Season Wrap: The 2024-25 Minnesota Timberwolves

  • By Keston Paul

    Last Updated on June 21, 2025 4:31 am by Keston Paul | Published: June 21, 2025

    A few weeks before the 2024-25 season was set to begin, the Wolves, Knicks and Hornets were involved in a three-team trade.

    The Wolves received Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo, Keita Bates-Diop and a future Pistons first-round pick.

    The Knicks received Karl-Anthony Towns and the draft rights to James Nnaji.

    The Hornets received Charlie Brown, DaQuan Jeffries, Duane Washington Jr., two future Knicks second-round picks, a 2025 Wolves second-round pick and cash considerations.

    This was a controversial trade for the Wolves after their run to the Western Conference Finals in 2024, so a lot had to be proven on the court this season.

    How’d It Go?

    The Wolves had chemistry issues throughout the first portion of the season, sitting 8th in the West with a 17-15 record on January 1. While they were 27-21 at the end of January and now 7th in the West, an injury crisis occurred and they fell as low as 10th in the standings with a 32-29 record on March 1.

    That is when things got better. By the end of the regular season, the Wolves closed with the No. 6 seed and an automatic playoff spot, holding a 49-33 record. If you do the math, that means they went 17-4 over their final 21 games.

    As the underdog in the first round, the Wolves upset the Lakers 4-1 and then got a little help with a Stephen Curry injury in the second round, but that is part of basketball and they also won that series 4-1. Suddenly, we looked up and they were back in the Western Conference Finals.

    Unfortunately, the Thunder were a level too high for them, but another WCF run did serve to silence some of the critics of them trading away Karl-Anthony Towns.

    Coaching

    Chris Finch has been the head coach of the Wolves since February 22, 2021. Coming off the high of a Western Conference Finals run in 2023-24, he would lead the team there again.

    The Wolves finished the regular season with a 115.7 offensive rating (8th), a 110.8 defensive rating (6th) and a net rating of 5.0 (4th). In hindsight, that is impressive as only the Thunder, Celtics and Cavs had higher net ratings and those three teams were viewed as the title favorites. If we narrow the scale to post-All-Star Break, in 26 games the Wolves had a 120.4 offensive rating (3rd), 112.1 defensive rating (12th) and a net rating of 8.3 (5th). The chemistry with Julius Randle had gotten much better, Donte DiVincenzo was hitting shots and the team was relatively healthy.

    In the WCF, the Wolves had to adjust defensive strategies as staying home on shooters and aggressive on-ball pressure just allowed Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to consistently get downhill and either draw fouls, score or kick out when late help arrived. In their 143-101 Game 3 victory against the Thunder, the Wolves adjusted with lower on-ball pickup points and even went under on some screens since SGA doesn’t typically look to launch many 3-pointers. They also had a lot of early gap help to try to crowd those driving lanes. However, SGA and the Thunder adjusted in Game 4 and picked apart that coverage and anything else the Wolves tried after that.

    Maybe we will see the Wolves experimenting with more defensive concepts next season, as they were forced to try zone coverages against the Thunder but it was unfamiliar to them. The playoffs are about having counters to the counters in certain matchups. We saw that the Wolves matching up well with the Nuggets in 2024 didn’t translate against the Mavs and the pick-and-roll mastery of Luka Doncic. In 2025, SGA’s relentless driving ability and the Thunder’s hyperactive defense got the better of them.

    The Players

    Anthony Edwards
    SG, Minnesota Timberwolves
    SeasonTeamGPGSMPG FGMFGAFG% FTMFTAFT% 3PTM3PTA3PT% PTSREBAST STLBLKTO
    24-25 MIN 79 79 36.3 9.1 20.4 44.7 5.3 6.3 83.7 4.1 10.3 39.5 27.6 5.7 4.5 1.2 0.6 3.2
    23-24 MIN 79 78 35.1 9.1 19.7 46.1 5.4 6.4 83.6 2.4 6.7 35.7 25.9 5.4 5.1 1.3 0.5 3.1
    22-23 MIN 79 79 36.0 8.9 19.5 45.9 4.0 5.3 75.6 2.7 7.3 36.9 24.6 5.8 4.4 1.6 0.7 3.3

