When the Minnesota Timberwolves signed Trey Lyles, it caught plenty of people off guard. The team clearly needed help at power forward, but Lyles wasn’t a name many fans had circled, especially after he did not play in the NBA in 2025-26.
The bigger surprise may be where he fits once the season starts.
At the moment, the Timberwolves still don’t have their starting power forward situation fully sorted out. If Jaden McDaniels isn’t the answer there - and Chris Finch and Tim Connelly have both said that, at least to start the year - then Minnesota has options, though not many that look like natural fits at the four.
Lyles is the closest thing the roster has to a true power forward. He arrived on a one-year veteran’s minimum deal in July, and while he is not expected to be in the mix to start, he does want a bench role.
But his most important job may come at center.
That’s the part of this signing that hasn’t gotten enough attention. If Rudy Gobert or Joan Beringer misses time, Lyles looks like the backup center.
Gobert has been mostly durable since joining Minnesota, but Beringer is still facing the grind of an 82-game season, and he is expected to get meaningful minutes whenever he is available. It would be a stretch to assume both bigs make it through all 82 games.
If the Timberwolves don’t convert Rocco Zikarsky’s contract to a standard deal or keep him active more often - he was barely active in 2025-26 - then Lyles is the only other player on the roster who can realistically handle center minutes. He doesn’t bring the rim protection Gobert and Beringer do, but he does have the size to fill the spot when needed.
Jaden McDaniels could probably survive in a small-ball center look for a few minutes, but that doesn’t sound like the right move. He picked up foul trouble often in the playoffs, and putting him against bigger bodies would likely lead to even more cheap fouls.
With little available in free agency, and unless a trade changes things, Lyles appears to be the Timberwolves’ second big off the bench. That could mean more minutes than most people expect.
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What makes the debate so enduring is that Minnesotas deal was only part of the story. There was also the report that Golden State had considered sending Klay Thompson for Love before Jerry West, then an advisor to the Warriors, opposed it, a detail that adds another layer to a trade tree already packed with alternate timelines. For Timberwolves fans, it is the kind of hindsight exercise that never really ends, because the careers of Love, Thompson, Wiggins and others might have taken very different paths if just one front-office call had gone another way. [Read more 🡒]