The Minnesota Timberwolves spent the final hours before the 2026 NBA Draft reshaping their frontcourt, agreeing to send Julius Randle to the Brooklyn Nets in a three-team trade that also pulled in the Chicago Bulls. The deal, completed on the eve of the draft’s first round on June 23, reads less like a basketball trade and more like a balance-sheet exercise for a franchise trying to keep its own free agents in Minneapolis.
The Full Framework
Brooklyn receives Randle and Minnesota’s No. 28 overall pick (Joshua Jefferson). The Timberwolves get back the No. 33 pick (Isaiah Evans) and forward Mo Gueye, whose non-guaranteed contract Minnesota is expected to waive. The third team, Chicago, walks away with Nets center Nic Claxton, a seven-year veteran who gives the Bulls a rim protector to reshape their own center rotation. No other players changed hands between the Wolves and Nets, which is unusual for a deal built mostly around one team shedding money.
Why Minnesota Made the Move
Randle was owed a reported $33.3 million for the 2026-27 season with a $35.8 million player option for 2027-28, figures that made him one of the pricier frontcourt pieces in the conference. Clearing that salary reportedly created enough room, plus a $33 million trade exception, for Minnesota to turn around within hours and re-sign guard Ayo Dosunmu to a five-year, $112 million contract. Viewed that way, the Randle trade was step one of a plan the Wolves had already lined up before the draft even tipped off. More moves from this offseason are tracked on Playbook Wire’s basketball hub.
The Frontcourt Randle Leaves Behind
Randle’s production last season was not the issue. He averaged 21.1 points, 6.7 rebounds and 5.0 assists a game in his lone full season in Minnesota, numbers that kept him a fixture in coach Chris Finch’s rotation. His shooting cooled at the worst possible time: he hit just 39 percent from the field and 24.4 percent from three-point range across the Timberwolves’ 12 playoff games. That postseason slide, combined with the size of his contract, made him easier to move than his regular-season line would suggest.
The bigger beneficiary in Minneapolis figures to be Naz Reid, the 2024 Sixth Man of the Year, who spent last season playing behind Randle at power forward and still averaged 13.6 points and 6.2 rebounds despite a shoulder injury that limited him around the All-Star break. With Randle gone, Reid is positioned to open next season as the Wolves’ full-time starting power forward instead of the frontcourt insurance he has been for two years running.
What It Means for Brooklyn and Chicago
For the Nets, adding a three-time All-Star scorer for a package that cost them a second-round-caliber pick swap is a low-risk swing at frontcourt talent as Brooklyn keeps retooling its roster. Chicago’s return, Claxton, gives the Bulls a shot blocker who has averaged at least 1.1 blocks per game in each of the last five seasons, addressing a center need the trade created almost as a side effect.
None of the three teams ended up with a natural first-round selection to call their own from the picks in this deal, since Jefferson and Evans were both drafted and then simply switched teams as part of the framework. That left Minnesota watching the first round pass by without a pick of its own, the price of using draft weekend capital to escape a contract instead of adding a rookie. It is a similar story to what played out when the Ja Morant trade reshuffled Memphis’s roster earlier in the offseason cycle, and it fits a summer that has already rewritten several rosters, detailed in Playbook Wire’s rundown of the free agency moves that followed just days later.
The full ripple effects, including how Brooklyn plans to use Randle next to its returning core and whether Chicago’s rotation absorbs Claxton cleanly, will not be clear until training camp. For now, the trade stands as one of the more straightforward cap-relief moves of an offseason that has already reshuffled more rosters than most fans can track without a scorecard.
Trade details via NBA.com.
