Of the four Veterans Affairs social workers that T.G. Polachek has cycled through in the past four years, his favorite has been a woman he refers to only as “Rita from Nepal.”

She worked with him for just four months last year, assigned through a VA supportive housing service. But in those four months, she did more than anyone to date in combing through public assistance programs to see what benefits he might qualify for.

The Veterans Affairs Medical Center, for instance, doesn’t offer blanket dental services for all veterans, and Polachek, 56, a college-educated U.S. Army veteran with a non-physical disability, is struggling with two broken molars. Rita quickly got him on Medica dental insurance through the state’s MinnesotaCare medical assistance program, though he acknowledges he’s since procrastinated on visiting the dentist, fearful of what they might discover along his gumline.

“I’m scared they’re going to take a bunch of teeth out,” Polachek said.

Finding him dental insurance, as well as discounted internet and public transit passes for low-income riders, was the relatively easy part. Qualifying for general assistance — once referred to as “welfare” — through Ramsey County has been much trickier.

Paperwork processed

With just $9 left in his bank account, Polachek bit the proverbial bullet in late April 2024 and applied for general assistance benefits. Three months passed before a fed-up Rita put him on a three-way conference call with Ramsey County, demanding to know why his paperwork had not been processed.

A county supervisor put the call on speaker phone, and Polachek could distinctly hear her feet padding across the floor as she wandered over to what must have been an old stack of mail.

“Oh!” he recalled the county worker saying about his application. “It hasn’t been looked at. We’ll take care of this right away.”

Two weeks later, in the last week of August, four months of cumulative general assistance payments suddenly were available through his Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card, delivered all at once.

As a self-described lifelong Republican skeptical of government excess, Polachek has donated ample hours toward helping conservative candidates win office — even candidates who would seek to cut or reduce the public assistance programs he increasingly relies on to survive. As a veteran who suffers from debilitating depression, he’s spent more hours than he cares to admit wrangling with the bureaucracy at Ramsey County and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, while attempting to access state, county and federal services.

On paper, those benefits should already be within easy reach.

The reality has been more complicated.

80 new county screeners to help with backlog

Neither political party, as he sees it, has done an exemplary job of listening to his concerns.

“I’m seeing everything Republicans never see or give a (expletive) about,” said Polachek, whose general assistance benefits totaled just $277 per month at the outset, though they increased to $350 last October. “God’s put me in this place so I can blow a whistle on a lot of things.”

His experience is hardly unique. As conservative federal efforts like DOGE — the Department of Government Efficiency — and federal bills in the House and Senate bear down on public assistance programs, administrators of those programs have been hard-pressed to acknowledge backlogs and inefficiencies that have kept some promised benefits all but out of reach for many poor clients.

Ramsey County announced in early March that it was hiring 80 new staffers — including more than 60 assessors — to help make headway on its massive backlog screening elderly and disabled residents for Medicaid-funded services. Since then, “we’ve hired quite a few, and the impact has been great to move things up,” County Board Chair Rafael Ortega said last week.

Ortega noted his office used to receive 10 complaints a day from desperate constituents wondering why their applications had yet to be processed. Pointing to the experience of his own 96-year-old mother, he brought those concerns to the county board, only to discover his fellow board members were drowning in the same requests for assistance. With added hiring and higher salaries, turnover among financial assistance workers has since improved.

“We have trained a lot of financial assistance workers, and then other counties offer them more money,” Ortega said. “We’ve adjusted our salaries to be more competitive.”

Frustration over backlog

County residents request initial MnCHOICES assessments with the county’s Aging and Disability Services and MnCHOICES Division, which determine eligibility for home- and community-based assistance for the elderly and people with disabilities. As of the beginning of March, new enrollees could expect wait times for screenings of up to nearly eight months, according to the county.

At the time, there were 1,947 residents waiting for their initial screening.

Emily Duesing, a case manager for the severely mentally ill who has worked with a variety of Twin Cities nonprofits, began writing letters to Ramsey County Board members in December on behalf of her frustrated co-workers.

“We would call Ramsey County to work on food stamps or figure out where our clients’ Medicaid was, and according to their own numbers they had a 52% call-abandonment rate, which essentially means you had a 1-in-2 chance of reaching a live person,” said Duesing, an incoming board member with the National Alliance on Mental Illness-Ramsey County, or NAMI, a group she worked closely with on her letter-writing campaign.

