After making it to the Western Conference Finals in 2024 for the first time in 20 years, the found themselves at the center of a battle over team ownership and facing an increasingly concerning long-term salary cap situation entering last summer.

was fighting to stop minority stakeholders and from gaining majority control of the franchise at the same time that ' Rose rule rookie scale extension took effect, which gave the Wolves a trio of max-salary players and pushed the team's salary above the restrictive second tax apron.

A year later, much has changed in Minnesota. Longtime Timberwolves star , the club's No. 1 overall pick back in 2015, was traded to New York before the 2024/25 season began; Lore and Rodriguez ultimately won their protracted struggle with Taylor for ownership of the team; and Edwards is now the only maximum-salary player on Minnesota's roster after Towns was traded and took a pay cut on his latest contract extension.

But there was one notable constant that carried over from 2024 to 2025: the Timberwolves made it back to the conference finals for a second straight time this spring.

It wasn't just the first time in franchise history that the team had accomplished that feat in back-to-back seasons -- it was the first time the Wolves had won even a single playoff series in consecutive years. The club, which made its NBA debut in 1989, has compiled just six postseason series victories in its history, and four of them have occurred within the past two years.

As talented as some of those -led Timberwolves teams in the late 1990s and early 2000s were, you could make a strong case that this 2020s iteration of the Wolves is the best the club has ever been.

Still, there's work to be done, not just to get the Wolves to the next level but to make sure they don't drop off at all from their current level. In , , and Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Minnesota will have three of the NBA's top 15 free agents this summer and may not be able to bring all of them back. And even if the front office can retain that trio, more upgrades may be necessary to turn the Wolves from a perennial playoff team into a legitimate championship threat.

Figuring out how to take that next step will be the challenge facing president of basketball operations Tim Connelly this offseason.

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Technically, there's a possibility that Connelly won't be the one making the roster decisions facing the Timberwolves this summer. He has an opt-out clause in his contract that gives him the ability to leave the team if he so chooses. However, there has been absolutely no indication he's thinking about taking that route.