MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The message to the Minnesota Timberwolves from the championship tier of the NBA has been delivered clearly and forcefully with their elimination from the playoffs three straight times: You're not there yet.
Nobody was listening more carefully than Tim Connelly.
“We have a lot of confidence in our guys, but it would be disingenuous to sit in front of this group and say we’re happy with the sixth seed, we’re happy with not being a home-court playoff team, we’re happy that our last three closeout games have been lopsided,” the Timberwolves president of basketball operations said. “We have to be realistic about what we have, which is way more good than bad, but we know that we’re not good enough right now.”
The San Antonio Spurs ousted the Timberwolves last week, taking the second-round series with a 30-point win. Last year, the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Timberwolves in five games in the Western Conference Finals on the way to the NBA title, finishing that series with a 30-point victory. The Timberwolves were beaten in five games in the 2024 Western Conference Finals, too, by the Dallas Mavericks when they still had Luka Doncic. They lost the clinching game that year by 21 points.
Now the Spurs and Thunder have begun what could be a conference final for the ages, two young teams with mental toughness, defensive acumen and a superstar player. So how can the Timberwolves catch up to that? Some of the improvement effort will come from within, be it expanding roles for young players or new responsibilities for established starters. And some of the actions toward trying to keep up with the Western Conference powers will come from the outside.
“We know our competition is not going to sit still, and nor will we,” Connelly said Tuesday during his season-ending news conference. “If we mess up, we’ll mess up loudly. We’re going to try to be as aggressive as possible.”
The Timberwolves have the 28th overall pick in the first round and the 59th overall pick in the second round in this year's draft, assets that won't move the needle much in trade talks, so they'll likely have to give up a key player or two to get one. The other disadvantage they have in building the roster for next season is the Achilles tendon injury to starting guard Donte DiVincenzo that will keep him out indefinitely in the final year of his current contract.
“Donte is one of the most competitive guys in the league. We've got to certainly find some more shooting in his absence,” Connelly said. “We think he's going to be back. We don't know when.”
Much of the offseason roster speculation will center around the status of power forward Julius Randle, who had a dismal performance over the final five games of the playoffs. His combined plus-minus rating over the four losses to the Spurs was a minus-93, but Connelly sidestepped questions about whether Randle still fits into the team's long-term plan.
“We don’t win because of one player, lose because of one player. I think when we lost in the fashion we lost to San Antonio, they were clearly the better team, and we have to look at the collective, me included, the whole building,” Connelly said. “What can we all do better to ensure that we don’t see the same result next season?”
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Minnesota Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch, center, watches from the bench during the second half of Game 6 of an NBA basketball second-round playoffs series against the San Antonio Spurs in Minneapolis, Friday, May 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)
Minnesota Timberwolves forward Julius Randle (30) drives to the basket against San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama (1) during the second half of Game 5 of an NBA basketball second-round playoffs series in Minneapolis, Tuesday, May 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
BUNIA, Congo (AP) — Authorities in northeastern Congo banned funeral wakes and gatherings of more 50 people Friday in an effort to curb a rapidly spreading Ebola outbreak in a region where medical workers have struggled with a lack of resources and pushback from angry residents.
The World Health Organization said that the outbreak now poses a “very high" risk for Congo — up from a previous categorization of “high” — but that the risk of the disease spreading globally remains low.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said 82 cases and seven deaths have been confirmed in Congo, but that the outbreak is believed to be “much larger."
There is no available vaccine for the Bundibugyo virus, which spread undetected for weeks in Congo's Ituri Province following the first known death while authorities tested for another, more common, Ebola virus and came up negative. There are now 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths, though more are expected as surveillance expands.
“We are trying to catch up,” Congo Foreign Minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner told the AP. “It is a race against the clock."
Supplies were being rushed to Ituri in the northeastern corner of the country, where nearly a million people have been displaced by armed conflicts over mineral resources. Ramping up contact tracing is a priority, Kayikwamba Wagner said.
In the provincial capital of Bunia, AP reporters saw empty emergency treatment centers, and doctors in the nearby town of Bambu using expired medical masks while tending to suspected Ebola patients.
