Timberwolves’ Kyle Anderson hasn’t thought about free agency yet (2024)

Kyle Anderson is Minnesota’s lone truly key free agent this offseason, and it’s tough to find a scenario in which the Timberwolves bring him back.

The Wolves are already set to soar into the luxury tax given the extensions for Karl-Anthony Towns, Jaden McDaniels and Anthony Edwards all kick into the team’s salary cap table.

Minnesota could still re-sign Anderson, but it would further hamstring the team financially and continue to push up the luxury tax bill that ownership — whoever that is at the time — will have to pay.

None of this has crossed Anderson’s mind to date.

“No, I don’t think about that stuff until after the season,” he said Thursday morning ahead of Game 6. “I hate thinking about that stuff.”

But it will weigh on the minds of Minnesota, surely. Anderson has had a few tough stretches of play this season. The experiment of having him play alongside multiple other bigs — whether that’s Naz Reid, Rudy Gobert or Karl-Anthony Towns — hasn’t always gone well.

Anderson’s best stretches in his two years with Minnesota have come with Towns injured, both for much of last season and then during the month this season Towns missed with a meniscus tear in March.

Whenever Anderson has played his more natural position of power forward, he’s shined. But those opportunities are injury-dependent and this season have been few and far between.

Still, it may be tough for Timberwolves coach Chris Finch to part with the 30-year-old. He has the ultimate faith in the high-IQ utility player. That trust has been earned.

“He was our most important player last year in many ways. He saved our season, he did anything we asked him to do, so we know he had it in him,” Finch said near the end of the regular season when Anderson played well in Towns’ absence. “He’s played mostly at the three this year, which has been an adjustment for many reasons. He’s a basketball player, so he can play all over the floor. I think the rhythm of the game for him was slightly different at times. That certainly had something to do with it. But I think since the trade deadline, breathe a sigh of relief that he wasn’t going anywhere and thankfully he hadn’t, never had any plans to, but it seemingly at that point in time, it’s been better and better for him.”

Mike Conley missed just one game with a calf strain, returning for Thursday’s Game 6. Calf strains generally require longer absences to allow them to fully heal, but Conley is a competitor who doesn’t want a season to end with him on the sideline.

While playing for Utah in 2021, he missed the first five games of the Western Conference semifinals in 2021 with a hamstring injury when the Jazz were taking on the Clippers. With Utah down 3-2, Conley returned for Game 6. Unfortunately, he wasn’t himself, struggled from the floor and Utah lost.

Karl-Anthony Towns played through a knee injury suffered in the second quarter of Game 5 and was visibly hobbling off the court following the contest. Towns still looked affected by the injury Thursday morning but was emphatic about his availability.

“I’m playing tonight. That’s all that matters,” Towns said. “I’ll take care of (the injury) later.”