    ADP: 10.0/8.9 (Yahoo/ESPN) | Total Value: 4/6 (8/9-cat) | Per-Game Value: 17/16 (8/9-cat)

    Edwards sank a league-leading 320 3-pointers in the 2024-25 regular season. Including Edwards, only five players in NBA history have hit 300-plus triples in a regular season: Malik Beasley (319) who also did it this season, Klay Thompson (301), James Harden (378) and Stephen Curry who has done it six times (311, 324, 337, 354, 357, 402). Off the back of this shooting, Edwards finished the season with career-high averages of 27.4 points and 4.1 triples on a .394 3PT%, propelling him to new heights in fantasy basketball.

    Here he is talking about some of his work in the offseason to improve his shot. I would recommend skipping to 0:38 since that is where the good stuff starts. The question at 3:02 prompts him to describe how adjusting his footwork has improved his rhythm. Then at 3:41 he mentions that watching Damian Lillard helped him improve his catch-and-shoot footwork as well.

    Per NBA.com’s tracking stats, in 2024-25 Edwards made 2.9 pull-up threes per game at a 38.5% clip and 1.1 catch-and-shoot threes per game at a 42.1% clip. In 2023-24, those numbers were 1.5 pull-up threes on 33.4% shooting and 0.9 catch-and-shoot threes on 41.1% shooting. In the video, he mainly speaks about his C&S footwork but it is likely that he adopted some of that into his pull-up form as well, because that is the area where we saw the massive improvement. The tracking data may not be perfect (it adds up to 4.0 triples per game instead of 4.1), but it does paint the general picture. He also mentioned working on how he comes off screens after the question at 1:49, which likely also helped the openness of his pull-up jumpers.

    Edwards fell a little short of his ADPs by per-game measures again, but the underrated aspect of availability made him worth the first-round selections. As he continues to improve, the next area will likely be continued growth as a playmaker and overall decision-maker. The improvements were easy to see when he picked apart the Lakers, but the Thunder defense (and they do it to everyone to be fair) showed that there is still progress to be made in that department.

    Rudy Gobert
    C, Minnesota Timberwolves
    SeasonTeamGPGSMPG FGMFGAFG% FTMFTAFT% 3PTM3PTA3PT% PTSREBAST STLBLKTO
    24-25 MIN 72 72 33.2 4.7 7.1 66.9 2.6 3.8 67.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 12.0 10.9 1.8 0.8 1.4 1.2
    23-24 MIN 76 76 34.1 5.3 8.1 66.1 3.3 5.1 63.8 0.0 0.0 0.0 14.0 12.9 1.3 0.7 2.1 1.6
    22-23 MIN 70 70 30.7 5.1 7.8 65.9 3.1 4.9 64.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 13.4 11.6 1.2 0.8 1.4 1.7

    ADP: 46.5/48.8 (Yahoo/ESPN) | Total Value: 58/47 (8/9-cat) | Per-Game Value: 76/62 (8/9-cat)

    Honestly, I cannot remember Gobert going this high in drafts (my brain says 50-to-65 range), but I also never got him in any of my drafts, so that is likely why. Gobert saw reduced minutes from the season prior and for a player with a narrow stat set that is FG%, rebounds, blocks and decent double-digit points, the small drop-offs across the board meant a few rounds of lost fantasy value. When the Wolves needed more offense, they would go to Naz Reid lineups more often.

    We usually got the best of Gobert if one of Julius Randle or Reid was out, since the Wolves had less frontcourt lineup versatility if one of those players was out of the equation. On the bright side, he was very healthy and all of his absences came in one 10-game stretch from February 13 to March 7 with what was called low back spasms and low back injury maintenance. Timing-wise, that may have been bad if you were jostling for playoff position or if you had an early fantasy playoffs, but otherwise, the overall availability did put him close to his ADPs via totals.

    Over the final 17 games after his return from injury, Gobert was the No. 46/No. 23 (8-cat/9-cat) performer per game, mainly thanks to 15.4 points, 12.5 rebounds, 1.1 steals and 1.1 blocks with a .707 FG% in 32.8 MPG. He can still be elite for stretches, but we cannot be certain that we will get it from a season-long perspective.

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    June 21, 2025, 4:31 am