The provincial government said Friday it was temporarily banning wakes and gatherings of more than 50 people. It said funerals must be conducted in strict compliance with health protocols. The authorities also required journalists to obtain a permit to report on the outbreak, impeding their work.
The illness also has been reported in two Congolese provinces to the south of Ituri — North Kivu and South Kivu, where the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group controls many key cities, including Goma and Bukavu, where the rebels reported two cases.
The group said Friday it was creating a crisis team to fight the outbreak.
Kayikwamba Wagner said having the illness in rebel-held areas was alarming because “M23 is, despite whatever ambitions they may have, thoroughly ill equipped" to fight the disease.
She said the Congo government and rebels were not communicating on the outbreak.
The efforts of health officials and aid groups have met with pushback from communities due to misinformation or situations where medical policy has clashed with local customs such as burial rites.
On Thursday, an Ebola treatment center in Rwampara was set on fire by youths who were angered when they were blocked from retrieving the body of a friend who apparently had died of Ebola, according to witnesses and police.
The dangerous work of burying suspected victims is being managed wherever possible by authorities, because the bodies can be highly contagious and lead to further spread when they are prepared for burial or when people gather for funerals.
Julienne Lusenge, president of Women’s Solidarity for Inclusive Peace and Development, a local aid group, said the population’s anger is mostly due to misinformation. “We have lived through years and years of conflict and hardship so rumors spread easily,” she said.
She said some churches have told their congregations the outbreak is fake and that divine protection makes medical care unnecessary.
In the Ituri province mining town of Mongbwalu where the outbreak is believed to have originated, Lokana Moro Faustin lost his 16-year-old daughter to the disease and bemoaned the fact that he was not able to give her a proper goodbye because of Ebola restrictions.
“At first, we thought it was malaria. But then came vomiting, a high fever, nosebleeds, and bloody diarrhea,” he said, grief-stricken.
The teenager died on May 15 and her body was taken from the hospital by specialized teams and taken directly to the cemetery for a secure burial. Faustin was not able to say goodbye because he was in self-isolation, and it pained him to have his daughter buried by people who were not family.
The United Nations said Friday it released $60 million from its Central Emergency Response Fund to accelerate the response in Congo and in the region.
The U.S. has pledged $23 million in funding to bolster the response in Congo and Uganda, and said it would also fund the establishment of up to 50 Ebola treatment clinics in the affected regions.
Lusenge said her group’s small hospital near in Bunia lacks basic protective equipment, exposing nurses and doctors to possible infection, she said. “We only have hand sanitizer and a few masks for the nurses, but we need much more than that," Lusenge said.
Both the WHO and Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believe the outbreak is larger than the cases reported so far.
The region’s already-weak health infrastructure and surveillance capacity has been further weakened by international aid cuts, experts say. The International Rescue Committee said it had to stop its surveillance activities in three out of five areas in Ituri over the last year because of funding cuts.
Armed conflict in the region further complicates efforts to handle the crisis. To get from Bunia to Mongbwalu, aid groups have to brace for potential attacks from armed groups.
“The outbreak can still be contained but the window for action is narrow,” Gabriela Arenas from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said Friday.
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Pronczuk reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press writers Jamey Keaten in Geneva; Constant Same Bagalwa in Bunia, Congo; Jean Yves Kamale in Kinshasa, Congo; Mark Banchereau and Wilson McMakin in Dakar, Senegal contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Charred hospital beds stand in smoldering Ebola treatment center in Rwampara, Congo, Thursday, May 21, 2026, after it was set fire by people angry at being stopped from retrieving a body, according to a witness and police. (AP Photo/Dirole Lotsima Dieudonne)
Flames and smoke rise from an Ebola treatment center in Rwampara, Congo, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Dirole Lotsima Dieudonne)
Medical staff carry an Ebola patient to a treatment center in Rwampara, Congo, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)
A person is wearing a protective face mask in front of the WHO logo, during the media regarding the epidemic of Ebola disease, during a press conference at the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, May 22, 2026. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP)
