Minnesota Timberwolves Roundup: Minicamp starts Monday

The Minnesota Timberwolves start their minicamp on Monday, and virtually everyone should be in attendance.

Minnesota Timberwolves basketball is about to happen.

Well, kind of. Weirdly enough, it’s still the 2019-20 league year, despite the fact that the 2020-21 season was supposed to kick-off with media day and training camp over the next couple of weeks.

Instead, we have something of a bow being placed on the season that effectively ended six months ago for the Wolves. Thankfully, it sounds like virtually the entire roster should be present.

Minnesota Timberwolves Roundup: Minicamp starts Monday

A few days ago, there was a report that “most” players would participate. This provided exceptions for Omari Spellman and Evan Turner, both of whom were never going to don a Timberwolves jersey, and Juancho Hernangomez, who is filming a movie.

The other player who was previously thought to only be participating in the individual workout portion is Malik Beasley, but now it sounds like he’ll be staying in town and taking part in the entirety of the three-week camp.

Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic wrote a piece covering several bits of Wolves news (subscription required), and one of the topics was Beasley. The organization gave him the out to participate because of his status as a restricted free agent, but Beasley wanted to be in the gym with his teammates.

His presence not only speaks to his commitment to the team and his work ethic but also the Minnesota Timberwolves organization. It shows that president of basketball operations Gersson Rosas and head coach Ryan Saunders have earned a level of trust from Beasley and other players with somewhat uncertain contract situations.

Last year’s two-way players, Kelan Martin and Jordan McLaughlin, are also technically restricted free agents. There are also a few players with only partially guaranteed contracts, including Naz Reid and Jaylen Nowell.

While this camp is essentially a glorified practice and the team says they won’t go too in-depth with on-court concepts for 2020-21, there are players who have something legitimate to play for.

The other big news this week was that Sachin Gupta will be staying in Minnesota as Rosas’ right-hand man due to Sacramento’s decision to hire Monte McNair, formerly of the Houston Rockets, to run their basketball operations department.

Overall, it was an eventful week for the Wolves as we look forward to the team actually getting on the court next week.