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Locked On Wolves - Daily Podcast On The Minnesota Timberwolves

Taking final stock of Minnesota Timberwolves roster as free agency dust settles

As NBA free agency winds down, a look at what the Minnesota Timberwolves roster will look like. Which players are gone, and who will be taking their place?
Duration:
32m
Broadcast on:
08 Jul 2024
Audio Format:
mp3

As NBA free agency winds down, a look at what the Minnesota Timberwolves roster will look like. Ben Beecken (@bbeecken) breaks down which players are definitely gone and who will be taking their place. Plus, Tim Connelly acquired a couple of additional second-round picks on draft night that we're just learning about. Finally, an argument as to why the Wolves' roster is just as good as it was a few weeks ago -- but with an even higher ceiling.

 

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It's the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Hello and welcome into another episode of Lockdown Wolves. Today on the show, another former Tim Earle is officially a former Tim Earle signing with another Western Conference contender. We'll also talk about the Tim Earles have two more second-round picks than we thought they did a week ago, all in the wake of the NBA Draft. The Tim Connolly continues to work as magic, and ultimately, who's in and who's out? Now that we basically know what the roster looks like moving forward, it's all coming to the show. Welcome in. You are Lockdown Wolves. You are Lockdown Timber Wolves, your daily Minnesota Timber Wolves Podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Hello and welcome to the Lockdown Wolves Podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. My name is Ben Beacon. I'm the host of Lockdown Wolves. Today's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Make every moment more as the playoffs wind down and they're over now. No more hockey, no more basketball, no more NBA, at least. The sports stop, sports scene like we want them to, but this summer, FanDuel's hooking up all customers with a boost or a bonus daily. That's right. So when every day, all summer long, visit fanduel.com to get started. Happy Monday, everybody. Hopefully you had a fantastic weekend. Summer league basketball is underway in Salt Lake City, so there's some of that going on. Maybe you saw a little bit of that this weekend, watched a little bit of the Sacramento Kings beat China by like 50 points the other day. Lots of, lots of summer league basketball, we'll call it good basketball, competitive summer league basketball on Vegas, summer league later this week. So we are right in the thick of still basketball on TV, of course, WNBA on going, but some NBA actions still happening here if you want to call summer league that. So gearing up for summer league, we'll talk a lot more about that later this week. Today, lots to get to. I do want to talk briefly about Joe Ingalls. He had some quotes about coming to Minnesota. I want to talk about the second round picks that Tim Connolly has uncovered as part of the finalization of all the draft night trades. And we'll also talk a little bit of kind of roster overall, you know, some more finality in terms of pending free agents from Minnesota that are no longer pending. So a ton to get to here on this Monday, a big thank you, first of all, for making lockdown wolves your first listen every day. Of course, this show is free and available everywhere that includes YouTube as well as all of your favorite audio platforms, wherever you like to listen to podcasts, you can find lockdown wolves, you can also watch on the lockdown sports, Minnesota app on both Roku and Amazon fire TV, and you can follow on X at lockdown T wolves and also at be beacon with two bees to ease C K E. All right, let's start with the more second round picks because this was a pleasant surprise when when this kind of when this came across, I guess, if you will, um, this was, let's see. So if you, I'm going to just kind of run through this. So we knew that the tip rules had some sort of a future second on pick coming as part of their trade back. Remember, they were at 37. They traded back to what was it initially to somewhere in the 40s and then to 53 and then to 57 and then all the way out of the second round. So we knew they had a pick coming. We weren't really sure from where we thought maybe it was from Detroit. And we knew that they had a pick swap coming as part of the Kylie Anderson signing trade. Well, that full deal is now finalized. And ultimately there's six different teams involved that I'm going to credit hoopsermers.com for kind of laying this all out. They've kind of compiled all the different press releases and stuff from the league and put this all here. So the six different teams involved, uh, and the wolves got another second on pick out of this. And then there's also another pick that I'll get to in a second. So ultimately there's going to be two picks that they're getting out of this