
The Wolves’ Point Guard Conundrum: Welcome to the Quietest Panic in Minnesota
Here we are. The slowest, most mind-numbing stretch on the NBA calendar. The Draft is done. Summer League is over. Free agency has been picked over like the bread aisle during a snowstorm warning.
For the Timberwolves, most of the big questions are already answered. Naz Reid? Back. Julius Randle? Back. Joe Ingles? Back (and probably stretching as we speak). Tim Connelly has locked in the core, kept the Wolves out of second-apron
prison, and somehow balanced a roster that’s good enough to contend right now without completely mortgaging the future. It’s been a borderline masterclass of team-building.
Except for one glaring problem.
The Wolves have a hole at point guard big enough to drive the Target Center renovation plans through.
Father Time vs. Baby Face
Mike Conley has been nothing short of a godsend since arriving in what Wolves fans still calls The Mona Lisa Trade (a.k.a. shipping out D’Angelo Russell for Conley and NAW). His steady hand and calming presence have been the perfect counterweight to Anthony Edwards’ “I might dunk on an aircraft carrier” energy.
But Conley’s 37. The decline in the 2024–25 season was noticeable, and unless Mike is secretly on the Tom Brady avocado ice cream plan, it’s hard to imagine those minutes going back up. He’s still valuable, still smart, still capable of winning you a playoff game or two. He’s just not a “30+ minutes a night, 82 games plus playoffs” guy anymore. He’s more like a really good band on a reunion tour—you want them on stage for an hour, not three.
Behind him? Rob Dillingham. Second-year guard. Occasional flashes of brilliance. Occasional “this is going to end in a turnover” moments. And while Dillingham getting real reps is great for the long-term, are you ready to hand him the keys to a team that’s been to back-to-back Western Conference Finals? Yeah, me neither.
And then there’s Donte DiVincenzo. Love his energy. Love his “randomly hits five threes and swings a game in February” potential. But running an offense? Not his thing. We saw how that movie ends against OKC in the playoffs, and it wasn’t exactly Shawshank Redemption.
The Free Agent Desert
Minnesota’s cap sheet is tighter than Sydney Sweeney’s blue jeans. After re-signing Randle and Reid, the Wolves were always going to be scraping the veteran minimum barrel for a backup guard.
The names still floating around: Malcolm Brogdon. Amir Coffey. Monte Morris. Cameron Payne.
None of these guys are going to send the Wolves surging up the power rankings, but they’re also not useless. You just need one of them to come in, give you 15 minutes a night, and not steer the car into a ditch when Conley sits.
So why hasn’t Connelly made a move yet? Simple: leverage. None of these guys are going anywhere fast. The Wolves can afford to wait until camp. Maybe someone better shakes loose. Maybe a veteran gets bought out. Or maybe—and here’s the fun one—maybe Kyle “Slo-Mo” Anderson makes his return.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/26074600/2154728985.jpg)
The Slo-Mo Reunion Tour?
Hear me out.
Kyle Anderson’s had a whirlwind year. Left Minnesota for Golden State. Got shipped to Miami in the Jimmy Butler trade. Ended up in Utah as part of a three-team deal. Now he’s sitting on a tanking Jazz roster like a high-end wine at a frat party. He doesn’t fit their timeline, and a buyout feels inevitable.
And if that happens? The Wolves make the call.
Is Anderson a true point guard? No. But he knows Finch’s system. He can handle the ball in stretches. He’s a versatile defender who can guard multiple positions, which is huge in the playoffs. He loved his time in Minnesota, and the locker room loved him back. For a team that needs a stabilizer behind Conley and isn’t going to find a savior on the free agent market, bringing Slo-Mo back is about as logical as it gets.
The Bigger Picture
At the end of the day, this is the last piece of the puzzle. The Wolves are in rarefied air right now: a legit contender with a young superstar in Anthony Edwards, a deep core, and a GM who actually knows what he’s doing. It’s weird to type that sentence about the Minnesota Timberwolves, but here we are.
All that’s missing is one more steady hand at point guard to bridge the gap between “aging Mike Conley” and “not-quite-ready Rob Dillingham.”
Whether it’s Brogdon, Monte, Slo-Mo, or some veteran buyout we haven’t even thought of yet, Connelly’s next move could be the one that locks this roster into place. If he gets it right, the Wolves won’t just be chasing another Western Conference Finals appearance — they’ll be sitting squarely in the conversation for something even bigger.