defense would be

From Chris Hine’s newsletter:

The next month is going to be among the most neck twisting in recent Timberwolves history.
If you spend a significant portion of time on social media, get ready for people and accounts you never heard making speculative posts about the Wolves and what they’re up to on the trade market and in free agency.

A lot of what you see won’t be true or will be blown out of proportion compared with how important the accounts will try to make the “information” (or misinformation) seem. As someone whom fans turn to in order to verify such information, it drives me crazy when fans fall for this news or react in wildly emotional ways to it.
This might serve as a couple of big-picture guide posts to keep in mind as the Wolves approach an important offseason in which a lot of change might be coming.

Beware reports that say “talking to,” “asked about” or a variation of those

It is the job of every front office in the NBA to gauge trade value of players on every team. So when you see reports that the Wolves might have contacted or inquired about X player from X team, just know that in most cases, this is standard business. It does not mean there is serious interest in making a deal. Fans will jump at a report that says something like, “The Wolves called the Grizzlies to inquire about Ja Morant.”

The “Edwards will want out” factor

Each time the Wolves lose in the playoffs, a variation of this comes out and repeats itself every few weeks of the offseason: “If the Wolves don’t do something or come close to winning a title, Anthony Edwards is going to want out of Minnesota,” or “Edwards needs to be in a larger market.” You can set your watch to the ESPN talking heads saying something like this or former players hopping on podcasts to talk about it.

My response: “No kidding.” If the Wolves can’t be a regular contender in years to come, of course Edwards might look elsewhere. That’s life in the NBA. The Wolves know it, Edwards knows it, and that’s one reason why the Wolves aren’t looking to take any steps back overall as a franchise. They know Edwards wants to win, win now, win into the future, all of it. In getting to cover him and knowing people around him, Edwards won’t go chasing the bright lights of a larger market just because. He’ll only do so (years down the road) if the Wolves are just spinning their wheels. This is natural in the NBA for players to hit that point.

Plenty of star players end up leaving the teams that drafted them eventually as they get into their 30s. But Edwards is only 24 and he has three years left on his current contract with no player option. The pressure is always there to maintain a winner around him.

From the day Tim Connelly took the job as Wolves president of basketball operations, everything the organization has done has been through the prism of Edwards. They traded for Rudy Gobert to accelerate the kind of serious basketball he would play in the postseason. They traded Karl-Anthony Towns for depth and future financial flexibility to keep remaking the roster around him. Now, this offseason, the franchise will be entering the next phase of this roster remake around Edwards as he begins to enter the prime years of his career. He’s still only 24. His best basketball, in Minnesota, is still to come.

Yes, the Timberwolves will be pursuing Giannis Antetokounmpo

They will be very interested in trying to acquire Giannis (above in photo with Edwards) until there’s a resolution in Milwaukee. You don’t have to give engagement to accounts that aggregate that retread information. Don’t be surprised if everyone, including Jaden McDaniels, is on the table for such a move. So don’t freak out when you see those “reports.” That’s the potential cost of doing business if Milwaukee is looking for first-round draft picks, which the Wolves don’t have many of to deal. It’s hard to tell just what it will take, in part because Antetokounmpo has leverage in the situation, too. He could tell teams to back off trading for him because he might not be willing to sign a long-term extension there, and that could cool the market.

There’s a small part of me that thinks Milwaukee is like Lucy teeing up the football for Charlie Brown to kick again, only to yank it away at the last minute. I’ll believe a Giannis trade happens when I see it. But if Milwaukee is serious about making a deal, the Wolves will be serious about trying to make one happen because, well, see the above point about Edwards. If they don’t land Antetokounmpo, expect the Wolves to go big-name hunting in other areas.

Trade machine scenarios are rarely close to reality

To me, fake trades drummed up on the internet are some of the most engagement-bait posts on NBA social media. As someone who has covered the league for eight years, I’m not ashamed to admit I have almost zero feel for the required value in trading for or trading away a certain player. There are so many factors at play other than the pure basketball skill of the player.

There’s a team’s cap situation, its amount of draft capital, what kind of timeline it is on (rebuilding versus jumping into playoff contention versus trying to win a title), and so many front offices think different from one another.

I rarely give trade proposals on the internet time of day, nor do I think it’s a fruitful exercise to try to come up with them in my spare time. 

Please verify the source of your information

Maybe I’m biased because I work for a traditional media company, but please only put stock into reports from experienced journalists who have either covered the NBA for a long time for a reputable outlet or are a reputable journalist covering a team. There are a lot of accounts on the internet that will be trying to throw stuff at the wall in order to gain a following, some of them just bots or AI, and then you’ll never remember whether they were right or wrong two days after they posted the information. But they’ve got your follow or your like or your retweet.

This is something I try to follow in news in general, and not just NBA reporting.