After slow offseason, Wolves boss Gersson Rosas stresses 'internal development'

LAS VEGAS – As Gersson Rosas was having a conversation with a reporter at the Thomas & Mack Center recently, former Timberwolves forward Robert Covington stopped by to say hello.

Covington and Rosas embraced and chatted for a few seconds, this coming after Covington showed up to a Wolves game and sat near Rosas shortly after getting traded in February 2020.

That Covington trade was one of the Rosas regime's bold strokes, a complicated four-team deal that sent a number of Wolves players out of town and brought back Juancho Hernangomez, Malik Beasley and a first-round pick.

Shortly thereafter, the Wolves president of basketball operations dealt Andrew Wiggins and what turned out to be the No. 7 pick in this year's draft to Golden State for D'Angelo Russell.

Rosas made those moves less than a year into his tenure and Wolves fans became accustomed quickly to Rosas' penchant for big trades, which is the way Rosas has often said he will re-make the roster.

That's what has made this offseason so uneasy for Wolves fans. Aside from dealing Ricky Rubio to Cleveland for Taurean Prince, Rosas has yet to sign any players in free agency not on two-way contracts or connect on another big trade.

"You're very strategic in addressing needs, but we don't want to overpay for the sake of overpaying unless it makes sense for us," Rosas said. "We feel like the trade market is a little more efficient in that regard and we've invested a lot in our own players. We want to give those guys opportunities to take advantage of those roles."

Philadelphia still hasn't traded Ben Simmons, so there is still a possibility, however remote, of the Wolves making a tectonic move that reshapes the roster dramatically for the next few years.

Barring that, the Wolves will enter next season more or less with the team they had at the 2020-21 season. Rosas is still working on potential deals involving Jordan McLaughlin and Jarred Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt took part in a team dinner with new owner Marc Lore on Thursday night while a source said McLaughlin and his camp remain optimistic they will reach a deal with the Wolves.

"Internal development is a major focus for us because of the stage we're in," Rosas said. "We're a young team where that's what you want to bank on is guys getting better. But secondarily, a lot of our free-agent business is in terms of internal development. The guys that have been in our pipeline, that we've developed, been through our process."

If the Wolves are going to be contenders, there is going to have to be significant internal development on the defensive side of the ball, where the Wolves were the 28th-ranked team in the league.

"We have to be more balanced," Rosas said. "It feeds into how we play offensively. We want to play fast, be dynamic and you do that the most effective way by getting stops and by rebounding. Where we're starting from top to bottom in terms of our defensive approach, one player is not going to change it. It's going to be a full commitment to how we're going to defend."

Rosas also said one big lesson the Wolves learned last year was how important availability of players is. Most of the season Karl-Anthony Towns and Russell didn't share the floor together for various injuries and Towns' bout with COVID-19. Then later in the season, Beasley was suspended and had a hamstring injury, preventing the Wolves from seeing just how everything looks when their top players are together for stretches of games.

The past few months have been a departure from what fans thought was the norm of the Rosas regime. The difference then was that the players on the roster weren't the ones Rosas had envisioned for the future. This roster is his now, and he wants to see what it can do.

"We've been very active, very aggressive, but we don't do deals for the sake of doing deals," Rosas said. "If there's a deal that can make sense, allows us to maximize our organization, we'll 100 percent do it. But if it's not there, if it doesn't make sense, we don't want to jump the gun for the sake of saying, hey, we did another deal."