The most important Timberwolves basketball of the offseason happened four thousand miles from Target Center, and nobody kept score.
This week, most of the roster got on planes to France to visit Rudy Gobert, who grew up in Saint-Quentin, a couple hours from Paris. Per The Athletic’s Jon Krawczynski, Anthony Edwards and LaMelo Ball were the ones getting the team together. Ball was roughly six weeks into his Timberwolves tenure and already pulling teammates across an ocean. And Krawczynski was explicit that this wasn’t a two-star photo op:
https://twitter.com/JonKrawczynski/status/2080329759163035948
The social feeds did the reporting for us. Ayo Dosunmu’s story had the shot that mattered, the traveling party assembled in front of the Eiffel Tower (reposted by The Hoop Central):
https://twitter.com/TheHoopCentral/status/2086566159495905389
Gobert shared the scene from his own story too, including Ant’s instant-classic review of the Eiffel Tower:
https://twitter.com/TheHoopCentral/status/2086606572483174418
Either a compliment to the Magic Kingdom or an insult to France — and knowing Ant, both.
Why this actually matters
Chemistry was the story of last season, and it wasn’t a flattering one. This was a team that won 49 games in 2025-26 and made noise in the West almost in spite of itself: the vibes ran hot and cold, and Naz Reid himself named it after the season ended: asked what separated the Wolves from the two conference finalists, he landed on “probably just the moodiness,” and the need to be “less moody and more selfless.” When the most beloved player on the roster says that in public, the private version was uglier.
Then the front office detonated the core. In a four-team June trade, Naz Reid went to Charlotte, Julius Randle to Brooklyn, and LaMelo Ball arrived to run the point next to Ant. A full rebuild wearing familiar jerseys. The new backcourt has never played a possession together, and Gobert now cleans up for two of the most reckless shot-takers alive.
So no, a week of croissants doesn’t fix spacing. But teams that just got blown up don’t usually plan international trips on their own in August. The two guys with the most to prove about coexisting, Ant and LaMelo, were the ones booking it. And the destination mattered: at 34, Gobert is the piece this experiment leans on hardest, and he’d just gotten most of the new-look roster to his home soil a month before camp.
Training camp opens in a little over a month. The fit questions are real, and we’ll spend September breaking them down. But the leading indicator arrived early. Ant and LaMelo planned this trip themselves. And they picked Rudy.
