The Wolves don’t get the usual running start into this one. There’s no last game to carry over, no fourth-quarter collapse to relitigate. There’s only an offseason that felt less like a quiet summer and more like a contractor gutting your kitchen while you were out of town.
Minnesota took the thing down to the studs. Julius Randle shipped to Brooklyn. Naz Reid, the Sixth Man this fanbase would have adopted into the family, gone to Charlotte. In came LaMelo Ball, a lead guard to run next to Anthony Edwards, and Jonathan Kuminga, who picked the Wolves over the Lakers. New team, new jerseys. Monday night at Fiserv Forum is the first time we get to watch it breathe.
It’s the preseason. Tonight will be the 55th preseason date with Milwaukee, more than any opponent in franchise history. Nobody wins a title Monday. But we finally see the backcourt that’s supposed to change everything, and that’s worth watching. So here are the keys.
1. Let Ant and LaMelo actually play together. The whole experiment lives here. SI framed the Ball-Edwards pairing as the thing that decides whether this team competes with the West’s best, and October is for the awkward reps: the misread pick-and-rolls, the two stars figuring out whose night it is. The starters are set to get a real run. Watch how long Ball and Edwards share the floor, not what the plus-minus says.
2. Solve the Kuminga-and-Gobert math. Kuminga is the new piece next to Rudy, and the spacing question is real. Two non-shooters near the rim can turn the paint into a phone booth. The counter is Kuminga attacking downhill before the help sets, and one clean preseason answer here does more for the season than any stat line will.
3. Don’t get anyone hurt. Seriously. This roster already learned the hard way. Donte DiVincenzo is out with a torn Achilles from last spring, and the guard depth behind Ball and Edwards is thinner for it. The Bucks are healthy and perfectly happy letting October be October. So is Minnesota. Handle your business, log the reps, and get everybody back on the bus in one piece.
It doesn’t count. It won’t look clean. Passes will sail, rotations will lag, somebody will air-ball a corner three and we’ll all pretend we didn’t flinch.
But this is the first real look at a team we spent all summer arguing about.
Win or lose, we finally get to watch.
