I have a confession to make.
In 2024, a time that feels like a lifetime ago, the Minnesota Timberwolves were in Sacramento for Game 2 of the new season. With 3:29 left in the first quarter, Keegan Murray was subbed out for Trey Lyles, a player I mostly remembered from his one year in college with the Kentucky Wildcats. That was all the way back in 2014-15, or roughly six lifetimes ago.
Lyles was part of the Fab Freshmen team, featuring longtime Wolf nemesis Devin Booker and former (and current, let’s be honest) Wolf beloved Karl-Anthony Towns. Those Wildcats would go on a historic 38-0 run before falling to none other than – checks notes – Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker in the 2015 Final Four.
Upon first seeing Lyles enter this Wolves-Kings game, I did a bit of a double-take, because, and here’s the confession…
I had completely forgotten that he was still in the league.
Not to defend my very wrong thought as reasonable, but Lyles is exactly the type of player to go unnoticed and eventually be forgotten. A player who already has a decent amount of miles on him, now somewhere in the middle of the pecking order on a middling team and one of the least nationally recognized franchises?
That sounds like a recipe for obscurity. Almost like a ghost, but not the scary kind that causes one to let out a shriek. Instead, just an “Oh, huh. It’s that guy,” followed by the I-guess shoulder shrug.
A ghost would be insulted by such a response, and honestly, so should Lyles.
The thing is, I actually really like the idea of Lyles. Specifically, on this Wolves team.
Based on what Will Griffith of The King’s Herald had to say in a fun Q&A with our very own Leo Sun, Kings fans not only liked the idea of Lyles. They straight up liked him, for real. By all accounts, he’s a pretty cool dude.
Griffith: In the Mike Brown years, the Kings would hand out a Defensive Player of the Game chain and crown, and the whole team would take a picture, and Trey, no matter where he was in the picture, flashed fours on his hands. It took all of like 3 games into the gimmick where the entire team was hitting this pose, holding four fingers out on each hand, and despite a lot of bad times in the seasons that followed, he was well regarded enough that players still held up fours out of love for him. On the off chance that the Wolves suddenly have a gimmick like that, or start popping locker room pictures after the game, Trey will throw up those fours, and you will ask yourself, what the hell does that even mean?
It means “4 Life”. It was just a thing he started in high school and has kept it going ever since.
It would seem that Lyles is a likable enough person and capable enough player, or at least a player with certain capabilities – he can shoot the three well enough and drive the ball well enough and rebound well enough. I loath to turn this into a positive affirmation piece all of a sudden, but I don’t care; Trey Lyles is clearly enough!
Whilst on the Kings, his own teammates liked him, and the fanbase seemed to have nothing outright bad to say about his game, though you would be hard-pressed to find any superlative-adorned comments on his list of competencies (but there is a list).
So, if you’re not a Kings fan, it wouldn’t have been egregious to be like me and think twice about Lyles’ existence in the league, but he did exist. He was very much an NBA player. A professionally employable, consistently fine, effectively visible NBA player.
Last year, however, Lyles shed the last remaining threads of his visibility cloak. He was no longer in the NBA. He didn’t retire. He wasn’t exiled. Adam Silver didn’t disappear him. Instead, Lyles made a voluntary decision to leave. He also left the country entirely, marking his foray into La Villa y Corte. Madrid, Spain.
Was he looking for a clean slate? A fresh start? To watch the running of the bulls in Pamplona? To become the bull himself and stampede back to the NBA with horns painted in blood spelling out “SEE ME NOW”? Metaphorically speaking, it’s possible.
Expedition “Bring Back Swagger”
Playing for Real Madrid, one of the most prominent teams in European history, Lyles came on strong right away and never really let up. He was able to leverage his 6’9” and 234-pound frame, slow-cooking on post-ups, using his lower body to seal away smaller players, and utilizing his 7’2” wingspan to steal boards and flourish above the rim. All that combined with what he was predominantly known for: a steady hand from deep.
