Minnesota Sports Forum

Here's the Wolves current roster, including our new draft picks but excluding Bolmaro on the assumption he'll stay in Spain:

Timberwolves Roster

(1) Karl-Anthony Towns, C: $31.7M (2024)
(2) Anthony Edwards, G: Rookie K (2024)
(3) Jaden McDaniels. SF Rookie K (2024)
(4) D'Angelo Russell, PG: $29.3M (2023)
(5) Ricky Rubio, PG $17M (2022)
(6) Jarrett Culver, SF: $6M (2023)
(7) Jake Layman, SF: $3.8M (2022)
(8) Josh Okogie, SG: $2.5M (2022)
(9) Jacob Evans, SG: $1.9M (2022)
(10) Omari Spellman, PF: $1.8M (2022)
(11) Naz Reid, PF: $1.4M (2023)
(12) Jarred Vanderbilt, PF: $1.3M (2021)
(13) Jaylen Nowell, G: $1.2M (2023)

As you can see, the Wolves have two open spots on their roster. Barring any further trades, there's no room on the roster for Beasley, JMac and a MLE free agent. It will only accommodate two of those three.

I'm really surprised the Wolves didn't find a way to offload Jacob Evans in a deal last night. He doesn't have negative trade value. It should have been easy to clear his roster spot, perhaps by including him in the Rubio deal. Maybe he is part of that deal.

What gives you a gag reflex more, the lack of a PF or the lack of shooters?

PorkChop wrote:What gives you a gag reflex more, the lack of a PF or the lack of shooters?

Hard to say. My gag reflex has been active nonstop since the Wolves announced their first pick last night.

Here's the salary situation:

The 13 players currently on the roster or about to be signed as draft picks will have a total payroll of about $105.07

Assuming the Wolves use their full $9.76 MLE to fill the 14th roster spot, the payroll will increase to $114.83. That's slightly above $109.14 salary cap and about $18M below the $132.62 luxury tax threshold.

Assuming the Wolves sign JMac for around $2M, they will have about $16M to sign Beasley or someone else. But they need to clear a roster spot to sign both. If they buy out Evans that will count against the cap so it won't free up more cap space for Beasley and JMac.

It's really important for the Wolves to stay below the luxury tax threshold because they exceeded that threshold this past season. That means the Wolves will be subject to repeater penalties if they exceed it again this next season. Repeater penalties include a significantly lower MLE.

I'm pretty sure Spellman and Evans will be gone by the time the season starts. How Rosas moves them is the question

Juan Hernangomez will eat up a portion of that available money and a valuable roster spot. I'm almost certain that Gersson Rosas will make it a priority to bring him back because, well, he's the smartest guy in the room.

Minnesota will have to make a trade or two to balance out this roster. There's no way they go into the new season relying on in-house options in the front court. Even Rosas isn't that ignorant.

There has been 2 years in a row where our offseason needs seem to be shooting and defense. I think its clear that wasnt Gerson's plan in the draft and he's not leaving himself much dough to address it in free agency. If he's not going to address shooting and D I do wonder what his plan is.

I'm going to pick up on that Doogie chatter and say I would be all over some sort of trade for PJ Tucker to help balance our roster. He's getting up there in age, but he'd be almost an equivalent front-court counterpart to Rubio. He'd be a steadying vet presence that can defend, switch, get physical with some guys, and hopefully have some influence on KAT's overall disposition (which is still way too immature IMO).

Volans19 wrote:I'm pretty sure Spellman and Evans will be gone by the time the season starts. How Rosas moves them is the question

Well, a trade is the only way to free up a roster spots held by a player under a guaranteed contracts and also get his salary off the books. And there are only two trade options. One option is to trade him for a player under a non-guaranteed contract and release him. The other is to trade him with another player or players in a two for one three for one.

Q12543 wrote:I'm going to pick up on that Doogie chatter and say I would be all over some sort of trade for PJ Tucker to help balance our roster. He's getting up there in age, but he'd be almost an equivalent front-court counterpart to Rubio. He'd be a steadying vet presence that can defend, switch, get physical with some guys, and hopefully have some influence on KAT's overall disposition (which is still way too immature IMO).

I can't agree with you here, Q. And I didn't agree with Darren Wolfson on Twitter either. While P.J. Tucker certainly helps this team in certain areas, I see zero logical reason to use assets on a soon-to-be 36-year old mediocre role player who has one year left on his deal. It just doesn't make any sense from my point of view. The Wolves would be better suited to pursue an option that could contribute a lot more and for much longer.

The thought of acquiring Tucker gives me awful flashbacks of Flip Saunders wasting an asset in 26-year old Thaddeus Young for a whopping five regular season games of 38-year old Kevin Garnett who was set to be a free agent after that season. While Young wasn't anything special he certainly had more value than that, and of course he was moved a year later by the Brooklyn Nets for a first-round pick that ended up being Caris LeVert.