The DiVincenzo Clock Is Running Out

Drew Timme signed a training camp deal last week, which tells you roughly where things stand. When a team is adding a forward on a camp invite two weeks before opening night, it's filling a hole, not building a rotation.

The hole is still Donte DiVincenzo. He's been out all offseason with an unspecified injury, and there's been no update on a timeline. That silence is the story. Minnesota remade its backcourt this summer — LaMelo Ball in, Mike Conley out, Ayo Dosunmu locked in long-term — but none of that construction accounts for DiVincenzo being unavailable on night one. He averaged nearly 12 points and close to four assists last season in a role that kept the second unit functional and gave the wing rotation actual depth. Bones Hyland is still here, and Jaden McDaniels is a legitimate starter, but we watched what happened to both of them when the load got heavy last May. McDaniels' efficiency fell apart as his shot volume climbed in the final stretch. The team doesn't have a clean answer for what comes next if DiVincenzo misses significant regular-season time.

Kuminga is the more serious insurance — a two-year deal, a player Edwards personally recruited, someone who can create his own shot. But Kuminga is a forward, not a guard, and he doesn't replicate what DiVincenzo does off the ball or in the backcourt rotation. Timme is a camp body. Neither signing changes the math on the wing. My read is that Minnesota heads into training camp with one genuine open question that Ball's playmaking and Dosunmu's efficiency can't answer: when does DiVincenzo come back, and is it before this thing starts?