Drew Timme did everything a player on the roster bubble can do in a final audition. Given extended minutes on Friday night in Chicago, the former Gonzaga standout scored 18 points on 7-for-12 shooting, added seven rebounds and three assists in 27 minutes, and was one of Minnesota's most productive players in the preseason finale. It was not enough. On Saturday, according to DAZN, the Timberwolves announced they had waived Timme along with veteran forward KJ Martin, guard Antonio Reeves and forwards Enrique Freeman and Norchad Omier, making their final roster decisions ahead of the 2026-27 NBA season.
The announcement, first posted by the team's Timberwolves PR account and reported by Minnesota Sports Fan, closed the book on a six-game preseason that ended with a 133-116 loss to the Chicago Bulls at the United Center on Friday. Minnesota finished exhibition play with a 3-3 record, according to DAZN. The timing was standard for the league's cutdown weekend — Saturday was effectively the last day for teams to release players on non-guaranteed contracts and still set a compliant roster before opening night — but the names made this more than a routine transaction wire item. Two of the five, as Minnesota Sports Fan noted, had been among the most efficient shooters on the roster all preseason.
A big Friday night that changed nothing
Friday's finale was always going to be an audition game. Several of Minnesota's top players — including Anthony Edwards, LaMelo Ball, Rudy Gobert, Jaden McDaniels and Ayo Dosunmu — did not make the trip to Chicago, according to Roundtable Sports, which covered the Bulls' win. Head coach Chris Finch used the night to look at the end of his bench, and the young players responded. Rookie guard Isaiah Evans led the Timberwolves with 21 points, hitting five of his 10 three-point attempts, according to Roundtable Sports and the game's box score reporting. Jaylen Clark added 18 points and seven rebounds, Cody Williams scored 15, and Timme matched Clark with 18 of his own.
Chicago, playing its projected starters for a half, got a team-leading 16 points, seven rebounds, four assists and two blocks from No. 4 overall pick Caleb Wilson, according to Roundtable Sports, with Matas Buzelis scoring 14 and Josh Giddey and Leonard Miller adding 12 apiece. The Bulls closed their preseason at 3-2. For Minnesota, the result mattered less than the individual cases being made — and on that measure, Timme, Evans and Clark all helped themselves. Only two of the three were still on the roster 24 hours later. Evans, the No. 33 overall pick in the 2026 draft, survived the cut, as did Williams, according to Minnesota Sports Fan, even though both had shot the ball less efficiently across the full preseason than some of the players released.
Who the five are, and where they go next
Timme, 26, leaves with one of the stronger resumes of any final cut in the league this weekend. According to DAZN, he appeared in 36 NBA games over the previous two seasons with the Brooklyn Nets and the Los Angeles Lakers, averaging 12.1 points in nine appearances with Brooklyn during the 2024-25 season, and he has averaged 20.6 points, nine rebounds and 3.8 assists across 54 G League games. Yardbarker's summary of the moves noted he played a career-high 27 games for the Lakers last season. None of that production, in the end, could displace the frontcourt depth Minnesota chose to keep.
Martin was the most experienced player in the group by a wide margin. According to DAZN, the 25-year-old forward has appeared in 309 career NBA games for Houston, the LA Clippers, Philadelphia and Utah, and his best season came with the Rockets in 2022-23, when he averaged 12.7 points and 5.5 rebounds while playing all 82 games. He averaged 6.6 points in five preseason appearances for Minnesota while shooting 57.9 percent, according to DAZN, and Minnesota Sports Fan reported he went 11-of-19 from the field in the exhibitions. Reeves was similarly efficient — 6.8 points per game on 70.6 percent shooting in four games, according to DAZN — and the former Kentucky guard, a second-round pick in 2024, has played 54 NBA games for New Orleans and Charlotte.
Freeman's release is the one with a structural consequence. He was waived from a two-way contract, according to RealGM, while the other four were on Exhibit 10 contracts. Freeman spent last season developing with the Iowa Wolves, Minnesota's G League affiliate, averaging 16.5 points and 8.8 rebounds in 39 starts, according to DAZN, and appeared in four NBA games for Minnesota. According to The Athletic's Jon Krawczynski, as reported by Yardbarker, Minnesota intends to leave the two-way spot open for now while it evaluates players cut by other teams around the league — a sign the front office sees the slot as a live piece of roster flexibility rather than a spot that had to be filled by Saturday. Omier, who averaged 18.3 points and 11.4 rebounds across 38 G League appearances last season, according to DAZN, rounds out the five.
The story may not be over for most of them in the organization. According to RealGM, Martin, Omier, Reeves and Timme are all expected to join the Iowa Wolves for the G League season if they clear waivers, the standard path for Exhibit 10 players, whose contracts are designed to route them to a team's affiliate. Minnesota Sports Fan likewise reported that all five could land in Iowa. For Timme in particular, the G League has been a productive holding pattern before — it is where he built the 20.6-point average that kept getting him NBA looks.
What Minnesota's roster looks like now
After the five cuts, Minnesota's roster stands in compliance for the regular season. According to RealGM, the Timberwolves now carry 14 players on standard contracts and two on two-way deals, with one open standard roster spot and one open two-way spot. Yardbarker added that 13 of the 14 standard contracts are fully guaranteed, with Trey Lyles partially guaranteed until January 10. In other words, Finch's rotation is set around Edwards, Ball and the established core, the two rookies the team drafted in June are in, and the front office has deliberately kept two doors open — one at the end of the NBA bench and one two-way slot — for whatever the league-wide cutdown shakes loose over the next few days.
That is the real context for Saturday's moves. This was not a verdict that Timme, Martin or Reeves cannot play; all three shot the ball well enough this month to make the decision uncomfortable, and the preseason finale gave each of them a final, visible case. It was a numbers decision, made on the last day the calendar allowed, by a team that valued open spots and guaranteed-contract structure over camp performance. The players who were kept include the ones the franchise has invested draft capital in, and the ones who were released include the ones it had invested the least in — a pattern as old as training camp itself.
Minnesota opens its season on Wednesday, October 21, against the Miami Heat on the road, with tipoff scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET, according to DAZN. Previously is following the full opening-week picture across the league on its sports desk, including the rest of Saturday's action in the Golden Knights' 6-2 rout of the Penguins and Connor McDavid's five-point night for Edmonton, plus Sunday's football in the Premier League Sunday preview. For the five players waived on Saturday, the next chapter is likelier to start in Des Moines than in Miami — but if recent Octobers are any guide, at least one of them will be back on an NBA floor before the season is old.
Sources · 4 sources
- DAZN — Timberwolves waive five players; Timme, Martin, Reeves, Freeman and Omier statistics and season opener details
- RealGM — contract types (two-way and Exhibit 10), expected Iowa Wolves assignments and final roster counts
- Minnesota Sports Fan — team announcement, preseason shooting figures and which young players survived the cut
- Roundtable Sports — Bulls 133-116 preseason finale report, Caleb Wilson and Isaiah Evans performances, players who did not travel
