Minnesota Timberwolves: 3 things we learned on media day

The 2021-22 edition of Minnesota Timberwolves Media Day is in the books, and it was an interesting one.

Given the tumultuous past week at 600 First Avenue, it promised to be an intriguing day. Beyond the front office saga, however, there were multiple themes to pull out of the day’s interviews.

Minnesota Timberwolves: 3 things we learned on media day

Media day began with majority owner Glen Taylor introducing new minority owners Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez to the Twin Cities media.

There was not much groundbreaking here, beyond Taylor setting the tone for the day by declaring that he would not be commenting on dismissed employees or players not under contract with the Timberwolves.

Also, Rodriguez mentioned that the new owners have “no plans” to move the team away from the Twin Cities while Lore talked about the possibility of eventually building a new arena.

Let’s jump into the other key themes from the day.

Minnesota Timberwolves Media Day Takeaway No. 1: Gersson Rosas’s firing was not a major topic

It was only five days prior that former president of basketball operations Gersson Rosas was relieved of his duties. Obviously, it’s atypical for a front office leader to be dismissed so close to the start of the season, to it would have made sense for his departure to overtake the discourse of Monday’s media event.

But beginning with Taylor’s opening comments, the tone was set. While the media brought Rosas up — both by name and indirectly — to the majority of interviewees, the sentiment was overwhelmingly … dismissive, as noted by Dane Moore of The Dane Moore NBA Podcast.

D’Angelo Russell explicitly said he didn’t have much of a reaction. Malik Beasley clearly wasn’t interested in talking about it. Karl-Anthony Towns launched into his (absolutely justified) airing of frustrations that included another front-office change — but we’ll touch on Towns more later.

Sitting next to Sachin Gupta, the man currently tasked with leading the basketball operations department, head coach Chris Finch nearly repeated Taylor’s opening statement word-for-word when asked about his reaction to Rosas’s firing last week, completely shutting down the topic.

For as much damage as has already been done, Taylor and the Wolves as a whole did a great job of limiting the conversation surrounding Rosas.