What to make of the Wolves' roster shakeup and its impact on the locker room

The Minnesota Timberwolves have experienced a large amount of roster turnover the past few seasons. While that is far from uncommon in the NBA, it is a bit unusual to see from a team that has won five playoff series over the past three seasons.

Looking back at the magical 2023-24 season, which saw the Wolves eliminate the defending champion Denver Nuggets on the way to their first Western Conference Finals appearance in 20 years, Minnesota has only three players (Anthony Edwards, Jaden McDaniels and Rudy Gobert) who saw time on the floor that season still on the roster.

For comparison, the team that eliminated the Timberwolves, the Dallas Mavericks, have been through an incredible amount of franchise turmoil since trading Luka Dončić and still have four players from that team who made it to the NBA Finals.

Wolves roster changes are piling up

This offseason, the Timberwolves have seen possibly the most roster changes in recent memory, with Julius Randle, Naz Reid, Mike Conley, Kyle Anderson and Joe Ingles all set to play for different teams next season.

On the court, the Wolves have done well to add talent amid the roster shakeup, with LaMelo Ball coming in with the trade of Reid and Randle. Off the court, though, it will be more difficult to replace the leadership Conley, Anderson and Ingles brought.

Conley especially has been an invaluable locker room presence for the Timberwolves since being traded to Minnesota in 2023. When things were going well, Conley would be the first to talk about how well his teammates were playing. If the team hit a rough patch, he would be the one putting together a team dinner to bring everyone together.

Anderson, who played an integral role for the Wolves in the 2023 and 2024 playoffs, returned after the trade deadline this last season and picked up right where he left off, mentoring players like Ayo Dosunmu, among others.

Ingles, while he may not have seen much time on the court, was also a helpful locker room presence. Ingles was constantly cracking jokes with players and the media while bringing a depth of knowledge about the NBA and opposing teams, which became especially helpful during the playoffs.

Without Conley, Anderson, Ingles and others, the Wolves' locker room is set to have a much different vibe next season. They will not have as much veteran leadership to lean on, requiring the players at the top of the roster to take on more of that responsibility.

Ensuring it's change for the better

That change can also be a positive. At many points last season, it seemed that the Wolves allowed a bad performance one night to leak into how they would play the next game and beyond. The atmosphere around the team would shift widely from week to week, which would lead to some fantastic wins followed by horrific stretches of play.

"It's the thing that most drives me nuts," Timberwolves' president of basketball operations Tim Connelly said about the team's moodiness. "I’ve never won a championship, so I can’t tell you how to win it, but I’ve observed enough to know that you can’t string together bad days."

"You guys see it. You guys are at the games," Connelly continued. "There’s too many nights where we were not as locked in as we should be, and that’s unacceptable, plain and simple."

The challenge for the Timberwolves will be fixing the team's night-to-night approach without many of the veterans who had been tasked with trying to regulate the emotions of the roster. With Conley signing with the Boston Celtics and Ingles going home to Australia, the Wolves will be without two of their locker room pillars who so often helped keep the team on the right track.

That job now squarely falls on the shoulders of players like Anthony Edwards and Jaden McDaniels. Once the young guys who needed teaching, Edwards and McDaniels are now the longest-tenured players on the roster and will be tasked with leading the team on and off the court.

So much of next season will be determined by Edwards and McDaniels' ability to navigate the new personalities like Ball and others while avoiding the regular season-inconsistency of years past. The Wolves can no longer allow themselves to get bored with the regular season and need to stop making everything more difficult by not following the coach's game plan.

The training wheels are now off. Now, let's see if Edwards, McDaniels, and others can ride the metaphorical bike all by themselves.

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This article was originally published on www.si.com/nba/timberwolves/onsi as What to Make of the Wolves' Roster Shakeup and Its Impact on the Locker Room.