Funny what happens when you get the No. 1 pick.
The Wolves will parlay their draft status into the marquee slot at the Las Vegas Summer League, when they'll play and the Los Angeles Lakers in a featured 7:30 pm Central time game on its opening day, July 10.
It'll be a meeting of No. 1 and 2 picks, of course, on NBA TV.
The league did the same last year, putting Cleveland's No. 1 overall pick Andrew Wiggins against Milwaukee's No. 2 Jabari Parker. They did so at the smaller Cox Pavilion, which fans jammed full and waited in long lines outside just to get into a game that seemed a bit like the playoffs in July.
This time, the NBA is putting the Wolves-Lakers game in the bigger Thomas and Mack Center arena next door.
The Wolves also will play Chicago (July 11, 5:30 pm Central time) and Utah (July 13, 9:30 pm Central time) in their other preliminary round games. All three games will be in the big arena, which has never happened before for the Wolves until they won the No. 1 pick this year.
Meanwhile, the Wolves continue draft workouts at Target Center this week. The plan is to bring top players Karl-Anthony Towns, Jahlil Okafor, D'Angelo Russell and Emmanuel Mudiay in for two days each, one of which will include a workout.
Wolves scouts are flying into town -- long-timer Zarko Durisic arrived on a late-night flight from L.A. last night -- to start 10 days of intense preparation and meetings that will culminate in the team selecting first for the first time, on June 25.
Right now, the best bet is the Wolves take Towns, but Flip Saunders very well could change his mind five or six times between now and draft night.