“One of my co-workers had a client, they were trying to figure out what was going on with her Medicaid, and they had called a Ramsey County financial worker 18 times and never received a call back from June to the end of December,” Duesing said. “My co-worker probably put in close to 40 hours of work in making those calls. That should have been a 20-minute phone call, and it took six months.”

That backlog has been blamed on everything from understaffing and high turnover to outdated state and county software that don’t share information well, forcing workers to create paper copies of key data and enter the information twice by hand.

“We have technology systems that don’t talk to each other,” Ortega said. “That’s being addressed. We just got money in this legislative session to address the technology.”

‘Really trying’

Meanwhile, a unionized workforce has resisted in-person work, delaying simple tasks like opening mail. Online portals like mnbenefits.mn.gov have made applying for assistance easier, but also led to an increase in applications, adding to already crushing workloads.

At the same time, inflation and rising housing costs loom large over an aging population.

“Case loads for financial workers have doubled since COVID,” Duesing said.

Still, she said the county’s backlog has gradually improved and she noted county workers are now using voicemail-to-text transcription technology to screen through calls faster.

Monthly “Ramsey County United” forums that were discontinued during the pandemic have finally started up again, bringing together the disabled, their families, case workers and others to meet with administrators face-to-face.

“Experientially, things have gotten better,” she said. “What I’m seeing is them really trying.”

‘It’s a safety net’

One of the public misconceptions surrounding public assistance, said Keith Kozerski, chief program officer with Catholic Charities, is the idea that recipients are somehow getting wealthy off free handouts. Most public assistance programs take property and other assets into account when determining if the applicant lands above a wealth threshold to qualify, meaning having a steady income, savings or a house could be disqualifying.

“For the average person who is living in deep poverty, that doesn’t change for them,” Kozerski said.

Polachek said he feels like a case in point. If his bank account has benefited from public assistance, it hasn’t benefited much.

“Right now, I have $46 in it, which is not even enough to cover one week’s worth of groceries,” he said.

The bureaucratic delays in obtaining public assistance as bills started piling were frustrating enough. Even worse, in his eyes, is the stigma.

Polachek, who works seasonal jobs as he can, said he takes no pride in receiving public assistance, and he shies away from mentioning it to his conservative peers, some of whom can be judgmental.

“A lot of this government assistance stuff, I was very reluctant to take it,” he said over lunch one afternoon at John’s Pizza Cafe in St. Paul. “People find out you’re on it, they blow a gasket. ‘How can you take that?’ But it’s a safety net. I can pay all my bills. I go everywhere on the bus. It’s not like I have a lot of vices.”

Public benefits

Despite his undergraduate degree in engineering, his last regular, full-time job was in 2014, though he spent the better part of 2019 working part time for the VA office near downtown Minneapolis in “compensated work therapy,” mostly serving as a gofer, transporting parts between work units.

“It’s an eight-month program,” Polachek said. “When you’re done there, if you don’t have a job lined up, they don’t really care.”

He still ventures back to the VA for psychological appointments and yoga therapy.

“I don’t like telling people I’m depressed because I want them to treat me normally,” he said.

Among his public benefits, he receives food coupons through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which is state-administered, as well as federal assistance through Housing and Urban Development’s Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program, or HUD-VASH, which covers the vast majority of his rent.

But it’s hardly luxury living. His small apartment is visited frequently by a mouse he’s nicknamed Jerry.

Polachek jokingly refers to the low-income housing where he lives in St. Paul as the United Nations because of its large mix of residents of color, many of them immigrants.

“As a white guy, I’m the minority there,” he said. “That doesn’t bother me at all.”

He’s never met most of the caseworkers he’s been assigned through the VA or Ramsey County. They’re usually just a voice on the phone, even a caseworker he once had for five consecutive years. Most “don’t know all the bells and whistles of assistance,” he said.

With late notices from Xcel Energy in hand, he applied through gritted teeth last year for monthly general assistance. After months of delays obtaining benefits through the Minnesota Family Investment Program, or MFIP, he began receiving cash assistance last August.

Three different MFIP case managers were assigned to him from September to December, before a letter informed him his new case manager would be “MFIP V”; he later surmised that “V” stands for “vacant.”

