{"id":198045,"date":"2026-05-29T15:14:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T19:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=198045"},"modified":"2026-05-29T15:14:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T19:14:13","slug":"ayo-dosunmu-free-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2026\/05\/29\/ayo-dosunmu-free-agency\/","title":{"rendered":"Minnesota Must Accept Ayo Dosunmu\u2019s Free Agency Valuation To Avoid Another NAW Disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Minnesota Timberwolves saw Nickeil Alexander-Walker<\/a> leave for free last summer, and now he is the 2026 Most Improved Player while playing for Atlanta. Now, after getting Ayo Dosunmu<\/a> in a trade and seeing him score 43 points in a recent playoff game, Minnesota has a problem again. Should they pay him what he deserves, or let another good player succeed somewhere else?<\/p>\n

Minnesota Must Accept Ayo Dosunmu\u2019s Free Agency Valuation To Avoid Another NAW Disaster<\/h2>\n

Dosunmu arrived from the Chicago Bulls<\/a> at the February trade deadline and immediately reshaped Minnesota’s second unit. In 24 regular-season games with the Wolves, he averaged 14.4 points on .521\/.414\/.925 shooting splits. He finished ninth in Sixth Man of the Year voting, a testament to how quickly he adapted.<\/p>\n

Then came Game 4 of the first round against the Denver Nuggets. With Anthony Edwards<\/a> and Donte DiVincenzo<\/a> both injured<\/a>, Dosunmu scored a career-high 43 points on 13-of-17 shooting, including a perfect 12-of-12 from the line. That single performance validated everything the front office believed about him.<\/p>\n

He carried that momentum through the postseason. Across 10 playoff games, Dosunmu averaged 15.6 points while shooting 50% from the field and 42.5% from three. Those are not placeholder numbers. They are the resume of a player who has earned a long-term commitment.<\/p>\n

<\/smartframe-embed><\/p>\n

The Donte DiVincenzo problem<\/h3>\n

DiVincenzo, meanwhile, was in the middle of the most durable season of his career. He started all 82 games for Minnesota, averaging 12.2 points, 4.1 rebounds, 3.8 assists, and 1.3 steals per game. His 244 made three-pointers ranked sixth in the entire league. He was the connective tissue of the Wolves’ offense.<\/p>\n

29 seconds into Game 4 against the Nuggets, it all collapsed. DiVincenzo suffered a non-contact injury to his right leg. He left the arena in a wheelchair. The diagnosis was a ruptured right Achilles tendon, confirmed by ESPN’s Shams Charania<\/a>. Surgery followed days later.<\/p>\n

Timberwolves coach Chris Finch did not hide his emotions afterward. “I feel completely devastated for Donte,” Finch said. “He was playing so well. He’s had such a great season. He’s the heart and soul of so many things that we do.”<\/p>\n

Why DiVincenzo May Be The Odd Man Out<\/h3>\n

The arithmetic is where this gets painful. DiVincenzo enters the 2026-27 season on an expiring contract worth $12.535 million, per Spotrac<\/a>. That salary will sit on Minnesota’s books while he rehabilitates an injury with an 8-12 month recovery timeline. He will likely miss most, if not all, of next season.<\/p>\n

Re-signing Dosunmu is expected to cost slightly above the mid-level exception, roughly $15 million annually. ESPN’s Tim Bontemps reported<\/a> that doing so might require Minnesota to move off DiVincenzo to avoid crossing the second luxury tax apron, a threshold that severely restricts roster-building flexibility.<\/p>\n

President of basketball operations Tim Connelly has already made his priorities clear. “Ayo’s our most important free agent,” Connelly told the Minnesota Star Tribune, as cited in ESPN’s free agency rankings<\/a>. “He’s a guy we thought we knew pretty well, and we liked him from afar. Now seeing him day to day, we love him.”<\/p>\n

The Wolves learned a bitter lesson last summer with Alexander-Walker’s departure. They cannot afford a repeat. Dosunmu is three years younger than DiVincenzo and lines up perfectly with the core ages of Edwards and Jaden McDaniels<\/a>. From a roster-construction standpoint, the choice almost makes itself.<\/p>\n

What Comes Next<\/h3>\n

Achilles recoveries are notoriously unpredictable. Jayson Tatum<\/a> returned in under ten months after a similar tear. Tyrese Haliburton<\/a> and Damian Lillard<\/a> each missed an entire season. With the right treatment plan, there is a possibility that DiVincenzo comes back<\/a> earlier than expected. However, Minnesota cannot build its offseason plan around a best-case medical outcome when its championship window with Edwards demands immediate roster optimization.<\/p>\n

It is a harsh reality for DiVincenzo, who was building toward a contract year before the injury. He now enters next season without the chance to prove his market value on the court. The Wolves, though, can only prioritize the roster they need, not the one they wish they could keep intact.<\/p>\n

Featured Image: Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Minnesota Timberwolves saw Nickeil Alexander-Walker leave for free last summer, and now he is the 2026 Most Improved Player while playing for Atlanta. Now, after getting Ayo Dosunmu in a trade and seeing him score 43 points in a recent playoff game, Minnesota has a problem again. Should they pay him what he deserves, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5867,"featured_media":198066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,21,62,3],"tags":[3967,1553,947],"class_list":["post-198045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-timberwolves","category-nba","category-news","tag-ayo-dosunmu","tag-donte-divincenzo","tag-nickeil-alexander-walker"],"modified_by":"Benjamin Yu, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5867"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198045"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198067,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198045\/revisions\/198067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}