Minnesota Timberwolves: Analyzing the opening night roster

The Minnesota Timberwolves have finalized their roster ahead of their regular season opener against the Brooklyn Nets. Let’s dive deep into who’s in and who’s out.

The Minnesota Timberwolves have undergone a major roster makeover this offseason as new president of basketball operations Gersson Rosas tries to build this team into a contender once again.

Only six of the 17 players, including two two-way players, that are on the opening night roster were with the Wolves last October.

With Minnesota’s limited resources this summer, Rosas decided to find bargains in free agency to fill out the roster and most of them made the team coming out of training camp.

Here are the 17 players that constitute the 2019-20 Timberwolves as we begin a new era in Minnesota:

The Wolves’ release of Tyrone Wallace this afternoon was the final necessary move to narrow this roster down to 15 full-time players and two two-ways.

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Minnesota decided to keep Jordan McLaughlin and Kelan Martin on two-way deals as they play positions that are relatively thin on this roster: point guard and big man.

It seems like the battle for the 15th spot came down to Tyrone Wallace and Keita Bates-Diop. The Wolves decided to roll with KBD because he plays a position of scarcity in the NBA on the wing and Ryan Saunders wants to have as many athletic guards/forwards as possible on this team to play a more positionless brand of basketball.

Wallace is a solid player, but there seems to be a wealth of available point guards in the talent pool and the front office must feel like they can go out and get one if Jeff Teague or Shabazz Napier go down with an injury this season.

It’s exciting to see a youth movement take hold in Minnesota as 31-year-old Jeff Teague and 29-year-old Gorgui Dieng are the oldest players on the roster, and neither of them are likely to factor into the Wolves’ future plans once their contracts are up.

The amount of wing depth is also encouraging after it seemed like Minnesota spent too many resources on old-school big men during the Tom Thibodeau era.

The Wolves and their new-look roster will begin their 2019-20 campaign in Brooklyn on Wednesday night as they look for their first win under their new regime led by Rosas and Saunders.