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Most of the early Giannis Antetokounmpo suitors are who you’d expect them to be. The New York Knicks? Sure. That’s the team he wanted to play for over the summer. Who doesn’t want to play in the Big Apple? The Miami Heat? Pat Riley has never met a superstar he hasn’t wanted to trade for. The Golden State Warriors? Of course they’d want to give Stephen Curry one last real chance at a fifth championship. They’re the usual suspects. They all make sense. So what are the Minnesota Timberwolves doing here?
The Athletic’s Sam Amick reported on Thursday that the four serious suitors thus far are New York, Miami, Golden State and Minnesota. On ESPN’s Get Up, Brian Windhorst made it clear that Minnesota is not only interested in Giannis, but that Giannis is interested in Minnesota.
In Tim Connelly, Minnesota’s front office is led by a general manager willing to take bolder risks than just about any other executive in basketball. He traded Karl-Anthony Towns after the best season in franchise history. While other teams will hem and haw over picks and fit and whether it’s worthwhile to gut your team for a single player, Connelly will put five rotation players on the table and force Milwaukee to say no. We’ve moved beyond the sleeper designation. Minnesota is in this for real.
That raises the obvious question of what they have to trade. By all accounts, Milwaukee wants draft picks and youth. Minnesota has no tradable first-round draft capital. It owes first-round picks to Utah in 2027 and 2029 and San Antonio in 2031. It can offer swap rights in 2028, but if Antetokounmpo were willing to extend in Minnesota, that swap is suddenly worthless. San Antonio already has swap rights on Minnesota in 2030. Their 2032 pick is frozen because the Timberwolves were in the second apron last season. So a picks-based package, at least from Minnesota directly, is off the table.
What about youth? That’s where things get a bit more interesting. The Timberwolves have some scattered prospects on rookie deals that might hold some appeal. Rob Dillingham, Joan Beringer and Terrence Shannon are all recent first-round picks with years of team control ahead of them. The real prize here, though, is Jaden McDaniels. He’s only 25, he’s on a very team-friendly contract and he’s an All-Defense-caliber wing. He likely wouldn’t have too much value to the Bucks, specifically. Rebuilding teams have little use for elite role players. But other teams would surely have quite a bit of interest in McDaniels, and that’s where this exercise takes a turn.
The Timberwolves are in much the same position the Knicks are, albeit without all of New York’s big-market advantages. Both of them are relying on other teams to participate as facilitators here. They’re both going to have to turn veterans, in New York’s case some combination of Towns, OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges, and in Minnesota’s, McDaniels, Julius Randle, Rudy Gobert, Naz Reid and Donte DiVincenzo, into youth and draft picks that would appeal to Milwaukee.
The three most valuable players in that clump are McDaniels, Bridges and Anunoby. Poll the league and you’d likely see preferences for each of the three. But here’s what’s crucial for a possible Giannis deal: McDaniels likely holds the most appeal to the sort of younger, rebuilding teams that actually have draft picks to trade. He’s three years younger than Anunoby and four years younger than Bridges. He’s cheaper than both of them. Say teams like Charlotte, Utah or Washington are considering a run at one of these wings as a long-term stopper. Isn’t McDaniels the one out of those three that would make the most sense for them?
The most important possible facilitator in any Antetokounmpo trade would be Portland. The Trail Blazers control Milwaukee’s first-round picks between 2028 and 2030. If Portland wants Anunoby, Bridges or McDaniels, that’s a major boost to either Minnesota or New York. In basketball terms, McDaniels being the worst offensive player of the three makes him an iffier fit for a Blazers team that has a lot of work to do on that end of the court. But contractually, his cheaper deal would actually be quite meaningful for Portland because the Blazers probably want to clear cap space in the summer of 2027. That’s when they can renegotiate and extend the contract of breakout star Deni Avdija, hopefully locking him up in Portland before he becomes a free agent in 2028. His team-friendly contract now means a veteran extension almost certainly won’t cut it. The Blazers need cap space to secure him.
New York has an edge by virtue of having two of those valuable wings compared to just one for Minnesota. For now, we don’t know if the Knicks would offer both. If they would, Minnesota would have to hope it could bridge that gap by dangling several other players. Julius Randle and Rudy Gobert would probably be easier to trade for Minnesota than Towns would be for New York just given how much lower their salaries are. Reid, younger and cheaper than all of them, but not as accomplished, probably nets at least a first-round pick somewhere. DIVincenzo likely would too. Milwaukee might have to take someone with an eye on flipping them later. That’s not a crazy proposition. Look at how well it’s gone for Brooklyn with Michael Porter Jr.
It would be an uphill battle. New York seems to be Antetokounmpo’s first choice. We don’t know how much pressure he’s willing to apply to get there. If it’s significant enough, that might scare the Timberwolves off. Minnesota chased Kevin Durant over the summer and missed out because he didn’t want to play there. One could argue the risk of losing Antetokounmpo for nothing would still be worth the reward of competing for the next two championships with him. Minnesota is already out all of its own future draft capital. You can’t be any more all-in than the Wolves already are. If nothing else, losing Antetokounmpo would set them up to pivot to cap space. Hardly ideal, but if you think Minnesota needs to take a major swing to go from Western Conference bridesmaid to legitimate championship threat, this is potentially sitting there for them. We just rarely see such boldness from smaller-market teams.
Both New York and Minnesota are operating with the disadvantage of needing help from outside parties to make this feasible. Miami and Golden State have cleaner paths to two-team deals. The especially asset-rich younger teams like Detroit, San Antonio and Houston could end this with a phone call, but thus far do not appear engaged on possible Giannis trades. New sleepers could emerge at any time.
But there is a pathway, however narrow, for the Timberwolves to factor into this thing. They have similar, arguably better, assets than New York does. If he’s open to Minnesota and the Timberwolves can find other teams to participate in a deal, it now seems at least somewhat plausible that they could swoop in with one of the more stunning blockbusters in recent NBA history.