The Wolves will play 27 games on national television this season, including a Christmas night game in our building and a Thanksgiving Eve slot on ESPN. The NBA does not hand out that kind of calendar as a participation trophy.
The full 82 landed this week, and the league office answered a question this fanbase has been asking, in one form or another, since 1989: do they think we belong up there with the brand names? Read the calendar. They do.
That is not the same as saying this roster is finished. LaMelo Ball is here, Naz Reid and Julius Randle are not. But after two straight Western Conference finals in 2024 and 2025 and a summer that rewired the rotation, the league scheduled us like a team worth watching. Let’s go through it.
The opener, and the first real week
It starts Oct. 21 in Miami, 6:30 p.m. CT on ESPN. Opening on the road on a national window is a compliment with a degree of difficulty attached.
The home opener is Sunday, Oct. 25 against Toronto at 6 p.m. CT. Then it gets unfriendly in a hurry: a trip to Cleveland on the 26th, Golden State back at Target Center on the 28th, and the Clippers on the 30th.
Four games in six days to open the year with three time zones involved. If you want an early read on whether the Ball fit is going to look coherent or chaotic, you’ll have one by Halloween.
Christmas
Dec. 25. Oklahoma City. 7 p.m. CT at Target Center.
This is the first Christmas Day home game in franchise history. After years of watching that showcase from somebody else’s arena, and this is the year the league finally put the cameras in ours.
OKC is the team that ended our 2025 spring in the conference finals, and now we get them in the marquee window, in our building. The league thinks we belong on its biggest day.
Circle it. Buy the tickets early. The people who sat through Kahn and the Wiggins years earned a December night where the whole country has to look at Target Center.
The revenge circuit
Naz Reid comes home Jan. 29, 8:30 p.m. CT, wearing Charlotte teal. That is going to be strange and it is going to be loud, and the ovation should last long enough to make the broadcast uncomfortable. He gave this franchise seven years, a Sixth Man award, and two words that people tattooed on themselves.
LaMelo’s return trip to Charlotte is Feb. 15, an 11 a.m. CT Presidents’ Day matinee. Noon tip on the East Coast, national window, for the first time he plays in the building where he became a star.
The Denver back-to-back is its own kind of grudge: Dec. 28 in Denver, Dec. 31 at home. New Year’s Eve against the Nuggets is a good problem for your evening plans.
The shape of the schedule
The structural stuff, straight from the released slate: 13 back-to-backs among the 80 dated games. The longest homestand is a monster: eight straight at Target Center from Nov. 8 through Nov. 23, the stretch that should fatten the record. The bill comes due right after: a five-game West Coast swing (Sacramento, Portland, the Clippers, Phoenix, Utah) spanning Nov. 29 to Dec. 14 around the Cup-knockout window, the longest trip of the season. Full slate, all times Central, on our Schedules page.
The nastiest 48 hours: a Saturday matinee in Philadelphia on Jan. 16, then Madison Square Garden on MLK Day, Jan. 18, at 4 p.m. CT on NBC and Peacock. Holiday-window games in two of the loudest buildings in the sport, two days apart.
Two more circles on the calendar
San Antonio comes to town Feb. 18 as the last game before the All-Star break, a rematch with the team that ended our spring, and the frontcourt matchup will tell you plenty. And the season closes at home on April 11 against Houston, which is exactly the kind of finale that decides seeding if this thing goes the way it should.
The Cup
Minnesota drew West Group B: Oklahoma City, the Clippers, New Orleans and Memphis. Strip away the branding and the group is one game that matters and three the Wolves should handle. Win the winnable ones, and Thanksgiving Eve in Oklahoma City decides the group outright.
The group games: Clippers at home Oct. 30, at New Orleans Nov. 6, at Oklahoma City on Thanksgiving Eve, Nov. 25 at 6:30 p.m. CT on ESPN as part of the league’s holiday tripleheader, and Memphis at home Nov. 27, the day after Thanksgiving. Group play runs Oct. 30 through Nov. 27, mostly on Fridays plus the Thanksgiving-week windows; knockouts are Dec. 4-11 with the final in Indianapolis.
Win the group and December gets interesting.
How to watch
This is the year the TV situation changes for good. DAZN is the new local home, carrying 55 of the 82 games across Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas and slices of Kansas and Wisconsin. The team is offering 15 games free before you have to pay anything, with pricing still to be announced.
The other 27 are national: ESPN, ABC, NBC, Peacock and Prime Video. That’s a real number for a market that spent decades getting scheduled at 9:30 on a Tuesday and told to be grateful.
The team’s PR account posted the full slate the moment it dropped:
https://x.com/Twolves_PR/status/2087979214939025538
The banner date
Kevin Garnett’s No. 21 goes to the rafters this season. The team announced it back in April and said the ceremony details would come later. The full schedule release did not attach one. (Update, Aug. 14: the date is set — Sunday, Feb. 28, against Boston. The biggest home date on this calendar, Christmas included.)
Eighty-two games, the deepest national slate this team has ever carried, and a number going up for the man who made this franchise matter in the first place. Whatever else this season turns into, the calendar is worth showing up for.