The EuroLeague final four championship game was Lyles’ curtain call, where he came out like a bat out of hell, punishing the Olympiacos defense for 21 first-half points. Though he would slow down considerably in the second half and Madrid would bow out in defeat, Lyles’ 24-point, eight-rebound performance was a nice capper to a year that reminded everyone what he’s capable of.
By season’s end, Lyles would average 13.5 points and 4.5 rebounds in just over 21 minutes of play, while shooting a staggering 45.9% on threes. It would appear Lyles had gotten his swagger back.
It remains to be seen how much of that swagger found in Europe carries over to the NBA and actually manages to manifest results. The EuroLeague and NBA are not the same league, and it would be fanciful to expect a one-to-one translation in performance.
In Madrid, only 40% of Lyles’ shot attempts were from three. Compare that to his previous two seasons in the NBA that saw his shot distribution largely favor shots from deep – 66% of his diet, to be exact.
Here, the role is going to be different, the spacing different, the competition different, and with that perhaps a little less comfort and a slight slippage of swagger. It’s an adverse league, the NBA, and to survive it and truly succeed, it pays to either be blind to its punches or just straight-up frothing mad.
But the idea of Lyles on the Wolves remains an exciting thought, and one worth exercising. He is the perfect tweener archetype for this team. With the downhill proclivities of both Ayo and TJ, and Beringer poised to mostly occupy space down low, Lyles has a real opportunity to provide second unit lineups with inverted potency. He’s not going to backfill the Naz Reid-shaped hole – and, to be fair, no one can – but with his particular skill sets and this team’s dearth of power forwards, there is an opening for a player of his kind to thrive. It’s up to him, though, to seize the moment.
A reason for optimism, and a reason for grace
Every team is a puzzle where certain ancillary pieces might not fit, while others do so perfectly. It can take years, several even, for those connections to click, but when they do, it can define careers.
Journeymen are finally able to make their names known. Think Shane Battier and Mike Miller, whose sharp-shooting prowess helped the Miami Heat win back-to-back championships in 2012 and 2013. Or Boris Diaw, Danny Green, and Patty Mills, vital pieces of the “Beautiful Game” San Antonio Spurs and their unconscious 2014 title run. There’s Shaun Livingston on the Golden State Warriors dynasty. Or most recently, Jordan Clarkson and Landry Shamet on last season’s NBA champion New York Knicks.
Not all roles are created equal, but if you can complement your team and help contribute to winning possessions, games, and beyond, then you’ve exceeded your expected value and proven that you are more than enough in this league.
When you consider the 450 active players, with 100 or so more waiting in the wings, from a relative small number of bonafide star players to the many key rotation pieces to the more populous distribution of playable and passable bodies whose job for a majority of the season is just to keep the bench warm, it is clear that every team is in fact greater than the sum of its parts. And to be a part of that sum is a privilege.
To be a part of something special is an honor.
Lyles once again finds himself somewhere in the middle of that large, expansive sea of NBA contracts, and because of that, I guarantee he isn’t the only player that people forget about from time to time. And hey, no matter how his career rounds out, at least he can say he made it longer than Frank “the Tank” Kaminsky.
Time will tell whether Lyles can play his part well enough to be remembered outside of the Wolves fandom. Maybe he becomes a de facto glue guy. Or he has to settle as an emergency fill-in, to find contentment in being the new team sage, a steady voice if not a steady hand, riding the pine like the owl in the tree. Sometimes, that alone is enough.
Truth is, if an organization wants you here and your teammates are happy that you are, then in a way you’ve made it. And so Lyles isn’t alone. Everyone in this league is necessary. If you’re here, clearly you’re doing something right.
On July 11, 2026, Lyles signed a one-year deal with the Wolves. I don’t know if he’s in Minneapolis at the time of this writing – that’s not important. For a while he was somewhere else, and now he’s here. To be here is to be present is to have value is to be enough. Only time will tell if he can be anything more than that, but for now, it’s good to have him here.
