Last summer, the Atlanta Hawks were in search of a connector: a multi-tooled guard who could join their rotation and serve as a defensive stopper alongside Trae Young and an offensive spark plug when he was next to Dyson Daniels.
They searched far and wide and set their sights on Nickeil Alexander-Walker, who, over the previous two years, had matured from an end-of-the-bench journeyman in rebuilding Utah into an essential leader on a contender in Minnesota.
The Timberwolves were up against the second apron, and, with a couple of young players they believed in waiting in the wings, decided to focus on re-signing Naz Reid over NAW, who got a four-year, $62 million contract with the Hawks in the sign-and-trade deal.
The player the Hawks got, and the player the Wolves let go of, has been even better in his seventh season in the league. His new team would be lost without him. He is averaging a career-high 20.3 points per game and has started 26 of Atlanta’s 33 games, including a 126-102 mauling of the Timberwolves on Wednesday afternoon.
The Hawks outscored Minnesota 64-36 in the paint, grabbed 16 offensive rebounds, took 17 more shots than the Wolves and led by 27 points in the first half to snap a seven-game losing streak.
As the Timberwolves were sleepwalking through another afternoon game in Atlanta, as they consistently failed to make any concerted effort on defense to grab a rebound or rotate to stop a drive, as Anthony Edwards was throwing his towel in frustration and leaving the bench before the game was over, it was as clear as it has been all season.
The Timberwolves really, really, miss Alexander-Walker.
There have been too many nights where this team does not have the spirit, the energy and the resourcefulness that NAW brought every time he took the floor in two-plus years with the Wolves. He was both a valued contributor on the floor and an emotional leader in the locker room, using his unflinching gratitude to absorb the carbon dioxide that can be exhaled during times of trial in a long NBA season and turning it into oxygen so the team can breathe.
This Wolves team is a quiet, brooding one. Edwards and Jaylen Clark are vibrant personalities, but that’s about where it stops. Mike Conley is a vocal leader, but he is not playing well right now. Rudy Gobert will talk, but he’s not one to rally the troops. Jaden McDaniels, Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo and Reid are all players more prone to internalizing their views than really expressing themselves.
Not having Alexander-Walker in the locker room has only exacerbated an issue that has plagued the team for some time. The pieces of the puzzle have not always looked like they’ve fit together this season, and it hasn’t been easy for them to communicate their way through rough patches.
“We have to have more internal voices,” coach Chris Finch said earlier this week in the wake of a lifeless loss to the Brooklyn Nets. “When things aren’t going well, our guys can be a little bit quiet in those moments. That’s just kind of been in our DNA the last couple of years.”
Dyson to the rack pic.twitter.com/TqFe3MuGJi
— Atlanta Hawks (@ATLHawks) December 31, 2025
Edwards scored 30 points against the Hawks, but that is about the only thing the Wolves can take away from the game as a positive. Randle had 19 points, but was awful on the defensive end, betting blown by routinely and only grabbing four rebounds in the decisive first half. McDaniels took only five shots, Reid was 2 of 10 with three turnovers, DiVincenzo was 2 of 8 and Bones Hyland was 0 of 7.
The Wolves were down 70-49 at half, which assistant Micah Nori deemed “probably the worst half of basketball in five years since we’ve been here.”
In games like these over the previous two years, Alexander-Walker would often come off the bench, inject some energy with a few defensive stops and get the offense going with a timely 3-pointer. He’s doing even more than that in Atlanta this season.
NAW for 1-2-3 pic.twitter.com/MyIWplmbGf
— Atlanta Hawks (@ATLHawks) December 31, 2025
His scoring average has leaped 10.9 points per game this season, representing the biggest improvement year over year in the league. He is playing almost 33 minutes per night and getting nearly 16 shots per game, which has come as a surprise even to him.
“I believed in my ability,” he told The Athletic in a telephone interview. “I didn’t expect this.”
In some ways, the Hawks had more confidence in Alexander-Walker than he did in himself. He remembers arriving in Atlanta and seeing the excitement inside the organization and feeling nervous about living up to their expectations.