thing. So part of this deals, the wolves get the second round pick swap from the warriors in 2031. So the better of the two teams picks, if Golden State has the better pick, the wolves get it. If the wolves have the better pick, they keep it in 2031. This is part of the Kylie Anderson signing trade. They also get cash, which we know there's a, there's a limit on what they can get there, but that's from Golden State in this trade because there has to be something else happening in the trade in order to, to make it be completed. And I'm going to read exactly what hoopsermers has here. It says, we don't yet know the exact details of the 20, 25 second rounders being acquired by both Dallas and Minnesota. One of them is a 20, 25 Knicks pick that Charlotte, excuse me, nuggets pick, where I got nicks from, that Charlotte initially agreed to acquire as part of the Jackson trade. One of them is the 2025 sixers pick that Charlotte already controlled. The Hornets were always going to send out two second round picks to get Josh green, but now they're going to Dallas and Minnesota instead of Dallas and Golden State. So basically one of the picks that was supposed to go from Charlotte to Golden State will now be rerouted to Minnesota. We don't yet know if it's the pick that was originally a nuggets pick or the pick that was originally a sixers pick. Either way, the wolves get another second round pick. This is a 2025 second round pick in addition to the 2031 pick swap. Okay. So all the wolves did here, this is, all they did here was facilitate Kylie Anderson going to Golden State. They get cash, a future second round pick swap and a 2025 second round pick. The other second round pick that Minnesota is going to get is from the Wendell Moore Jr. trade, which was that, that what became a trade back. We knew that they were traded him to the Pistons for a second round pick swap. The Pistons went from 53 to 37 and so the wolves got 53. So I added a step in there earlier. So the wolves went from 37 to 53. There was cash involved and they had the 53 pick. Then they traded the 53 to Memphis for 57 and a future second rounder and then they traded 57 to Toronto for a million bucks. So the wolves have cash from Detroit. They have a million bucks from the Raptors and then they get this future second round pick from Memphis for the 53rd pick in this draft. So another second round pick. So we knew that there was one in there somewhere but there's a couple more now plus cash plus the future pick swap. And this was the trade, you know, they sent out Wendell Moore Jr. They get back cash and they get back a future second round pick. So two more second round picks than the wolves thought that at least publicly everybody thought the wolves had a week ago, week and a half ago in the wake of the draft. Big win for Minnesota. Well, big is maybe strong. But a win nonetheless and this is how Tim Connolly operates. Nobody was focusing on the two second rounders or the Kale Xander Walker part of the Delo Mike Connolly trade. Everyone was worried about the Connolly Delo part. I thought the second round picks were great coming from Utah, which they were good picks, right? One of them was already this year. Nobody was focusing on the Kale Xander Walker part. But he's quietly, even though he's traded on all these first rounders, he's quietly accruing the second rounders, which you can use later, of course, and they already have. But it's also a way to affordably, relatively speaking, build a team that's going to be a second apron team, at least for the near future and only has what one first round pick and a couple of swaps in the next seven years. I'm pretty sure that's what I'm pretty sure the wolves, I don't have it right in front of me right now, but I believe the wolves have a 26 pick that's their own and a swap in 28, and now a swap in 30, I believe, is what they have. Only one actual pick they own free and clear in the next seven-ish years going out to 2031. So part of the way you're going to build that team, rebuild this roster or build the roster along the way is through hitting on these second rounders or trading them or packaging picks together like future picks like they did this year to move up to number eight and take Rob Dillingham. It's a creative approach to team building that you have to do when you've got three max contract guys with the way the CBA is now set up. Pretty interesting, pretty interesting. One other thing really quick, Joe Ingalls gave an interview after he signed with Minnesota, was reported and then it was I think finalized on Saturday over the weekend. And he talked about how the wolves wanted to get him last year and he was interested in going to Minnesota in part because he knew that they liked him even when Kyle Anderson was still in the roster and now he's replacing Kyle Anderson and Joe Ingalls said part of it, meaning signing Minnesota, was having the interest for more than just Kyle Anderson leaves and hey, you can help us. Last year, they went pretty hard as