Every August, the NBA hits us with the schedule release, and, if we’re lucky, a little offseason drama to tide us over. This year? The drama is coming gift-wrapped as the 2025 Emirates NBA Cup draw.
And for the Minnesota Timberwolves, it’s not just any draw, it’s a storyline gift from the basketball gods. Group A will feature a rematch of last year’s Western Conference Finals: Wolves vs. Thunder. Two heavyweights in the same group, joined by three teams who… well, let’s just say they’re the “early lottery pick” portion of the Western Conference menu: the Phoenix Suns, Sacramento Kings, and Utah Jazz.
Group A is top-heavy enough to tilt the court. Group B? Mid-tier parity city. It’s got both LA teams, the Memphis Grizzlies, and the Dallas Mavericks, with the Pelicans thrown in as the default punching bag. And then there’s Group C, “The Group of Death”, home to Nikola Jokic’s Denver Nuggets, Steph Curry’s Golden State Warriors, Kevin Durant’s Houston Rockets, and Victor Wembanyama’s San Antonio Spurs. That one’s going to be the NBA’s version of the Elimination Chamber, with the poor Portland Trailblazers thrown in as the jobber.
For Minnesota, this should be a cakewalk… if they can resist their old habit of playing down to the competition. Last year, the Wolves earned a PhD in making winnable games look like root canals. Drop a sloppy one to Sacramento? Go cold for a quarter against Utah? Let Phoenix hang around too long? Suddenly, what looked like a 3–1 group stage turns into 2–2, and you’re watching the knockout rounds on your couch wondering how the Jazz ruined your month.
The stakes are bigger than they look. The Wolves haven’t advanced out of the group stage in the Cup’s first two years. Year one, they got torpedoed by the point-differential tiebreaker—death by math. Last year, an overtime loss to Houston did them in. That’s why this year’s setup feels like an opportunity: two home games to open (Utah on Nov. 7, Sacramento on Nov. 14), then a road trip to Phoenix (Nov. 21), and finally, the heavyweight bout—at Oklahoma City on Nov. 26.
You couldn’t script it better. The same floor where the Wolves’ playoff run ended last season. The same crowd that cheered as Anthony Edwards and company fall just short of the Finals. This game could very well decide the group winner. And sure, an NBA Cup isn’t the Larry O’Brien Trophy, but if you’re a Wolves fan, you know the value of getting to see your team lift _any_ kind of hardware. In a franchise with who has only experienced playoff series victories in 3 of their 36 years, I’m not turning my nose up at a midseason championship.
Bottom line: this is a chance to set the tone for the season, send a message to OKC, and maybe finally scratch “win something meaningful” off the Wolves’ 21st-century to-do list. November 26 isn’t the Finals, but make no mistake—it’s circled in red ink.
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