While LaMelo Ball’s on-court fit in Minnesota will go a long way toward ultimately determining the Timberwolves’ ceiling in 2026/27 and beyond, head coach Chris Finch said on Monday that Ball’s impact in the locker room shouldn’t be understated, as Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic relays.
“He’s always in a great mood,” Finch said. “Always come in smiling. He and Anthony (Edwards) have a shared quality: They’re really hard to stay mad at. And they do some things that you want to get mad at. They have a reflective joy, and I think that’s important. They tease the joy out of each other as practice goes along. So, that kind of adds to the overall spirit of the group, which we really needed.”
The Timberwolves made the Western Conference finals in both 2024 and 2025 and advanced to the second round of the playoffs in 2026. However, beat writers covering the Wolves last season repeatedly suggested that the vibes surrounding the team weren’t always positive — Finch suggested on Monday that that’s certainly not the case this fall.
“We referred to ourselves as a moody team in the last couple of years at times, and it’s probably gotten in our way,” the Wolves’ coach said. “We’ve traded moodiness for giddiness, so we’ve got to kind of get back to some sort of equilibrium. But it’s been fun to go to work every day so far.”
Here are a few more notes from around the Western Conference:
Veteran point guard Jordan McLaughlin, who re-signed with the Spurs this summer on a minimum-salary contract, said on Monday that he briefly considered the Hawks, Celtics, and Jazz before opting to return to San Antonio, tweets Tom Orsborn of The San Antonio Express-News. “You hear nothing but good things before coming into the organization, but when you’re in it and you actually see it, they take care of their players,” McLaughlin said of the Spurs.
Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault spoke on Monday about the pride the organization takes in the development of homegrown players like Luguentz Dort and Aaron Wiggins, both of whom were traded this offseason (Twitter video link via Justin Martinez of The Oklahoman). Asked how involved he was in those roster decisions, Daigneault replied, “It’s definitely Sam (Presti’s) decision, but I wouldn’t describe it as that I’m totally separated from it. One of Sam’s gifts as a decision-maker is his ability to take information in from a lot of different sources, and I’m one of those sources. Sam and I talk regularly about the team, the roster. But, at the end of the day, the roster decisions are Sam’s decisions” (Twitter video link via Martinez).
The Pelicans are formally listing Jordan Dumars – the son of executive VP of basketball operations Joe Dumars – as an “executive advisor” ahead of the 2026/27 season, notes Shamit Dua of In The NO (Twitter link). Dua reported last November that the younger Dumars had become part of management’s inner circle despite the fact that his hiring was never officially announced. At the time, the team described him as a “basketball operations consultant.”