Over the weekend, the Timberwolves will be co-hosting pre-draft workouts at their facilities with the Utah Jazz. They are doing this even though they don't hold a pick in the draft, which might seem counterintuitive.
Why go through the effort of hosting players you currently can't acquire?
For team President Gersson Rosas, always one to wheel and deal, not having a pick now doesn't mean the Wolves' cupboard will still be bare in a few weeks.
"Just because we don't have a pick on whatever day today is doesn't mean we're not going to have a pick on draft night," Rosas said. "The worst thing you can do is be caught unprepared and we're fortunate we have players on our roster that are valued by other teams. We have opportunities to jump in the draft at very strategic levels and that's a testament to our players, the value they have around the league."
The main mechanism the Wolves will likely use to upgrade their roster this offseason is trades or the sign-and-trade market, with Rosas saying the Wolves need to prioritize their power forward position.
But before fans think Rosas is aiming to get back in the draft after ceding the Wolves' first-rounder to Golden State to complete the D'Angelo Russell-Andrew Wiggins trade, he tempered his remarks.
"It doesn't necessarily mean we want to [jump back into the draft]," Rosas said. "We believe in our core and our group and we want to see them moving forward, but I'm not doing my job if I'm not being diligent and preparing for decisions on draft night."
That could be the night when some major trades go down. Wolves fans on social media have been all a flutter about the possibility of acquiring Ben Simmons from the 76ers. Rosas can't speak publicly about specific players, but his guiding principle as president has been to position the Wolves to strike when an elite-level player becomes available through the trade market. Knowing the Wolves have a shoddy history of attracting big-name free agents, Rosas sees trades as the primary way to bring high-level talent to Minnesota, much like Houston did with James Harden when Rosas was on staff there.
So if any All-Star caliber players are available, you can expect the Wolves to make a few phone calls, at the very least. Simmons' situation has yet to reach the stage where anonymous sources are leaking to national media he wants out or the team is actively trying to trade him.
"Based on our stage of our team and the market that we're in, trade will always be the primary platform of team-building for us," Rosas said. "It gives us creativity, it gives us the opportunity to acquire players to address needs in different shapes and forms."
The workouts also will be a chance for Rosas and his staff to connect in person with executives around the league as everyone prepares for the tectonic shifts that could happen around the league at the end of July and early August.
"This does create an environment here over the next three or four days where you can speak with teams, address some needs, address some targets," Rosas said. "Some of those conversations have already started from Chicago at the combine, so another data point to be together to talk through things is very enticing, not only for us but for every other team that's going to be here."
