Wolves Season in Review: Gary Neal

This is Part Two of the Wolves Season in Review player capsules. We’ll be looking at every player that finished the season on the Wolves roster, excluding ten-day contract signees. We’re starting with the players that played the fewest minutes and working our way up the roster to those that logged the most playing time. Today’s featured player is Gary Neal.

The Wolves acquired Gary Neal on February 10th, just over a week prior to the NBA trade deadline. Minnesota had traded away backup guards Mo Williams and Troy Daniels, and they brought Neal back (along with a 2019 second-round pick) to help match salaries and to ensure they had enough healthy bodies to field a team. They also needed to attempt to keep some semblance of roster balance.

Neal played in one game for the Wolves before rolling his ankle in practice. There was a brief dance between his agent and Flip Saunders regarding a potential buyout so that the veteran could potentially hook on with a playoff contender, but Saunders was steadfast in wanting Neal and his “championship pedigree” off the bench in Minnesota.

Neal could have mailed it in right off the bat with his practice injury, but came back to average 25.5 minutes per game over his next nine contests, including one start (in which he played 40 minutes against the Clippers) and a 27-point performance in a big home win over the Portland Trail Blazers.

He was pretty up-and-down with the Wolves, and Saunders clearly encouraged some volume scoring off of his thin bench. Neal obliged, and actually shot 35.5% from long-range after making three-pointers at just a 29.3% clip with Charlotte earlier in the season.

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Neal is also the type of player that the Wolves need off the bench behind Andrew Wiggins and Kevin Martin. They need a sharpshooter, and Neal’s 38.1% career three-point shooting percentage qualifies, especially when compared against the “sharpshooters” the Wolves have employed in recent seasons. The problem with Neal is that he’s undersized and went to the Kevin Martin school of defense.

He’s also similar to the guard he replaced in Williams in that he’s only a true plus-contributor on the offensive end if he gets hot. Saunders routinely ran play sets that ended with Neal shooting tough mid-range jumpers. He made them in the victory over Portland, but missed them far too often to be an efficient player off the bench.

Neal won’t be back; he’ll be able to be a bit player on a contender as at age-30. Being a minus defender coming off of a year that he shot just 30.5% from beyond the arc he won’t find a playoff team willing to let him play north of 20 minutes per game, so he’ll be forced to either take a larger role on a non-contender or a 10-15 minute-per-game role on a playoff team.

Neal was a solid player over the course of 11 games for the Wolves, but was just a pawn in Saunders’ goal to acquire a draft pick. But he provided a glimpse at the type of player that would fit off the bench for the Wolves, and the type of player that the front office needs to work on acquiring to help fill some of the gaping holes that the roster has as currently constructed.

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• The dream starting 5 for Minnesota Timberwolves 5 years from now
• Anthony Edwards’ latest accolade is a great sign of things to come
• In an OT thriller, Team Canada snatches Bronze from Team USA
• Timberwolves start, bench, cut: Mike Conley, Shake Milton, Jordan McLaughlin
• Which Timberwolves roster additions have upgraded the bench?