Minnesota Timberwolves avoid NBA luxury tax penalty, for now

We know that the Minnesota Timberwolves put a lot more money into their salary expense column for the 2022-23 NBA season. Where is the team at right now?  Per Spotrac.com, the team’s current payroll is currently $147,207,825.  The NBA Luxury Tax threshold is currently at $150,267,000, which means that the team is $3,059,175 below the Luxury tax mark.

The team still has a $4,105,000 BAE (Bi-Annual Exception) option to use on a future roster addition. Speculation consensus believes that the Timberwolves will save that for any players who may be bought out and released later this season by other teams and may be good fits for this roster.

But many teams in the NBA are not as lucky, as the following Tweet indicates:

Winning is costly in the NBA. The NBA Champions, the Golden State Warriors, are facing a payroll that is currently at $185,821,873. At that amount, the Warriors are facing a luxury tax of $147,217,963. Yikes!

But the Minnesota Timberwolves will need to keep one eye on that level of payroll, as they could find themselves in a similar salary cap purgatory very quickly. Right now the team has nearly 40 percent of their 2023-24 salary cap committed to both Karl-Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert.  But the team faces a costly re-signing of PG D’Angelo Russell, and an option to extend SG Anthony Edwards, both contracts will take plenty of Benjamins.

The Timberwolves will also likely look to extend Jaylen Nowell and Naz Reid next year as well.  That really leaves only a little room to get creative in the NBA Free Agency market, as well as force the team to be especially scrutinous in the offseason.

Of course, exceeding expectations is the best marketing that the Timberwolves can do to attract veterans to play in Minnesota. But money helps too. That’s why the Timberwolves will be careful with any financial commitments going forward.