well, meaning the wolves went hard after signing him in free agency and we decided Orlando, playing with Mike Conley, again, will be awesome, obviously, I know Rudy and then helping these other guys to keep getting better. Dane Moore had reported, I think on Twitter last week, that the wolves were offering Ingalls seven million last year and he went to Orlando for 11 million, which is defensible and Orlando was a playoff team this year. So yeah, can't fault the guy for making four million more. Now this year, the wolves just offered him the vet minimum and who knows what other options he had. I'm sure he had some and he comes to Minnesota, talks about how Ingalls daughter and Conley's son attended school together when they both played in Utah. So that relationship is there. Apparently, he and Chris Finch got into it in the 2012 London Olympics when Finch was coaching Great Britain. I didn't know that. I'm going to have to look that up. I talks about the competitive nature and then he says, it's exciting. It's obviously a really good team Western Conference finals this year. Just going in there, fully understanding the role they have for me, trying to help Rudy, trying to help and trying to help all these guys get better and hopefully go further. When the opportunity came up and you speak more in depth about the basketball side, especially with the stuff I'm saying, you still want to play, you still want to compete. It's a basketball opportunity that was too good to give up. That's what Ingalls said about joining Minnesota. So that's good stuff, exciting that Joe Ingalls is excited to be in Minnesota. Again, that's a ESPN article from, I believe, their Australian basketball writer. Of course, Ingalls playing for Australia this year in the Olympics as well. So really good. All right. I want to talk about the roster. Jordan McLaughlin is leaving. He signed a Sacramento. We'll talk about now. We know what's out, what's in the Wolves roster. We'll spend most of the rest of the time just kind of taking a half step back and looking at that. That's what we'll do here next. Today's episode of Lacta Wolves is brought to us by our friends at Fain dual. I love sports. I love them so much that I never want them to stop. But now we're in this lull and like a week from now, it's actually an even bigger lull. A week from now, you've got the MLB all-star break and there's like nothing else going on. Right now, at least there's regular season baseball games. If that's your speed, it's MLB regular season, Olympic trials, WNBA and that's kind of it. Next week NBA also, or excuse me, MLB all-star break. Normally, at least it'll be ongoing. We'll have that. But they're just right now in the middle of the summer. It makes me want it to be October, November, which is the absolute sweet spot of the sports calendar where everybody's playing at once, all the big, the big four sports. And then you get it, you know, March is probably the next biggest, next best sports month. But right now, in the middle, early mid-July sports are not sports-ing like we all want them to. But Fain dual, let's you keep the sports going, whatever, whenever you want, all you have to do is open the app and dream up bets anytime you're in the mood. This summer Fain dual is hooking up all customers, all customers with a boost or a bonus daily. That's right. There's something for everyone every day all summer long, so head over to Fain dual.com and start making the most out of your summer. Fain dual, an official sports betting partner of Major League Baseball. Hey, every dayers, NBA free agency is here and coverage doesn't stop with your team. Locked on NBA will be here for you every day of the offseason with quick-hitting 30-minute recaps of all the news and rumors in the NBA. Make locked on NBA your second listen and stay caught up on the biggest off-season storylines and free agency signings every day, available on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Part of the locked on podcast network, your team every day. To watch Fox Sports or ESPN on your TV all day long, if so, no doubt you have to turn down the volume because of all the shouting instead, make the switch to locked on sports today. A free 24/7 sports streaming channel program for you every day to bring you the biggest stories without all the screaming locked on sports today brings you can't miss analysis, opinions and news streaming 24/7 on YouTube or the free Amazon fire TV channels app. Part of the locked on podcast network, your team every day. All right. So Jordan McLaughlin on, I think this was reported early Sunday, agreed to sign with the Sacramento Kings. So not a surprise, those only have the one real roster spot left. We don't know about the PJ Dozier contract, there's been kind of conflicting reports out there. It may be partially guaranteed, in which case, if it's only partially guaranteed, it's kind of like they have two roster spots left. But either way, Jordan McLaughlin reportedly signing with the Sacramento Kings. Hopefully