Critics “automatically think anyone on welfare is abusing the system,” Polachek said. “I’m sure there’s some fraud, but not to the extent people say. SNAP, a lot of Army families are on that because they’re not paid enough to raise a family.”

At the age of 56, this isn’t entirely where he expected to end up in life, but it’s not a terrible place to be, either.

“I guess I’m on welfare,” he said. “I don’t call it that.”

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Jonelle Madera has experienced a lot of change in the last school year.

The elementary school teacher and mother of four left her home country of the Philippines for the first time, moved to the U.S. and began what is expected to be at least three years working as a special-education teacher with St. Paul Public Schools.

She wondered if she’d be understood. Would people get her jokes and could she just be herself?

“And some would say, ‘Oh, my God, you have a family to leave, how can …’ you know?” Madera said. “We see things differently, and not everyone (gets) the reason why you’re leaving your country for your dream. But you know, my dream is also for my family’s family. And it’s great to see the world.”

Madera is one of 19 special-education teachers in the district this school year recruited from the Philippines, one measure in response to a number of unfilled special-education positions in the district and part of a larger shortage of teachers nationwide.

Jonelle Madera, a special education teacher at the Heights Community School in St. Paul, coaxes a answer from a student on Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

“Special education has been experiencing pretty significant workforce shortages, specifically in regards to special-education teachers,” said Heidi Nistler, SPPS assistant superintendent in the Office of Specialized Services. “It’s always been an area where it’s difficult to find highly qualified and experienced candidates. But I think kind of coinciding with the pandemic, their workforce shortages essentially reached crisis level, and a few districts elsewhere in Minnesota started to explore recruiting international teachers.”

At the same time, SPPS officials heard positive things from other districts about recruiting internationally. The district began to look into the possibility about a year ago. In St. Paul, the first Filipino teacher arrived Thanksgiving Day and the last one in March.

‘It’s my dream’

Madera, along with the other Filipino teachers in SPPS, is on an H-1B visa. That’s the case for most of the teachers recruited by PhilAm Partners LLC, a consulting agency based in Fargo, N.D., that recruits Filipino teachers to work in American school districts, and worked with SPPS.

The biggest need in the U.S. seems to be special-education teachers, who make up the majority of those PhilAm recruits, said Dan Johnson, who, along with his wife, Claire — herself a former teacher from the Philippines — owns PhilAm.

The H-1B visa allows visa-holders to work in specialty occupations in the U.S. for up to three years and can be extended for another three. With an H-1B visa, costs can approach around $10,000 per teacher. A smaller number of districts opt for J-1 visas, which are considered an exchange visitor visa and typically for a shorter term.

On the district side, teachers follow the same process any other teacher applying to the district goes through, said special-education supervisor Carolyn Cherry, and their credentials are evaluated to determine their U.S. equivalent. Districts also let PhilAm know what skills and backgrounds they are looking for.

For PhilAm, teachers typically need to have at least three years of experience and a proficient level in English, Johnson said, though many already have decades of experience or advanced degrees. Teachers who have previous experience teaching in the U.S. are also preferred, though that still remains a smaller number.

PhilAm has brought more than 200 teachers to North Dakota and Minnesota since it began in 2022, with around 175 in the Twin Cities metro area.

“We want to make sure that we’re bringing people that are ready and interested, have a high interest. I’ll tell you this, when I pre-interview, almost all of them say, ‘It’s my dream,’” Johnson said.

The state Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board also reviews and awards each candidate a Tier 3 or 4 teaching license, Nistler said.

Teachers attend a pre-departure seminar as well as an orientation seminar put on by the Filipino embassy after arrival. With those, as well as orientations from PhilAm, they learn about professionalism in the U.S., culture, safety and finances.

The Johnsons also strongly encourage districts to have the basics prepared for the teachers. For Madera, that meant SPPS’s Cherry picking her up from the airport and then staying with the family of an SPPS teacher while she looked for an apartment. She now lives with three other Filipino teachers in the district.

While PhilAm’s clients are the districts, the Johnsons work to be a consistent point of contact for teachers throughout their time in the U.S.

“These are professionals, so we want to – this is our goal – is to give them independence. And not everyone’s going to be the same. Some need more guidance. Some just take it and run. Some we don’t need to hear from too much, and they just go and they do their own thing. And that’s really exciting for me, quite honestly,” Johnson said.

