We’re just past the halfway point of the ’25-26 season, 43 games in. At the literal halfway point the Wolves boasted an impressive 27-14 record, pacing for 54 wins. That end point would leave them 4.5 wins beyond their preseason over/under, and somewhere in the Top 5 of a top-heavy Western Conference. I didn’t publish a post in time to celebrate the midterm report, and unfortunately it was quickly followed by a pair of highly-competitive but ultimately unsuccessful games played back to back, this weekend.
On Friday, still without Anthony Edwards (toe), the Wolves lost at Houston to a red-hot Kevin Durant and the Rockets. On Saturday, now playing without Rudy Gobert (hip) and largely without Naz Reid (shoulder, left game in the first half), the Wolves and Spurs treated viewers to one of the absolute classic 4th Quarters in recent league history. Coming back from a 25-point halftime deficit, Ant scored a career-high 55 points (26 in the 4th Quarter alone) in what became an epic mano a mano battle against Victor Wembanyama. The Spurs eeked out the win, but anyone watching that game knew it was one that meant a lot less about a single game in the standings, and a lot more about the star power of two players, and the way the league will market and define itself in the years to come.
This year’s Wolves team has the same combination of capability and pressure that all of them have had, and will continue to have, under Tim Connelly’s leadership. He sold the future draft assets farm to bring in Rudy Gobert, which dramatically increased the roster quality, while dramatically increasing the importance of success in each and every season.
The Wolves need to be good, because they cannot afford not to be good.
It’s a pressure cooker only matched in franchise history by the desperate and failed attempts of the McHale-Saunder regime to surround Kevin Garnett with a supporting cast after the 2004 magic quickly faded. That front office traded future firsts for Marko Jaric and Ricky Davis. When the cupboard was nearly empty and the team wasn’t sniffing the playoffs, a full demolition project ensued and McHale got the axe just a few years after he gave it to Flip.
Trading away tons of first rounders is dangerous business, but Tim Connelly, quite clearly, likes to live dangerously.
The early part of this season had a soft schedule, relatively good health among Wolves players, and the rally cry of “continuity,” that was supposed to mean a hot start to the season. While the wins piled up at a mostly acceptable rate (6-4 after 10 games; 12-8 after 20; 20-10 after 30…) nobody paying close attention was especially impressed by the team’s performance. Lots of weak or undermanned opponents. Lots of halftime deficits requiring late-game comebacks. Lots of ugly videotape showing failed box-outs and lack of hustle. Lots of disappointment in the now-needed young players.
Simply put, the Wolves were winning games at a respectable rate, but without a level of play that could realistically contend for a championship come springtime.
There are two wrinkles that together define the team’s pathway toward making another deep playoff run and potentially reaching its first NBA Finals.
The first is something I wrote about in my last post in December, and then (controversially, I guess) tweeted more about, as the phenomenon only grew with time. This would be the Wolves statistical situation, now through 43 games, where the team is performing quite a bit better when Anthony Edwards is not in the game. Right now, the numbers are +7.6 when he’s off, and +3.4 when he’s on. For some perspective on a 4.2 points per 100 possessions differential, the middle of the league teams right now are the Magic (+1.1) and Hornets (-0.4). Move up 4 points and you’re in the Knicks and Timberwolves territory, teams quite a bit better than league-average. Move down 4 points and you’re at the Brooklyn Nets, nobody’s idea of a decent team (even if they’ve performed admirably for their low talent level). Four points is a meaningful gap.
The second wrinkle is that the Wolves as a collective group (with or without Ant playing) have clearly been competing better in January. The New Year’s Eve debacle at Atlanta seems to have been the shrieking wake-up call they needed to play harder on defense, and faster and more together on offense. Whatever the basketball-strategic or locker room-motivational reasons for it, the Wolves in Calendar Year 2026 are a much more fun team to watch, and a team that is much more easily envisioned in the conference finals for the third straight year. Zach Lowe, anybody’s reliable barometer for objective leaguewide takes, had big things to say about the Wolves’ title prospects:
These two concepts weave together neatly when you watch games like last night’s at San Antonio. Playing against the best defensive player in the league (apologies to Rudy, but Wemby when active and healthy has succeeded him for the French crown), Ant went supernova and was completely unstoppable. There is no player in the world – not Shai, not even Jokic – who can rack up points as rapidly against elite defense as Ant was doing to the Spurs. As a shotmaker, his elite craft, Ant at this point has few if any peers. He’s got the athletic ability to “get his own shot” on par with the greatest of all time, the MJs and Kobes. As time goes on, he builds a longer and longer trail of marksmanship from three-point range that makes him almost like a prime James Harden, in how he drills difficult shots from 25+ feet out. (Eds note: I almost typed Steph Curry’s name there, but had to check myself after revisiting his Basketball-Reference page.) This year Ant is hitting 41.8 percent of threes on 8.4 attempts per game. Combine the prolific three bombing with his explosive drives to the rim and you’ve got a built-in-a-lab perimeter scorer. That performance versus the Spurs was reminiscent of Ant’s famous moments against KD and the Suns in the 4-0 sweep first round series in 2024. It’s a level of shotmaking and flair for the moment that is damn-near unbeatable.
This is to heap on as much praise as possible, to highlight the reality that this team needs to integrate and leverage Ant’s shotmaking more successfully into the feistier, faster, more collective approach that the team has demonstrated over the last few weeks. There should be a way to inspire all of the players to give maximum effort on defense and in transition, while also ensuring that Ant gets enough shots and can bend opposing defenses all sorts of different directions so that life is made easier for his teammates. The team should have a dominant +/- over the course of a season when Anthony Edwards is on the floor. Opposing teams should both struggle to score against Jaden McDaniels and Rudy Gobert (and Joan Beringer!), while losing its breath on the other end, trying to stay with Ant without completely abandoning his teammates.
I’ve little doubt that Finch understands this better than we do, and that it’s a job one part basketball x’s and o’s, and another part Zen Master psychological manipulator. He needs to keep Julius Randle’s mood up, even if his usage goes down. He needs Jaden McDaniels to continually accept a low scoring output in exchange for team success and All-Defensive Team consideration. Maybe first and foremost, he needs Ant to balance his huge responsibility of making buckets with every player’s primary task of winning the team game.
Some of those games with Ant out of the lineup were really fun to watch, as the team approached each game from the outset as a tough task that required full buy-in, and maximum effort and speed. Ant’s return against the Spurs was a whole ‘nother level of must-see-TV, the best basketball talent in the world on full display. If Finch can fuse these things, the Wolves will reach their potential.
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