he's able to get a legit backup role there. If he ends up just being a fringe rotation guy there, it would be disappointed that it's there and not in Minnesota. But he, let's see, it's believed to be a minimum contract deal. He gives them an option behind Darren Fox. Of course, Davey on Mitchell was traded to Toronto over the summer. And the Kings are also completed a sign and trade for Demar de Rosen, of course. That's the, the other kind of big news. So McLaughlin likely getting a minimum deal there. It's curious to me that he wouldn't get anything a little bit more than the minimum and maybe wouldn't get, he may just be there straight up backup point guard. I don't, you know, I haven't researched their depth chart a ton, but there's a shot that he's, he's just got a rotation role there. And I suppose you're in the West. You're with a contender. You could play against the wolves. You can compete. The Kings are, at least a fringe, I shouldn't say fringe. They were obviously much better the last couple of years than they were last year. But they're, they're a playoff to you in the West. So McLaughlin moves on and it's understandable that writing had kind of been on the wall. The change of scenery makes some sense. Minnesota does not have a third point guard, but they also didn't last year either. Remember at the start of the year, Jordan McLaughlin was the only other true point guard on the roster beside Mike Conley. Shake Milton was an option as a combo guard. Nikhil Alexander Walker. We knew they were going to use in that capacity in Kyle Anderson, of course, initiated offense a lot last year. But now this offseason, it's the same deal. Adam McLaughlin, it's Rob Dillingham, he's of course going to see, it's really more the Shake Milton role. Remember the start of the regular season last year, McLaughlin didn't, wasn't necessarily getting minutes every night. It was mostly Shake Milton and Kyle Anderson and Nikhil Alexander Walker sharing quote unquote point guard duties with the second unit with Shake Milton being asked to generate a lot of offense for himself in addition to others. And we talked about this, I think on Friday's show, about Shake is essentially, or excuse me, Dillingham is essentially in what was the Shake Milton role last year. And previously, previous to that, the Jalen Noel role, that instant offense off the bench as a primary creator for oneself, but also the ability to create for other people. Dillingham is basically in that role. So taking a half step back and looking at the roster right now, I'd seen a couple of things out there. And I'm trying to remember there was a, I forget, there was a blog, I've seen this on TV, like people kind of talking about winners and losers of the offseason or people that teams that necessarily, that that might have gotten a little bit worse and the wolves have kind of been mentioned as one of them. And that's, I think pretty absurd. I don't think this roster is worse. You could argue it's maybe marginally worse just because we know what Kyle Anderson is and we kind of knew what Monte Morris was or should have been, had he been fully healthy. And we don't know what Rob Dillingham is. But as I argued last week on a couple of different shows, it's not hard to argue that Joe Ingalls is actually a better fit for Minnesota than Kyle Anderson. I know that the losing the defensive versatility of Kyle Anderson is going to really hurt because Ingalls is not the defender Kyle Anderson is, that is going to hurt. But the wolves have enough depth, length, athleticism, just overall talent on this roster to cover over what they're losing from Anderson on the defensive end. And the offensive boost that Ingalls, even at call it 18 to 20 minutes a game is going to give you over Kyle Anderson, I think is significant enough to overcome that difference on defense because not only do you have the margin for error, they were the best defense in the league by over two points per 100 possessions by over two points of defensive rating. The wolves were the best defense in the league. They have margin for error and they have guys like McDonald's, go bare Alexander Walker and guys that can cover and keep the defense as a top or at least top three defense offensively. They're in the 15 to 20 range basically all season and they finish what's depending where you look 17 to 18 the lead in terms of offensive rating. There is no margin for error. They have to get better offensively. So by losing a couple of lower usage guys, Monte Morris slash Jordan McLaughlin, Kyle Anderson and bring it at higher usage, higher usage, effective offensive player, very likely at Rob Dillingham. Of course, we don't know what he looks like at the NBA level, but based on what he did in college and based on his skill set, what he's expected to bring, that's going to make the offense better. It's going to raise the floor of the offense certainly and take you removing another and this isn't even, I'm going to be talking about Terrence Shannon at this