On the eve of the 2026 NBA draft, the Minnesota Timberwolves agreed to trade multi-time All-Star forward Julius Randle and the No. 28 pick to the Brooklyn Nets in a three-team deal for the No. 33 pick, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania. The Nets will send Nic Claxton to the Bulls, who will presumably absorb him into some of their open cap space.
Charania noted that the Timberwolves “free up significant salary with the remaining two years of Randle’s deal, giving them more flexibility to retain Ayo Dosunmu and use exceptions.” Meanwhile, the Nets and Bulls still have plenty of available cap space, according to Spotrac’s Keith Smith.
The Timberwolves moved down five spots in the draft to trade Randle and got nothing else back. It wasn’t a huge sacrifice in terms of draft value, but they’re otherwise just outright salary-dumping someone who just averaged 21.1 points, 6.7 rebounds and 5.0 assists in only 33.0 minutes per game for them this past season.
This trade is reflective of the new NBA, where teams are being forced to make purely financially driven moves that otherwise make zero basketball sense. The Wolves wouldn’t salary-dump Randle in a league without contracts, but money is forcing their hand here.
The Wolves’ Salary Crunch Pre-Randle Trade
Before trading Randle, the Timberwolves were trending toward being a second-apron team.
Between Anthony Edwards ($48.9 million), Rudy Gobert ($36.5 million), Randle ($33.3 million), Jaden McDaniels ($26.2 million), Naz Reid ($23.3 million) and Donte DiVincenzo ($12.5 million), the Timberwolves were entering the offseason with more than $180 million in salary on their books. That’s before re-signing Ayo Dosunmu, whom they spent four second-round picks to acquire at the trade deadline and is set to become an unrestricted free agent in a week.
Dosunmu’s floor figured to be the $15.0 million non-taxpayer mid-level exception, but he easily could have fetched offers upward of $20-25 million per year from other teams. Instead, he agreed to sign a five-year, $112 million contract (including a fifth-year player option) to return to Minnesota, per Charania.
Based on those reported terms, his contract can start as low as $19.3 million and increase by 8% annually from there. By clearing Randle, the Wolves effectively gave themselves the financial flexibility both to re-sign Dosunmu and use the non-taxpayer MLE and $5.5 million bi-annual exception.
Only three teams had enough cap space to absorb Randle without sending any salary back—the Bulls, Nets and Los Angeles Lakers—and no team has a trade exception that’s big enough to take him into. They couldn’t start a bidding war for Randle—if that would have even materialized—without taking salary back from any team other than the Bulls, Nets or Lakers.
If the Timberwolves cross the first apron, which is currently projected to land around $209 million, they would lose access to the non-taxpayer MLE and bi-annual exception. They’d have only the $6.1 million taxpayer MLE to offer instead. And if they crossed the second apron, which they were in real danger of doing before salary-dumping Randle, they wouldn’t have had any mid-level exception at all.
In essence, the Wolves had to pick between two paths: Run back the same team that lost to the San Antonio Spurs in six games in the Western Conference semifinals, or try something new? They chose option B.
Why The Wolves Sold Low On Randle
That series against the Spurs exposed how woefully overmatched he was against Spurs center Victor Wembanyama. With Wembanyama and the Spurs seemingly set to rule over the West for the foreseeable future, the Wolves apparently weren’t interested in running it back with Randle to see if he’d fare better in a rematch.
There’s good reason for that.
In the first round of the playoffs against the Denver Nuggets, Randle averaged 19.2 points, 7.3 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game while shooting 43.0% overall and 30.0% from deep. Against Wembanyama and the Spurs, he averaged 12.8 points, 7.7 rebounds and 1.5 assists while shooting 34.2% overall and 19.0% from distance.
In Randle’s final game of the season, he finished with three points on 1-of-8 shooting in a 30-point blowout loss. The Wolves battled valiantly against the Spurs, especially with star guard Anthony Edwards nursing a significant knee injury, but team president Tim Connelly made it clear after the season that he thought he had some work to do this offseason.
“We have a lot of confidence in our guys,” Connelly told reporters. “But it would be disingenuous to sit in front of this group and say we’re happy with the sixth seed, we’re happy with not being a homecourt playoff team, we’re happy that our last three closeout games have been lopsided,” Connelly said. “We have to be realistic about what we have, which is way more good than bad, but know that we’re not good enough right now.”
Randle is a perfectly fine regular-season player, but he’s not the typical archetype who drives winning in the playoffs. He’s a mediocre three-point shooter, so teams can dare him to beat them from deep, and he isn’t much better than that on defense, either.
Some teams might have given up something of minor value for Randle, but he’s under contract for $33.3 million this year and has a $35.8 million player option in 2027-28. It’s hard to make the case that he’s a significantly positive-value contract. And for a team like the Wolves, who needed financial flexibility to re-sign Dosunmu and further shake up their roster, Randle was a luxury that they could no longer afford.
The Wolves’ loss is the Nets’ gain, who now move up five spots in the draft and get a chance to rehabilitate Randle’s trade value like they did with Michael Porter Jr. last year. They’ll likely look to flip him at the trade deadline in February or next offseason when he’s a $35.8 million expiring contract.
This trade represented a sharp use of cap space for both the Nets and Bulls. For the Wolves, it was a necessary evil brought about by the league’s current collective bargaining agreement.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac and salary-cap information via RealGM. All odds via FanDuel Sportsbook.
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