A lot of the buzz around the Minnesota Timberwolves is about continuity.
Anthony Edwards, Jaden McDaniels, and Naz Reid are all entering their sixth season playing together in Minnesota. Julius Randle re-signed to remain in Minnesota after a whirlwind year since the Wolves traded for him on the eve of training camp in 2024.
Donte DiVincenzo, the other player in the Karl-Anthony Towns trade, is back and healthy after a toe injury last winter. Rudy Gobert has a new look but is back patrolling the paint for his fourth season in the Twin Cities. Mike Conley returned and is looking to prove he still has some gas in the tank after last season’s disappointment. Rob Dillingham, Jaylen Clark, and Terrence Shannon Jr. are all back, hoping to expand their roles this season.
Chris Finch is the second-longest tenured head coach in Minnesota Timberwolves history. Tim Connelly leads the front office into his fourth season as President of Basketball Operations. Although Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez are technically new owners, they’ve been around the team for years.
Nickeil Alexander-Walker is the only impact player from last year’s squad not returning.
The last time the Wolves experienced this level of continuity, they won 58 games and advanced to the Western Conference Finals for the first time since 2004. But there is one player back in the fold that nobody is talking about, who is ready to wreak havoc on the NBA in 2025 for one last ride.
Joe Ingles is a lean, mean inbounding machine ready to unleash hell on Minnesota’s opponents this season.
Okay, Ingles isn’t exactly a key returning member of one of the deepest Wolves squads in franchise history. The 38-year-old (Happy birthday, Joe!) Aussie only appeared in 19 games last season. He played 114 minutes, scored 15 points, shot 6 for 23 from the field (26.1 percent) and 3 for 15 from three.
Ingles didn’t play one second in the playoffs and was only used in extreme garbage time, when the Timberwolves needed a steady hand to inbound the ball in crucial situations, or that one time he had to start against the New Orleans Pelicans and played six minutes.
It was by far Ingles’ worst season to date since he entered the NBA with the Utah Jazz at the age of 27 in 2014. So why is he back at Target Center for Year 12 in the NBA and another season with the Timberwolves?
During his heyday, Ingles was exactly what the Timberwolves have been missing during the Anthony Edwards era — a 6’8” point forward who shoots 40.9 percent from three for his career. Ingles was the third wheel of the Donovan Mitchell-Rudy Gobert era Utah Jazz teams that made the playoffs for six consecutive seasons.
He’s one of the wiliest vets in the league. By all accounts, he’s a great locker room presence who can continue to help guide younger players from Ant to Dillingham and reinforce the fundamentals that still matter. For a team prone to blowing huge leads and turning the ball over, Ingles is another coach on the bench.
For Ingles, it sounded like it was a tough decision to come back for what would likely be one more year. Ingles spoke at Timberwolves media day about the toll his decision to return to Minnesota takes on his family, who are still in Orlando.
His kids are in school, and Ingles won’t be with his family much for the next six months. That absence will last for the entire school year if the Wolves make another deep playoff run in 2026. The $3.6 million Ingles will make this year will help assuage any hard feelings of dad spending his winter in Minnesota.
Ingles loves basketball, the grind, and being around the guys in the locker room enough to give it one last shot at an NBA title. He’s made nearly $90 million in his career and could ride off into the sunset at any moment. Still, Ingles knows the depth of this team will keep him on the bench for most of the season, and that it will also give him his best shot at an NBA title.
Ingles is far down on the list of people involved with the Timberwolves who will propel them to the first championship in franchise history. There’s a chance he won’t even be on the roster come playoff time. He’s the 14th or 15th man on the roster as the Wolves begin training camp and open the preseason with an exhibition game in San Diego this weekend against the Denver Nuggets.
He may only be on the bench in a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency role, and we don’t actually want to see him get any playing time because then something will have gone horribly wrong. But watching Ingles rip beers at a championship parade would be legendary.