point, but taking out a, who was essentially a net negative offensive player and I know he distributed the ball well. I know he was good against the zone for handful possessions a game, but replacing Kyle Anderson with Joe Ingles and I don't want to repeat everything I talked about Friday with Ingles spacing to the corner and just how that's going to naturally provide so much more room for Ant and Cat and Rudy on, you know, rolling to the basket, diving to the rim. There's just going to be more space because you don't, you can't take off of Joe Ingles who's going to hit, what was he, what did I say he was last year 60% on catch and shoot threes, something nuts, there was over 50% of catches you threes, but like 66% wide open threes, something like that, like two points per possession on catch and shoot three pointers. Or I should say catch and shoot overall, but the vast majority of those were three pointers like 1.9 points per possession. Using slo-mo with Joe Ingles is going to make a world of a difference. So the improvement to the offense, at least the floor of the offense with Dillingham and Ingles is greater than the impact of losing Kyle Anderson on defense. And grand scheme, if you look at what they've lost to what they're bringing to the roster, I think it raises both the floor and the ceiling seriously. So what's out, Kyle Anderson, Mate Morris, Jordan McLaughlin, what's in? Rob Dillingham, Joe Ingles, Terrence Shane Jr., essentially, right? You go back to mid last season and obviously, Shake Milton and Troy Brown Jr. and they, you know, in terms of depth pieces, Wendell Moore, Disha Nix, at this point, is still a free agent. Guys, it didn't play, weren't part of the rotation. So I'm talking rotation guys, and you go back and look at the rotation at the end of the regular season. For instance, once Kat came back, the final couple regular season games, it is, it is three of the five bench pieces. Kyle Anderson, Jordan McLaughlin, Mate Morris, all gone. However, McLaughlin and Morris were playing together because they had to. They were two of the 10 best players. So they had to play together and it wasn't ideal. They were both undersized. Like there's a reason either of them are back because the wolves weren't going to pony up to keep either one of them. They wanted some more size and I know Dylan Ham is actually smaller, but I'm talking about playing them together. They worked, they didn't want to have to play two small point guards together in the back court at the same time. And now they just have one and they're adding size to the rotation in Terrence Shane and Jr. Joe Ingle's similar size to Kyle Anderson. So they continued to get bigger and ultimately, the floor raises because there's more scoring potential there with Dylan Ham. There's more offensive firepower, more shooting ability, more. They're never going to have two guys on the floor together that cannot shoot the three. They look out one guy in the rotation out of the side of three that's not capable of making a three and that's Rudy go bare. So you're never going to have two of those guys on the floor together. So again, the floor of the offense raises, they're already third best of three point percentage. They're middle of the pack in terms of three point rate. The three point rate comes up. The three point percentage should stay similar. And the defense, I don't think got significantly worse. Maybe slightly, but Terrence Shannon should be a good defender at the NBA level. Ingle's is a net, slight net negative defensively, depending on how they use him. But likely in the scope of the team defense, he's going to be a negative. And then Dylan Ham is very likely to be a negative early in his career and may be forever. But again, the floor and the ceiling of the offense comes up. The floor and the ceiling, the floor of the defense might go down slightly. I don't know if the ceiling comes down because we already knew what Kyle Anderson was. And some of these guys are only going to get better because that's the other thing we have to factor in. I want to talk a little bit about that and then kind of put a bow on the overall depth conversation and why I would argue this roster is everybody is good now as it was. Call it 12 months ago. So we'll do all that here next to close the show today. Today's episode of Lockdown Wolves is brought to us by our friends at BetterHelp, sponsored by BetterHelp. Do you tend to compare your life to others? It's easy to do that. If you do, it's because the social media no doubt, social media plays a part in that. And what do you do when you get caught up wishing your life looked like someone else's? Well, look, comparison is the thief of joy. It's easy to envy other people's lives. And I, like social media, can be great, but it also can cause that envy, no matter what platform it is. 