Tim Connelly is a natural deflector. He likes to explain how he executes his job as a front-office leader. He brushes off Denver’s selection of Nikola Jokić as bad luck and often shrugs when discussing a trade, saying he just hopes it works out for both teams.
He has played a prominent role in building the championship roster in Denver and helping turn the Minnesota Timberwolves into a contender that reached the Western Conference finals this season. It was more of the same on his part after this week’s NBA Draft, when he engineered an aggressive move into the top 10 to grab Kentucky guard Rob Dillingham and then Illinois wing Terrence Shannon Jr. with the 27th pick to address a major need in the NBA. List of wolves.
After Connelly attempted to avoid credit Wednesday night, his friend and Timberwolves senior vice president of basketball operations Matt Lloyd spoke up for him.
“The kid was a complete monster the last two days, which put us in a position to add to the team with limited resources,” Lloyd said Thursday after Round 2.
Lloyd joked (presumably) that Connelly slept a total of 16 minutes over the previous few days as he combed the rest of the league for opportunities to add talent. The Timberwolves see their championship window as now, but their payroll is about to skyrocket, limiting their chances to improve the team.
With few resources to choose from, Connelly leveraged his wide array of contacts around the league to generate options where, initially, there seemed to be none.
“Throughout the meetings, the discussions, the debates, the videos and the stats, Rob Dillingham was someone we wanted to go get, and Tim just went and did it. It was wild,” Lloyd said. “It was an incredible two-day performance and it’s put us in a position to get better.”
The Timberwolves came into this week needing shot-creating help and knowing they weren’t going to have the money in free agency to get it. So Connelly gathered with a tight-knit team that includes Lloyd, Sachin Gupta, Jon Wallace, Dell Demps, head coach Chris Finch and a strong group of performance and analytics personnel, scouts and salary cap experts to come up with a plan.
In the days leading up to the draft, Connelly sat down with Finch to watch video of Dillingham. They saw an explosive player who throws loft passes as well as anyone on his current team, a key skill to opening up the offense more under Rudy Gobert.
“He was as excited as we were,” Connelly said of Finch.
One of Connelly’s greatest strengths is his network of contacts throughout the league. He is a very gregarious man, an expert in building relationships that helps him have frank conversations with team management at a time in the calendar when smokescreens and subterfuges are rampant.
“His personality is that he doesn’t come in here and be someone different than he is in real life,” Lloyd said. “His ability to gather information and know who was doing what, when, where, why and how, that’s why we got to the position we got to (Wednesday) and made the deal we did because of the information we gathered.”
When the San Antonio Spurs emerged as a trade partner at No. 8, Connelly met with owner Glen Taylor to discuss the financial ramifications. Adding the eighth overall pick to a team that was already going to exceed the luxury tax threshold meant millions more in spending. Taylor quickly signed the deal and, according to team sources in the room, encouraged the Wolves to continue looking for more ways to add talent as the night progressed.
“The ownership group was here last night and the resources they provided to us, they approved everything we did,” Lloyd said.
After adding two promising young offensive players on the first day of the draft, the Wolves changed course for Day 2. They began the day with the 37th overall pick but traded it to Detroit along with Wendell Moore Jr. for the 53rd pick. The Wolves used the 37th pick as a sweetener to get out of Moore’s $2.5 million contract for next season, a figure that would have effectively cost much more because they will be in the luxury tax.
There was simply no sign that Moore was ready to enter the Wolves’ rotation anytime soon, especially considering Wednesday’s additions of Dillingham and Shannon. Moore was the 26th overall pick two years ago out of Duke. At the time he was viewed as a versatile guard/wing who was expected to develop into the type of player who could initiate the offense, hit open shots and defend multiple positions. But Finch rarely used him in games. Moore appeared in just 25 this season and never played much more than eight minutes.
With no room in the rotation for Moore, who will be entering his third season, it didn’t make sense to keep him. The Wolves then traded from No. 53 to No. 57 and then exited the second round entirely and did not select any players on Thursday. The terms of the second and third trades have yet to be revealed, but the moves certainly helped the team’s financial picture, as big raises are expected to come into effect for Anthony Edwards, Karl-Anthony Towns and Jaden McDaniels.
If the Wolves bring back Kyle Anderson and Monte Morris in free agency, something Connelly said Wednesday was a goal, payroll will approach $189.5 million from the second tranche of the luxury tax system. That comes with severe restrictions on various roster-building methods, including sign-and-trades, adding salaries into deals and potentially freezing future draft picks.
Teams across the league are concerned about the new rules, and Lloyd believes Connelly’s approach of prioritizing making more draft picks rather than signing players in free agency could serve as a model for teams to navigate this new economic reality.
“I think Tim laid the foundation for teams that are in our position in the future with the aprons and the exposure to taxes and the salary cap,” Lloyd said. “We had to address roster needs with limited resources, so we simply used the draft instead of free agency or trades.”
(Photo by Tim Connelly/Alex Kormann via /Keynote USA/Getty Images)
Keynote USA
For the Latest Sports News, Follow Keynote USA Sports on Twitter.