Other Filipino teachers tend to pay it forward, too, Johnson said.

“They really open up and they’ll even do some of the things that the district normally would be doing. For instance, taking them to get a Social Security number, so they might even bring them to an appointment, or to get a phone or certain things like that,” he said.

While most of the districts that PhilAm has worked with are in the Twin Cities metro area, they have also worked with districts in Alexandria, Moorhead and Faribault, as well as private and charter schools.

Special-education vacancies

SPPS has around 6,000 students who receive special-education services. Around 2,000 staff work in special education, which includes almost 500 special-education teachers, in addition to speech-language pathologists, social workers, occupational therapists and paraprofessionals.

But in the last few years, the district has struggled to find enough candidates for open positions in special education.

“So that has just persisted for the last couple of years, and really the impact is on our students who may not be getting the services that they need,” Nistler said. “So that’s why special education is such a high priority, and why, when we’re talking about these innovative types of programs, it’s focusing on special education because we have a legal and ethical responsibility to be providing services to make sure that our students with disabilities have their needs met in school.”

There have been a variety of strategies across the state to address shortages, such as grants under the state’s Special Education Teacher Pipeline Program for those pursuing careers as special-education teachers.

“There’s been other programs that are all working to address the workforce shortages, but those efforts haven’t been enough to fill the positions that are currently vacant, which is why we started to explore the international teachers in conversations with other districts who had started this work earlier than us,” Nistler said.

Those shortages have meant more responsibilities for the special-education teachers the district does have.

“And so as much as possible, the other educators and others try to provide the services and complete all of the paperwork to ensure that students are still receiving what they need,” Nistler said. “But there are times that we just haven’t been able to find somebody to provide those services and then we work with families to try to make up for those services at a later time. But we really want to make sure we are providing the services when the students need them during the school year, during the school day.”

Meanwhile, state lawmakers included $4 million in their most recent education bill for a special-education apprenticeship program to recruit and retain teachers with past experience. At the same time, lawmakers set up a commission to find $250 million in cuts by the next session for special education for the 2028-29 budget.

With teachers like Madera in the classroom, districts are able to close some of the workforce gaps.

“I think a year ago, the number of vacancies we had for our special-ed teachers was over 30. Whereas right now, we have fewer than 10 current vacancies in the current school year,” Nistler said last month.

A learning curve

With the school year over, Madera is staying in the U.S. to continue working for SPPS this summer. Despite the distance from her home country, Madera is finding community, from the paraprofessionals in her classroom who remind her they are a team, to other Filipino teachers who have helped her with classroom setup or dressing up for an interview.

“I am really surrounded with the kindest people. From home to school, I am surrounded with the kindest people, and I’m so grateful for that,” Madera said.

It can be a learning curve, from working with district iPads and students’ assistive devices, to following new curriculum, and doubts can come up, but Madera pushes through.

“How am I going to communicate with this child? Will he be able to understand me? Will I be able to understand him? But if you have the love for your learners, I guess you can do anything,” Madera said.

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While the Minnesota Wild seem to be set on their NHL blue line for the coming season, general manager Bill Guerin and his hockey operations staff looked to the future of their defensive corps on Saturday.

With the 52nd overall pick in the NHL draft – the first selection owned by Minnesota – the Wild looked to Scandinavia, drafting sizable defenseman Theodor Hallquisth, who played last season with Orebro in the Swedish junior hockey league.

Hallquisth, who turned 18 earlier this month, is a right-shot defenseman who played for Sweden in the 2025 World Juniors, and may be coming to Xcel Energy Center in December to skate for his country again, when the Twin Cities hosts the tournament.

He had participated in an interview with the Wild at the combine prior to the draft, and said current Minnesota defenseman Jonas Brodin is a mentor but was still pleasantly surprised to hear his name called.

“Speechless, shocked, a bit taken by the situation,” Hallquisth said in a Zoom with reporters in the minutes following his selection. “It was a surreal feeling.”

Hallquisth played in seven games for Team Sweden at the 2025 World Juniors, and a dozen more in the nation’s top pro league. He said his game grew last season when he concentrated on making the simple plays and let the game come to him.

“I see myself as a two-way defenseman, try to focus on the fast and easy plays, which I think is one of my strengths,” Hallquisth said. “I of course want to contribute offensively as well, but I prioritize defense. I can play physical, and I’m pretty coachable in things.”

