The NBA All-Star break is mercifully here, with all the tweaks to this year’s format.
The USA vs. the World (vs. the other USA team) round robin tournament. The return of the shooting stars competition. Jaxson Hayes being by far the best player in the dunk contest. And Adam Silver letting 200 grifters, I mean creators, go off-leash inside the Intuit Dome to farm that sweet, sweet content means I will be treating the whole weekend like the Kid Rock halftime show and not acknowledging its existence.
Instead of giving in and finally learning what a Jesser is, or watching Mr. Beast launch his presidential campaign — but only if a fan can dunk over mecha Steve Ballmer — I’ll be immersing myself in the news that NBA expansion could be on the horizon (for real this time).
A report from the Dallas Morning News stated that the NBA Board of Governors could vote to expand the league this summer. The two cities should come as no surprise. Seattle and Las Vegas have been thrown around as expansion teams for the last decade. It will be exciting to have the Sonics back in our lives, and we’ll have to deal with LeBron and Tom Brady both being owners in Sin City.
One of the first steps for these two new franchises would be to fill the rosters. If the NBA adds two new teams, they’ll hold an expansion draft. The premise is fairly simple. Each existing NBA team can protect up to eight of its players. You can’t protect a player whose contract is expiring. And only one player per team can be selected in an expansion draft.
Spotrac made a nifty little program to simulate an upcoming expansion draft and recommend who each team would protect, saving me a ton of time and stress about the salary cap.
Their recommendations for the Minnesota Timberwolves caught my eye. They had the Wolves protecting their obvious young stars: Anthony Edwards, Naz Reid, and Jaden McDaniels. Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo would be protected if the draft were held this summer. Spotrac also has Tim Connelly and the Timberwolves protecting their young assets: Joan Beringer, Terrence Shannon Jr., and Jaylen Clark. Newly acquired Ayo Dosunmu wouldn’t be able to be protected because he’s a free agent this summer. But that’s not the surprising player left open for either Seattle or Las Vegas to anchor their defense.
According to Spotrac, Rudy Gobert, the Stifle Tower, who is in the running for a record-breaking fifth Defensive Player of the Year trophy this season, would be one of the highest-profile players left unprotected in a draft, along with former No. 1 pick Zion Williamson, Ja Morant, Jimmy Butler, and Paul George. If the expansion draft were just about protecting your eight best players, Gobert is a lock to be protected. But there are many variables to consider when deciding who to leave vulnerable to selection.
Gobert will be 34 years old by the time the 2026-27 season tips off in October. He’s having a resurgent year in his 13th season in the NBA, but there’s no denying Gobert has put some miles on his 7’1” French body. He was a shell of himself in the playoffs last year, especially in the Western Conference Finals. He was a non-factor against the Oklahoma City Thunder, averaging 5.8 points and 6.6 rebounds during the five-game ass-kicking. Gobert also played very little for France at the 2024 Olympics, and history shows a steep fall off for 30-something centers.
Along with his age concerns, Gobert is set to make $36.5 million next season and has a player option for $38 million that he will assuredly pick up in his age-35 season in 2027-28. That’s a hefty sum of money to be paying for an aging center that relies on athleticism. I sound like Shaquille O’Neal or Draymond Green criticising Gobert like this and counting his money in public. But these are certainly conversations Tim Connelly and Co. are having behind closed doors with expansion coming imminently.
If the Timberwolves were prioritizing their top eight players, they’d likely protect Edwards, McDaniels, Randle, Reid, Gobert, DiVincenzo, Beringer, and then either TSJ or Clark as the eighth player.
Things would get even more interesting if there were a zero percent chance the expansion draft would be held this offseason. At the earliest, it would be held in the summer of 2027. That would mean the Timberwolves couldn’t protect Gobert or Randle unless they pick up their player options for the 2027-28 season, leaving DiVincenzo as a free agent in the summer of 2027. Assuming the Wolves use Dosunmu’s Bird Rights to re-sign him this offseason, Minnesota’s long-term roster planning will revolve around Edwards, McDaniels, Reid, Dosunmu, and Beringer.
NBA expansion is coming soon. When it does, the Wolves will have decisions to make that could affect the championship window around Anthony Edwards. There’s no guarantee that an expansion team would take anyone left unprotected by the Timberwolves. Still, there’s a good chance one of the expansion teams would leave a draft with a cornerstone of this era of Wolves basketball.