The more things change, the more they stay the same. The busiest and most breaking news-filled part of the NBA offseason has already concluded, and pundits are busy projecting where they think all 30 teams will finish in the 2025-26 season. As per the usual, the Minnesota Timberwolves are being counted out.
This of course comes as no surprise to Wolves fans who have followed this team for years. Minnesota rarely gets a lot of national recognition, even when they have a lot of reason to be getting attention. Chalk it up to market size or whatever floats your boat, but there's no denying how annoying it is for the fanbase.
And that's sort of the thing here — there is a lot of legitimate reason for there to be noise around this Timberwolves team. I mean, they just got finished with their second straight Western Conference Finals run, while doing it with a very different roster from the one they had the year prior.
Imagine if this roster belonged to a bigger market team like the ones that reside in New York or Los Angeles. It's not even funny how much more coverage they would be getting. I understand that those teams print money for the biggest media organizations, but let's at least have some sort of self-awareness when it comes to the actual basketball stuff too.
Minnesota's relevance is being downplayed right now
It also doesn't help that some of the Wolves' biggest competitors in the West have had big offseasons and made more of a splash than Minnesota. The Denver Nuggets seriously leveled up in adding Cameron Johnson, Bruce Brown, Tim Hardaway Jr. and potentially Jonas Valanciunas as well.
The Houston Rockets just added Kevin Durant and then put Dorian Finney-Smith alongside him as well. Then of course there's the Oklahoma City Thunder, that just put the finishing touches on a Game 7 win in the NBA Finals a couple of weeks ago.
So when you consider recency bias and the "what have you done for me lately" viewpoint, it makes sense that Minnesota's rivals are currently getting a lot more love. But again, we don't need to trick ourselves here. The Timberwolves should still be viewed as one of the top threats in the West to reach the Finals next year.
I believe Anthony Edwards hasn't even come close to reaching his individual peak yet, and there's a lot to like when you talk about the potential of some of the other young guys on the roster as well. The Wolves aren't the most popular pick to go back to the conference finals or reach the NBA Finals in 2026, but they're being counted out far too much right now.