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Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch their piss at any time for no additional charge. Stop comparing and start focusing with better help. Visit betterhelp.com/lockdownnba today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp. Hey, every dayers, NBA free agency is here and coverage doesn't stop with your team. Lockdown NBA will be here for you every day of the off season with quick hitting 30 minute recaps of all the news and rumors in the NBA. Make locked on NBA your second listen and stay caught up on the biggest off season storylines and free agency signings every day, available on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Word of the locked on podcast network, your team every day. All right. So I was talking a minute ago about how the floor and the ceiling of this team overall gets better and the easiest reason to lay that out is the guys you're losing, you knew exactly what they were. Kylie Anderson, you know, around 30 years old, you knew what he was. Monte Morris, late 20s, you knew what he was, Jordan McLaughlin, you knew what he was, same deal. These guys were all in the prime or coming out of their prime. You knew exactly. They were known quantities and there's value to that for a, a contending team. And of the guys that are bringing in, only one of them is a known quantity. We know what Joe Ingles is and, and yeah, he's 37 soon to be 38. He may take a half step back next year. He may fall off a cliff. We don't know. Hopefully not literally. I mean his production of course. But he's, he's up. No, we'll call him a known quantity, just like Kylie Anderson was. Rob Dillingham, Tarrant, and Junior, we don't know what they will be at the NBA level. But we know Dillingham, there should be almost a, Dillingham was so efficient as a score at Kentucky. He's not going to suddenly be completely inefficient at the very least. He's going to be a really good catch and shoot player off the ball. He's going to be a good pick and roll point guard. A lot of what he's able to give the wolves in terms of overall production and on court impact is going to hinge on if he's going to be fine defensively passable or a complete disaster. He's a complete disaster. It brings the Florida, you know, or it brings the ceiling down just a little bit, of course. But the point here is, call Kylie Anderson and Joe Ingles a wash because ultimately Ingles is going to make the offense better. The defense worse. Anderson made the defense better. The offense worse. Call it a wash. But Rob Dillingham's going to bring is not going to be less than what Monte Morris and Jordan McLaughlin brought. And what's his ceiling, borderline all star, all star, what's his most likely outcome? Probably high usage, relatively efficient bench score, a six man type contender. That's upside that you didn't have with Monte Morris, Jordan McLaughlin and, you know, saw good players, solid backup point guards, I would love to have one of them back. That was what I said at the start of the offseason. I wanted one of them back. Well, it didn't happen. Morris is with the Suns, McLaughlin's with the Kings. Both of those guys are going to be competing for playoff spots next year again. But the ceiling of what this could be both this year and into the future with Dillingham is much higher. And I don't think the floor is any lower. I don't think this is a worse roster because the most likely scenario, I know rookies are generally not good like they, even if they're promising. What they give you is not usually positive production. But I think Dillingham is relatively safe. I know he's really small and I know he'll be bad defensively. But the offensive production and the feel he shows, as we've talked about already many times on the show in the last two weeks, the pick and roll feel and the way how he operates the team, the way he knows what to do with the ball in his hands and score efficiently. That's not going to just not be there. Again, it's a bit of a wild card, but he's also the 10th man and he's going to battle with Josh Minor and Leonard Miller to be the 10th man as the team is currently constructed. And I mean, it was rare that Morris and McLaughlin were in the rotation or think back to the 10th man early in the year when it was Troy Brown Jr. and eventually shake when shake was played out of the rotation a little bit. Whoever that 10th man is is kind of a sweat like he, sometimes he's not going to play. And again, there was a stretch after the Morris acquisition and especially after Cat was hurt where McLaughlin and Morris were both in the rotation. It just wasn't ideal. It worked in the regular season because they were both fine players. But now instead of playing two point guards together, you have the punch of Rob Dillingham and you have the size of Shannon or the size of by not, minor, of course, is a relative non-shooter, not as bad as Kyle Anderson, but he's not what Shannon should be. He's not obviously Ingalls. So whoever that 10th guy is, if it's Shannon, might not potentially Leonard Miller, unlikely PJ Dozier, right? But you know, one of those guys, it's probably going to be better than Troy