Adrian WojnarowskiSenior NBA Insider Jun 25, 2023 4:41pm ET2 minute read
Minnesota Timberwolves center Naz Reid has agreed to a new three-year, $42 million deal that includes a player option, his agents Sean Kennedy and Excel Sports Management’s Jeff Schwartz told ESPN on Sunday.
The deal keeps Reid out of free agency and secures him to the franchise, where he arrived as an undrafted single player and went on to become a must-have frontman.
The player option for the 2025/26 season gives Reid the chance to get another new contract in two years.
Reid had his best season — 11.5 points and 4.9 rebounds per game — before a season-ending wrist fracture kept him out of the final weeks of the regular season, play-in tournament, and Western Conference playoffs. The Timberwolves clearly missed his presence in their opening loss to eventual NBA champions Denver Nuggets.
The Timberwolves risked losing Reid as a free hand starting next week, but Kennedy and Schwartz had been negotiating with Timberwolves President Tim Connelly for several months and finally reached an agreement on Sunday.
After arriving from LSU in 2019, his rise as a bencher behind Karl-Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert in the lead up to the Timberwolves made him an attractive target across the league. He also shot 53.7 percent and managed 34.6 percent of his 3-point attempts.
After the All-Star break in February, Reid had 242 points in 312 minutes of play; According to a study by ESPN Stats & Information, only Philadelphia MVP Joel Embiid averaged more points per minute during that period. NBA Finals MVP Nikola Jokic finished third.
Reid, who turns 24 in August, would have become an unrestricted free agent despite his age since he signed a four-year deal with Minnesota early in his rookie year — just like Jalen Brunson did with Dallas before joining the New York Knicks made the switch last summer.
ESPN’s Tim Bontemps contributed to this report.