The Wild made another change on their blue line later in the day, trading veteran Declan Chisholm to Washington in exchange for Chase Priskie and a draft pick.

Priskie, 29, is a former captain at Quinnipiac who has played four NHL games. Chisholm played 95 games for the Wild over the past two seasons, but did not crack the lineup in the playoffs. He came to the Wild originally after being picked up off waivers from Winnipeg.

“(Chisholm) is a good player, he did a good job for us. We appreciate it,” Wild general manager Bill Guerin said of the restricted free agent. “Honestly, it’s one of the better waiver pickups I’ve seen in a while. Credit to our pro staff. Declan came in and played great for us. …The finances didn’t really match up to what we need.”

Guerin added that they have not decided what they will do with Priskie, who is an unrestricted free agent.

Minnesota picked Czech forward Adam Benak in the fourth round, 102nd overall. At just 5 feet 7, Benak still led Youngstown in the USHL offensively last season, averaging better than a point per game in his first season of North American hockey.

Known for his puck-moving skill, Benak had seven points in four games for Czechia at the 2025 World Juniors, and some experts said his size, or lack thereof, was the only thing keeping him out of the top two rounds.

“At first blush, you see the size, but he is a dynamic offensive player,” said Judd Brackett, the Wild’s director of amateur scouting. “Great vision, skill, speed, tenacious at that size, and he has continued to prove it. … It’s more than the body and more of the brain. He knows where to be and can stay out of harm’s way.”

Hallquisth is expected to be in St. Paul in the coming days to attend the Wild’s development camp. But as of now, he will not be back in the Twin Cities in late July for the World Junior Summer Showcase, with teams from the U.S., Canada, Finland and Sweden playing exhibition games at Ridder Arena in Minneapolis. Hallquisth said he has not been selected for the Swedish team.

“He’s clearly a two-way defenseman. He’s got the ability to get back on a puck, he’s got a good IQ,” said Brackett. “He feels pressure, he can find his first read and get out of his zone. But he’s got good engagement too. He plays with some bite, which is nice.”

It was the second time in as many years that the Wild have used their first pick on a defender, having grabbed University of Denver blueliner Zeev Buium with the 12th overall selection in 2024. Buium was one of the top players in college hockey last season, then signed with the Wild and made his NHL debut in their first round playoff series against Vegas.

Later in the fourth round, Minnesota grabbed a pair of Canadian forwards, selecting Lirim Amidovski from North Bay in the Ontario Hockey League at 121 and Carter Klippenstein from Brandon in the Western Hockey League at 123.

Their final pick of 2025 was another defenseman, Justin Kipkie from Victoria in the WHL, with the 141st selection.

Earlier on Saturday, Blaine defenseman Jacob Rombach became the first Minnesotan taken on Day 2 of the draft when Nashville selected the future Gophers blueliner 35th overall. It marked the 25th consecutive year, and the 51st time in 52 drafts, that at least one Gopher has been selected.

Gophers-bound defenseman Mace’o Phillips, from Minnetonka, went 80th overall to Calgary. Ten picks later, the Devils grabbed future Gophers forward Mason Moe, who is from Eden Prairie. Another future Gopher, forward L.J. Mooney, was picked by the Montreal Canadiens at 113.

Blake Vanek, a key winger on Stillwater’s run to the 2025 state title game and the son of former Gophers and NHL goal-scorer Thomas, went to Ottawa with the 93rd pick. He will play major junior hockey in Washington state next winter, and has not yet picked a college.

Theodor Hallquisth poses after being drafted by the Minnesota Wild with the 52nd overall pick during rounds 2-7 of the 2025 Upper Deck NHL Draft at Peacock Theater on June 28, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
New York Rangers’ Julien Gauthier (15) continues to compete with Florida Panthers’ Chase Priskie (22) for the puck after being tripped by Panthers’ Brandon Montour (62) during the first period of an NHL hockey game Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022, in New York. AP Photo/John Munson)

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Timberwolves general manager Matt Lloyd and president of basketball operations Tim Connelly have been scouting NBA draft prospects for years.

Last Saturday provided a throwback moment for the two of them.

Fenwick High School is a private school in Oak Park, Ill., and the site of the final step of Minnesota’s evaluation for the next piece of its franchise puzzle.

