The Timberwolves may miss out on LeBron.
Since LeBron James made it clear that he would be moving on from the Los Angeles Lakers, teams across the league have made their interest clear in the future Hall of Famer.
One of those teams is the Minnesota Timberwolves, who have revamped their roster with the addition of LaMelo Ball and look to have one of the most exciting young offensive cores in the NBA.
On first glance, the Timberwolves and James seemed like a perfect match. James could enter the Timberwolves as their immediate veteran and assume more of a mentor role while not needing to be the first-option on the team, leaving him more time and space to simply contribute on the court without pushing his body to the limit.
Considering that James wanted the last years of his career to be about fun, the Timberwolves seemed like a perfect match with the vibrant young personalities headlining them.
Timberwolves Missing Out
The case for Minnesota was made even stronger by the team appearing on James' agent Rich Paul's shortlist of teams that James was interested in, but a recent report from ESPN's Shams Charania, it seems like the Timberwolves are out of the running for James and have been passed up by some of James' past teams as well as an Eastern Conference riser that have recently transformed their own roster.
Per Charania's report, which he shared with Stephen A. Smith, the Miami Heat, Cleveland Cavaliers and Philadelphia 76ers stand out as James' top three teams based on what Charania has heard from sources around the league.
The Cavaliers' inclusion in these conversations has been a given from the start considering James' history with his hometown team and what a full-circle moment returning to Cleveland for a third time would do for the narrative of James' legacy.
The Heat are a compelling destination for a similar reason to the Cavaliers as the place where James won the first two championships of his career. On top of that nostalgia, the Heat added Giannis Antetokounmpo to their roster this offseason and the pairing of Antetokounmpo and Bam Adebayo could be another reason for James to head back to South Beach.
A Case for Philadelphia
The 76ers don't have the sentimentality of Cleveland or Miami to help their case, but the amount of improvements they've made to their roster already make them stand out as the best team of the three for James to go to.
Trading for Jaylen Brown from the Boston Celtics and offloading Paul George's contract in the process has put the 76ers in a radically better place than they were this past season and could be enough to entice Jams over.
All of these factors are bad news for the Timberwolves and it seems like the deck is stacked against them when it comes to signing James.