Brown slash having two point guards play at the same time with Morris and McLaughlin. So again, I go back to the point here. I think the floor is about the same, maybe slightly higher. I think the ceiling is pretty obviously higher because we don't know just how good Dillingham could be. And in a year, probably two years, he becomes the starting point guard. And then you've obviously got to solve the bench thing. And, you know, nozzlingly is a year left on the deal before he can opt that anyway. That's the next thing we have to talk about is we haven't on this show talked with Rudy Goberic extension at all, but that could even happen this summer. He's extension eligible. The wolves can bring down. I think we covered this on the Minnesota basketball party on Wednesday. I think Jack Borman brought it up that the wolves can save themselves some future cap. I wouldn't say they saved themselves cap pain, but maybe some of that pain by bringing down the average annual salary for Rudy. If you agree to an extension now and essentially buy out, you know, what happens in the future with Rudy and you got to figure out the nozz contract. You got to understand that Michael Exeter Walker a year from now is going to be somewhere else. He's going to make more than what the wolves can offer him next year. So there is a next step here. It's not as it's not, it's the extension for Rudy, but for this year for the assets the wolves had that Tim Connolly had at his disposal. And what's next? The floor is about the same. The sun's higher. It's just, it's not a worse roster than what we saw a year ago and given again, given the assets and the reality of what Tim Connolly had to work with, he did extremely well. And I would be really surprised if this team was, you know, more than a couple of wins off of last year's pace and we haven't even factored in. I teased this a little and we're not really, I guess getting to it today. But you have to assume that 22 year old Anthony Edwards and 22 year old Jayden McDaniel's and, you know, especially those two, they're not going to get worse. They're getting better. They're not to their prime athletically or as NBA, just their skill level and cats in the middle of his prime. This team, their best players are all in their prime or younger. And if you assume relative improvement, like what we saw from 22, 23 to 23, 24, this team is going to be better next year. I'm not saying they're going to win 60 games. I think the variance is a couple of wins either direction. This is very early to truly project this and I'm not giving a real win projection. But they're pretty likely to be in the 54 to 58 win range give or take. To me, that's the most likely scenario sitting here right now is that they're in that range still. They didn't get significantly worse. I believe that. All right. Later in the week, we will get the summerly roster for the Wolves, maybe even on Monday. We might get it today, in which case, we'll cover it Tuesday, but when we get it, we'll do a deep dive on the roster. What I'm most excited to watch, we'll talk specifically about the actual roster players from Minnesota, whether it's the rookies, Dillingham Shannon, the second year, you know, Leonard Biller, technically second year slash rookie Jalen Clark, who, of course, it was officially cleared. I should have mentioned that. He was officially cleared over the weekend by Tyrell's doctors to participate in summer league. So we're very excited to see Jalen Clark. We'll talk about, I believe, yeah, Josh Minett's going to play, so 30-year guy playing. Lots to talk about there. And then also, whatever else they feel the roster with, we'll cover all of it. We'll talk about every single player that's on the roster, but we'll have some special focus on the actual roster players for the Wolves, regular season roster as well. So lots to get to here yet this week. A big thank you for making lockdown wolves your first listen every day. Of course, this show is free and available everywhere that includes YouTube, as well as all of your favorite audio platforms, wherever you like to listen to podcasts, you can find locked on wolves. You can also watch on the lockdown sports Minnesota app on both Roku and Amazon, Fire TV, and you can follow on X at locked on T wolves. And I also at B beacon with two B's, two E's, C K, E and of course, the lock that wolves podcast is part of the locked on podcast network. The locked on network is, is your local experts on all the biggest stories. Once again, I'm Ben Beacon. This is the locked on wolves podcast and we'll catch you next time. Hey every dayers, NBA free agency is here and coverage doesn't stop with your team. Locked on NBA will be here for you every day of the off season with quick hitting 30 minute recaps of all the news and rumors in the NBA. 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As NBA free agency winds down, a look at what the Minnesota Timberwolves roster will look like. Which players are gone, and who will be taking their place?