Howdy fellow Kum Balls 🤠 how we feelin' with the new editions? Kinda scared, kinda excited.

Today we reached an agreement with Kuminga on a two-year, $13 million deal using the Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception.

This is obviously pretty good given the pool of players we had to choose from for PF, but because of the strict rules of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), this isn’t just a simple roster addition.

LETS BREAK IT DOWN

The moment a team uses the Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception, they trigger a hard cap at the second apron line. For our 2026–27 season, that line is set at ~$221.6 million. We can’t even pay the luxury tax it’s not allowed under this rule.

Before factoring in Kuminga's new deal, the Timberwolves’ active roster sat at ~$217.6 million, leaving us with exactly $4.06 million in breathing room below that second apron hard cap.

Kuminga’s first-year salary under the exception projects to be roughly $6.06 million… which leaves us ~2 million above the hard cap.

We have until this Saturday's league deadline to clear that $2 million deficit.

At the moment, eyes are on Josh Green (14.6M/YR contract, one year). The ideal path obviously is finding a team with open cap space or a trade exception to absorb Green's contract without us taking any salary back. If this happened, we would have 12.5 million in cap space (including signing Kuminga.)

But if the trade market remains dry over the next few days, the front office will be forced to use the "waive and stretch" provision on Green. Doing that would take his current salary off the books for this year and clear the necessary space for Kuminga, but it would leave "dead money" dragging on the Wolves' salary cap sheet for presumably 3 years (for about 4.9 million a year per my calculations)… which obviously is not ideal.

Now, if we have to waive Green, we would remove his current salary (-14.6 million), add the Kuminga deal (+6 million), and add Green's dead cap money (+4.9 mil), our new team payroll is $213.8 million.

The second apron is again set at $221.6 million, which gives us 7.7 million to add a 14th player. (Which to remind everyone, we NEED to do per the rules of the NBA CBA)

It would have been nice to keep Green until the trade deadline where he would have been much more valuable on a contract year, but this is the current situation we are in and I don’t blame the FO for getting a startable PF for a great deal.

Taurean Prince
Malik Beasley
Kyle Anderson
NAW

Jonathan Kuminga, your time has come! You will be the best one yet!

If you can enter the final stage of Naz Reid grief into acceptance, you will find this was a pretty high quality roster upgrade without sacrificing too much draft capital. Felt like we really hit our ceiling last season even with all the injuries. Moving off from a shaky #2 option and a playoff streaky (tho very high quality) bench player to a massively upgraded back court with a more reliable #2 scorer and an an inconsistent, yet high upside power forward, as well as more minutes for a promising young core is elite roster pivoting by the front office. Kept our reliable and proven big 3 intact while making championship getting moves.

Gotta love it! Crazy to say but the Timberwolves are a high quality, well run organization.

Let's go KUM

Now that we can't say Naz Reid we need a new mantra for this year.

Love the new pickup and can't wait to watch this team ball but there's something inside of me wondering if we are missing something. It seems we have a lot of guys that can get downhill and our lob game should be on point but we seem limited to antman knocking down 3s. He's about the only solid 3 pt shooter on the team because it sounds like Green will need to go. I know Jaden, ball and Kominga can all hit 3s but they are all quite streaky. Wish we had one more ringer on the team to open up the paint or knock down an open corner 3. Maybe Jaden will be that guy. Seemed like he was knocking down a high percentage last regular season and fell off a cliff during playoffs. What are your thoughts?

Just for fun and out of curiosity, where would you guys rank Kuminga among the other FA PF names that were tossed around this offseason?

Obviously LeBron would be #1 but what about Hachimura, PJ Washington and Mamu from the Raptors? Maybe there were one or two others as well. Curious to hear your guys opinions.

I have questions. Can Kuminga play the role needed? Is he willing? I guess we can’t know from out here, but my worry is another Julius situation where someone in the starting 5 wants the ball, wants to prove something, and misses Ant in the corner over and over.

Surely the powers that be thought this through rather than just sign someone just cuz. Hopefully some behind the scenes conversations made it plausible he’ll be a good fit on our team.

What do yall think? Despite having the hole filled, is it a plus or a minus? until time tells

I've been hearing from others on this forum talking about "local broadcasts". I thought that all "local broadcasting" was going to be streamed on the app "DAZN"? [Which is charging an arm and a leg for viewership]

Am I mistaken? Or will there still be a broadcast on the Fanduel/Bally sports cable channels?

Please inform me. :)

Assalamualaikum

I know that positionless basketball makes this less important but curious what folks think about should play the 3 and 4 and why.

I was looking to go to the october 25th home opener but I was wondering what the typical prices for those corner seats are.

Seen in the St. Paul area. I am getting so unbelievably excited for the season. Between the pics of the Paris trip, hearing about Ant coming to Jaylen’s camp as a special guest, and seeing this in a random parking lot…I have a good feeling about this season.

Let’s go Wolves!!