The Wolves had tracked Joan Beringer for about a year after being alerted to him by an assistant coach on the staff of Beringer’s Slovenian professional team, KK Cedevita Olimpija.

The Wolves assumed Beringer would be a second-division player who’d simply work on his skills this past season. Last year was, after all, the center’s first season playing pro basketball and just fourth in the sport overall.

“Every time we watched him we were just kind of blown away with his instincts,” Connelly said. “Defensively, he was covering five spots. He’s very raw, but really bright and has developed at a pace that, quite frankly, I’ve never seen for a guy that new to professional basketball.”

There’s a lot to learn from tape. But, ideally, if you’re going to spend a first-round pick on a prospect, you’d like to see them in person before doing so. But Beringer came to America later than some other international prospects, because his club was participating in the postseason.

Yet, through coordination with Beringer’s agent, Jelani Floyd, the Wolves were able to set up that Chicago-area workout in the days leading up to draft night.

“We had to travel to go see him,” Lloyd said. “But, at the end of the day, it was worth it.”

Because Beringer was passing every test. The Wolves put the 6-foot-11 big man through what Connelly described as a “really hard” workout. Minnesota pitted the 18-year-old against front office member Alonzo Gee, who played eight years in the NBA as a defensive role player, for 1 on 1 action. All Gee would talk about post-workout was how strong Beringer was.

“He couldn’t really hold him off,” Lloyd said.

Minnesota also was encouraged by how well Beringer was knocking down 15-foot jumpers during his workout. The team’s excitement about the Frenchman was growing by the minute.

“I have like grainy videos on my phone that I took at the workout, because I started to get so excited,” Lloyd said.

The Timberwolves posted a video from the workout on their social channels on Friday. At the end of the grueling workout, Connelly had to ask the prospect a question – could he dunk from the free-throw line?

Sure enough, Beringer took flight from the stripe and threw it down.

“That was memorable,” Connelly said.

Still, Connelly noted the chance to sit down and talk to prospects for even an hour or two is what he finds most valuable from face-to-face sessions. The Wolves fell more in love with Beringer’s drive and story. He’s a soccer striker who picked up basketball because he could no longer find soccer shoes that fit his growing feet.

He learned English from his teammates during his one season in Slovenia and has gained 24 pounds over the past year, alone.

“We’re not drafting him because of the story, but I was blown away relative to how little he has played and how far he has come,” Connelly said. “This is my 29th or 30th draft and he’s one of the more unique players I’ve ever seen.”

Minnesota believes he can become a dominant, switchable defensive center. The Rudy Gobert comparisons will be made because they share a home country and, now, a locker room. But think more along the lines of Brooklyn center Nic Claxton or Atlanta big man Onyeka Okongwu in terms of potential versatility on that end of the floor.

That ability to guard all over the floor is essentially a requirement on that end of the floor as you advance deeper into the postseason. Lloyd described Beringer as “a ball of clay.”

“I think he’s going to hang his hat on defensive versatility,” Connelly said. “Offensively, we don’t know what he is. Right now, he’s a sprint-the-floor, he’s a lob threat, he’s an offensive rebounder and garbage guy around the rim.

“But it’s really exciting, especially because we have such great coaches, is he’s really malleable. However we want to develop him, we can develop him. He’s coming from a great development school in Cedevita. Great, great coaches. It’s just exciting to see a guy who has all these crazy tools and really no bad habits.”

Lloyd said that in-person workout was “critical” to Minnesota closing the book on its evaluation of the center and knowing he was the team’s target. He noted the Wolves were “really excited” about Beringer when they left Illinois.

A source said Beringer was in the top 10 on Minnesota’s draft board. But would he get to No. 17?

“Quite frankly, we didn’t think he was going to be there. We were actively trying to make sure we were going to get him,” Connelly said. “So much of it is luck. The draft board, 16 really, really good players went before him, so that’s not to say that we got the best player by any stretch. But the draft board fell a certain way, and we were lucky we got our guy.

“He’s an unbelievable piece to add to our young core,” Connelly said. “I think he’s different than everything that we have.”

Joan Beringer poses for a photo with NBA commissioner Adam Silver after being selected 17th by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round of the NBA basketball draft, Wednesday, June 25, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger)