The Timberwolves are one win away from their second consecutive Western Conference Finals appearance.

But Minnesota’s Game 4 win in San Francisco wasn’t the only major happening across the NBA on Monday evening. Taking place hours earlier was the draft lottery, which left the league stunned as Dallas, who had a 1% chance of nabbing the No. 1 overall pick, got the top spot and is now in position to select Duke’s Cooper Flagg on June 25.

But what about Minnesota? The Timberwolves currently own the No. 17 pick — Detroit’s selection —which they acquired in their trade with the Knicks back in September.

Who is Minnesota projected to select in the first round of next month’s draft? Here’s who the experts suspect may soon be joining the organization:

ESPN: Michigan forward Danny Wolf

The skinny: Leaning into the versatility of an out-of-the-box prospect such as Wolf, who shouldered significant playmaking responsibilities for Michigan as a 7-footer, could be interesting. Wolf’s skill level, creativity and overall instincts on both ends of the floor give him a higher ceiling than your typical 21-year-old prospect, especially with the development trajectory he has been on the past three years.

NBA intel and fit: The Pistons breaking through and making the playoffs conveyed this pick to the Timberwolves, who have a nice opportunity to add talent after having traded away most of their draft capital since Tim Connelly took over as president. Wolf would give them a versatile frontcourt player capable of contributing sooner than later.

Minnesota will also consider using this pick to improve its roster as it pushes to contend around an ascending Anthony Edwards.

SBNation: Alabama guard Labaron Philon

The skinny: Philon started for an elite team all year as a true freshman and made big contributions despite not having a reliable outside jumper yet. The 6’4 guard has one of the better handles in the class, and he does a tremendous job manipulating pace to punch holes in the opposing defense. He’s a solid live-dribble passer who can kick out to teammates for threes, and he has a developing mid-range/floater game to score even when he doesn’t make it all the way to the rim. Philon’s defense is also intriguing with quick hands that generated the most steals on the Crimson Tide by a big margin. The catch with Philon is he isn’t a great outside shooter yet (31.5 percent from deep) and he has trouble finishing over length. If the shot comes around, his game feels built for the playoffs.

Yahoo: Colorado State wing Nique Clifford

The skinny: Clifford is a tough-as-nails wing who does it all. He defends multiple positions, crashes the boards and scores from everywhere. The Timberwolves could use that type of dynamic ability from a role player, since Clifford can offer some creation and passing on top of his foundational skills. And plus with Nickeil Alexander-Walker set to hit free agency, Minnesota might need someone who’s ready sooner than later.

USA Today’s For The Win: Colorado State wing Nique Clifford

The skinny: In our last mock draft, we had Colorado State senior Nique Clifford projected to the Timberwolves and we are sticking with that instinct. Clifford is the oldest player we have projected in the first round but he looks ready to contribute to an NBA rotation. He led an upset over Memphis in the first round of the NCAA tournament and averaged a productive 18.9 points. 9.6 rebounds, and 4.4 assists per game during his final collegiate campaign.

Bleacher Report: French guard Nolan Traore

The skinny: Nolan Traore is in the midst of one of his best stretches of the season. He’s going to enter the draft with the field’s highest assist percentage regardless, but now he’s confidently stepping into three-point makes and creating for himself with visible decisiveness.
Shooting struggles and inefficiency caused by athletic limitations had scared scouts off. But the bar was awfully high entering the season. And now the 18-year-old has looked highly effective generating offense as a starting point guard in Pro A.

The Athletic: Georgetown forward Thomas Sorber

The skinny: The Timberwolves have some questions forthcoming in the frontcourt over the next couple of years. Julius Randle has starred in the playoffs but has a player option this summer. Naz Reid is a free agent. Rudy Gobert turns 33 in June. Sorber is an absolutely massive body that I think would tick some boxes for head of basketball operations Tim Connelly. He’s fluid and coordinated at 6-9 to 6-10, but moreover possesses a mammoth wing span that I wouldn’t be stunned to see land in the 7-4 range. His frame is massive with broad shoulders

Beyond that, he has this innate feel for the game as a passer and playmaker that Connelly has tended to value in his big men going back to even Denver, when he selected Nikola Jokic. It’s easy to see Minnesota valuing Sorber as a big man with real feel for the game as a developmental project next year who could hopefully step into a more substantive role in his second and third seasons.

By ILLIA NOVIKOV, Associated Press

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that he will be waiting for Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Turkish capital this week to conduct face-to-face talks about the more than three-year war.

Putin hasn’t yet said whether he will be at the talks, which U.S. President Donald Trump has urged the two sides to attend as part of Washington’s efforts to stop the fighting.

Zelenskyy told reporters in Kyiv that he will be in Ankara on Thursday to conduct the negotiations. He plans to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the two will wait for Putin to arrive, he said.

Zelenskyy said that if Putin chooses Istanbul to hold the meeting, then both leaders will travel there.

“If Putin does not arrive and plays games, it is the final point that he does not want to end the war,” Zelenskyy said.

The Ukrainian leader added that European and U.S. leaders should follow through with threats of powerful sanctions against Russia, if Putin doesn’t show up for talks.

Overnight, Russia launched 10 Shahed and decoy drones at Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said, in its smallest drone bombardment this year.

The Kremlin hasn’t directly responded to Zelenskyy’s challenge for Putin to meet him in person at the negotiating table.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused for the second straight day Tuesday to tell reporters whether Putin will travel to Istanbul and who else will represent Russia at the potential talks.

“As soon as the president considers it necessary, we will make an announcement,” Peskov said.

Russia has said that it would send a delegation to Istanbul without preconditions.

Washington has been applying stiff pressure on both sides to come to the table since U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January with a promise to end the war.

Military analysts say that both sides are preparing a spring-summer campaign on the battlefield, where a war of attrition has killed tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Monday that Russia is “quickly replenishing front-line units with new recruits to maintain the battlefield initiative.”

Zelenskyy won’t be meeting with any Russian officials in Istanbul other than Putin, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, said Tuesday on a YouTube show run by prominent Russian journalists in exile.

Lower-level talks would amount to simply “dragging out” any peace process, Podolyak said.

European leaders have recently accused Putin of dragging his feet in peace efforts, while he attempts to press his bigger army’s battlefield initiative and capture more Ukrainian land.

Russia effectively rejected an unconditional 30-day ceasefire demanded by Ukraine and Western European leaders from Monday, when it fired more than 100 drones at Ukraine. Putin instead offered direct peace talks.

But the wrangling over whether a ceasefire should come before the talks begin has continued.

“Ukraine is ready for any format of negotiations with Russia, but a ceasefire must come first,” Andrii Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said Tuesday.

Negotiations are impossible while “the Ukrainian people are under attack by Russian missiles and drones around the clock,” Yermak said in a video address to the Copenhagen Democracy Summit 2025.

Putin has repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government, especially Zelenskyy himself, saying his term expired last year. Under Ukraine’s constitution, it’s illegal for the country to hold a national election while it’s under martial law, as it now is.

In a further complication, a Ukrainian decree from 2022 rules out negotiations with Putin.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke Monday with the senior diplomats from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Poland, who were meeting in London, to assess “the way forward for a ceasefire and path to peace in Ukraine,” spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.

Those European countries had pledged further sanctions on Russia, if Moscow didn’t comply with a full ceasefire that Ukraine had accepted from Monday, but they made no announcement of additional punitive measures.

By PAUL WISEMAN and LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is waging a trade war without getting approval from Congress: He declared a national emergency to slap import taxes — tariffs — on almost every country on earth.

The president is now facing at least seven lawsuits that argue he’s gone too far and asserted power he does not have.

President Donald Trump attends a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the Royal Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade holds the first hearing on the challenges Tuesday morning in New York. Five small businesses are asking the court to block the sweeping import taxes that Trump announced April 2 – “Liberation Day,’’ he called it.

Declaring that the United States’ huge and long-running trade deficits add up to a national emergency, Trump invoked the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEPPA) and rolled out 10% tariffs on many countries. He imposed higher– up to 50% — “reciprocal’’ tariffs on countries that sold more goods to the United States than the U.S. sold them.

Trump’s tariffs rattled global markets and raised fears that they would disrupt commerce and slow U.S. and global economic growth.

Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel and director of litigation at the nonprofit Liberty Justice Center, said the president is exceeding the act’s authority. “That statute doesn’t actually say anything about giving the president the power to tariff,’’ said Schwab, who is representing the small businesses. “It doesn’t say the word tariff.’’

In their complaint, the businesses also call Trump’s emergency “a figment of his own imagination: trade deficits, which have persisted for decades without causing economic harm, are not an emergency.’’ The U.S. has, in fact, run a trade deficit – the gap between exports and imports – with the rest of the world for 49 straight years, through good times and bad.

But the Trump administration argues that courts approved President Richard Nixon’s emergency use of tariffs in a 1971 economic crisis. The Nixon administration successfully cited its authority under the 1917 Trading With Enemy Act, which preceded and supplied some of the legal language used in IEPPA.

The legal battle against Trump’s tariffs has created unusual bedfellows, uniting states led by Democratic governors with libertarian groups – including the Liberty Justice Center – that often seek to overturn government regulation of businesses. A dozen states have filed suit against Trump’s tariffs in the New York trade court.

Kathleen Claussen, a professor and trade-law expert at Georgetown Law, said Tuesday’s hearing and another scheduled for the states’ lawsuit in the coming weeks will likely set the tone for legal battles over tariffs to come. If the court agrees to block the tariffs under the emergency economic-powers act, the Trump administration will certainly appeal. “It strikes me probably this probably is something that has to be decided by the Supreme Court,” she said.

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And if the cases do go to the Supreme Court, legal experts say, it’s possible the justices will use conservative legal doctrines they cited to rein in government powers claimed by Democratic President Joe Biden administration to strike down or limit tariffs imposed by Trump, a Republican.

The U.S. Constitution gives the power to impose taxes — including tariffs — to Congress. But over the years lawmakers ceded power over trade policy to the White House, clearing the way for Trump’s expansive use of tariffs.

Some lawmakers now want to reclaim some of the authority they’ve given up.

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, for instance, have introduced legislation that would require presidents to justify new tariffs to Congress. Lawmakers would then have 60 days to approve the tariffs. Otherwise, they would expire.

But their proposal appears to stand little chance of becoming law, given most Republican lawmakers’ deference to Trump and the president’s veto power. “That train has left the station,” said trade lawyer Warren Maruyama, who was general counsel for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in the administration of President George W. Bush.

For now, many American businesses are struggling to cope with Trump’s tariffs, which have lifted America’s average tariff to the highest level since 1934 — even after a trade truce with China was announced Monday, according to Yale University’s Budget Lab.

Victor Schwartz of New York City has spent the last 39 years building a business importing wine and spirits from small producers across the world. The tariffs are hitting his business hard. His customers want regional wines from around the world, so he can’t just shift to American vintages. And the state requires him to post prices a month in advance so it’s tough to keep up with Trump’s ever-changing tariffs.

His business — V.O.S. Selections — is one of the five plaintiffs in Tuesday’s hearing. “It’s a race against time,” he said. “Will we get through it? I’m not sure exactly.”

By DEE-ANN DURBIN, Associated Press Business Writer

U.S. retail egg prices fell in April from the record-high prices they hit earlier this year, according to government data released Tuesday.

The average price for a dozen Grade A eggs dropped 12.7% to $5.12 in April, according to the Consumer Price Index. It was the first month-to-month decline in egg prices since October 2024.

Still, egg prices remain near historic highs as a persistent outbreak of bird flu continues to wipe out flocks of egg-laying hens. The April figure is 79% higher than the same month a year earlier, when the price averaged $2.86 per dozen.

In March, U.S. egg prices had climbed to a record $6.23 per dozen. It was unclear how much egg prices would fall in April because consumer demand is usually high around Easter and Passover.

Bird flu has killed more than 169 million birds since early 2022. Any time a bird gets sick, the entire flock is killed to help keep bird flu from spreading. That can have an effect on the egg supply because massive egg farms may have millions of birds.

In April, outbreaks on two farms on Ohio and South Dakota affected more than 927,000 egg-laying hens.