5 Minnesota Timberwolves who may not be back next season

Yes, money matters

The trick is that the team is stuck between a rock and a hard place. The team has more financial commitments than available cash. While the trade out of D’Angelo Russell has saved the Timberwolves significant funds, Conley Jr. is not cheap in the least, costing $22.7 million in 2022-23, and increasing to $24.4 million next season.

We know that the Timberwolves want to extend Anthony Edwards and Jaden McDaniels as their two off-season priorities. And, thanks to the trade of DLo, the team may have freed up enough cash to make a competitive offer to keep free-agent center Naz Reid at Target Center as well. But NBA rosters are very complex, and after you go beyond those significant financial investments of Rudy Gobert, and Karl-Anthony Towns, as well as the likely investment into Anthony Edwards and Jaden McDaniels, the team has to be very savvy about who comes back to this roster and for how much.

The Timberwolves roster debuted well

The Timberwolves surprisingly did a pretty good job on that front for the 2022-23 NBA season. While there is a consensus that Bryn Forbes simply did not work out as a free agent signing, the Timberwolves appear to have done very well with extending power forward Taurean Prince as well as adding power forward Kyle Anderson and shooting guard Austin Rivers to the mix. But this is a team that had invested in two timelines. There are the veterans of Gobert and KAT who are in their prime and need to win now.

But there is the secondary timeline for this team that is led by Anthony Edwards and Jaden McDaniels, and they have the potential to deliver an NBA Championship to the Minnesota Timberwolves in their careers as well.

So that makes it imperative that the Timberwolves do an excellent job of pruning the roster to avoid choking out the playing time with too many players. Not only is playing time limited but so are the dollars. Every NBA team tries to bargain shop and that makes the decision over who NBA teams build around versus who are the supporting cast quite important. Let’s see who will be staying.