Tim Connelly watched this season as the Timberwolves beat his former team, the Nuggets, three times, and he also watched as the Wolves pressed the Grizzlies in a playoff series the Wolves should have won, if only they could have gotten out of their own way.
As Connelly takes over as Wolves president of basketball operations with only a few weeks to go before the NBA draft and free agency, he said he is not in Minnesota to remake the team from the ground up. His goal is to keep the team on an upward trajectory.
"I'm not joining a team that's broken," Connelly said during his introductory news conference Tuesday. "This is a team that's trending in the right direction. It's made a ton of really, really smart decisions, most recently extending [coach] Chris [Finch] and getting Pat Beverley on the additional year extension, so I'm not here to impede progress, I'm here to promote it."
In that statement, Connelly alluded to two people he will be working closely with — coach Chris Finch, whom Connelly referred to as "Finchy," and executive vice president Sachin Gupta, who has run the basketball operations since Gersson Rosas was fired in September and made the moves in extending Finch and Beverley's contracts. Connelly heaped praise on both, and has worked with Finch during the coach's one year as an assistant in Denver.
Connelly didn't delve into many roster specifics — he's still learning all he can about the Wolves, he said — but he did address the two highest-paid players in Karl-Anthony Towns and D'Angelo Russell.
Towns, who has two years left on his current contract, recently made the All-NBA team and is eligible for a supermax contract extension that can pay him an additional $210 million over four years.
"KAT is one of the most talented guys in the NBA," Connelly said. "He's got a relentless work ethic. He's probably the best-shooting big in the NBA. I'm getting to know him. I don't know him well. I look forward to getting to know him better."
Connelly knows he's the latest in a long line of front-office leaders the Wolves have had during Towns' time. Contrast that with Connelly's time in Denver, when he was helming the team as general manager, then president, for the entirety of two-time MVP Nikola Jokic's career.