“It’s almost like they had a lot of belief in what I was doing now and they could see it,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. I didn’t want to put any pressure on myself to have to get to a certain role. I think that’s a reason it’s turned out the way it has.”
That is Alexander-Walker in a nutshell. In a world full of inflated egos and forced braggadocio, NAW is All-NBA First Team when it comes to introspection. The seeds of that perspective were planted in the cracked, drought-ravaged terrain of his early days in the league, when he bounced around from New Orleans to Portland to Utah and was hanging onto the league by his fingernails when he was thrown into a trade to Minnesota in 2023 that also brought Conley to the Timberwolves.
Nothing has come easy for him as a professional. His visions of becoming a go-to scoring guard when he was a first-round draft pick in 2019 proved to be unrealistic. He arrived in Minnesota in need of reinvention, and that’s exactly what happened. He quickly won over the coaching staff with his humility and willingness to do the dirty work, morphing into a top-flight perimeter defender and reliable shooter when the ball found him in big spots.
“They were huge development years to understand what it meant to be a pro, to grow, to affect winning,” he said. “Not just be a young kid consumed with all the excess, but to really lock in. The process.”
Alexander-Walker embraced everything about becoming a role player, and he flourished with the Timberwolves. He could play some point guard when needed. He never missed a game in his two full seasons in Minnesota, becoming as dependable as his name is long.
“I used to refer to him as a utility infielder,” Finch said. “He could do whatever he needed to do on any given night.”
The Wolves had a difficult decision to make at the end of last season. Needing to get under the second apron to give them a little more flexibility to continue building out the roster, they essentially had to choose two of Reid, Randle and Alexander-Walker, who had so much success in Minnesota that he positioned himself for a big raise. They spent $225 million on Randle and Reid in large part because they felt they had better options on the wing to replace NAW than they did in the frontcourt.
They expected Clark, Terrence Shannon Jr. and Rob Dillingham to give them a reasonable facsimile of Alexander-Walker’s production. To this point, those three have fallen woefully short. Shannon has been bothered by a foot injury for much of the season, Dillingham is out of the rotation in Year 2 and Clark has not shot the ball well enough to earn bigger minutes in the rotation.
Alexander-Walker understood the financial constraints under which the Wolves were operating. He knew that there was a good chance he was going to be the odd man out. But deep down, there was a part of him that hoped Minnesota would see how important he was to the operation and find a way.
“You almost want the team team to figure out a way to make you feel that you’re worth it to them,” Alexander-Walker said. “At the same time, you have to understand it’s a business at that. I’m so grateful to have that opportunity, and the trade to Minnesota allowed me to be here. Sometimes, in life you go through phases and moments that are supposed to take you from one place to another.”
In some ways, those three youngsters are where NAW was early in his career. They are ambitious, with big visions of what they are capable of doing. They may eventually be proven right. But they also do not understand their own limitations right now and want to do more. That is something that took Alexander-Walker four years and two trades to comprehend.
“Those years in Minnesota helped me get to who I am today because it showed me what it meant to play a role and what each role means,” Alexander-Walker said. “To stay down and trust the process. It was more a mental thing. It really gave me the development to take the next step that I needed.”
Last year, Finch often referred to his team as having eight starters, including DiVincenzo, Reid and Alexander-Walker off the bench. But this season, with Conley showing his age, DiVincenzo in the starting lineup and NAW in Atlanta, the Wolves appear to have six reliable players.
Hyland has shown some promise, the Hawks clunker aside. Shannon could give them more when he is fully healthy, which could be another couple of weeks. But beyond that, the depth that the Wolves were hoping to have has not materialized. So, when the starters have an off night like they did in Atlanta, there are not many answers.
When Edwards made a bad pass in the fourth quarter that led to a dunk by Jalen Johnson and a 29-point Hawks lead, Finch called timeout and pulled his regulars with just under eight minutes to play. A frustrated Edwards threw his towel in the air and stormed to the back — an uncharacteristically selfish display. He did not speak to reporters in Atlanta after the game.
“Obviously frustrated with the performance, and rightfully so,” Finch said in his postgame press conference. “He needs to stay on the floor and root for his team.”
Hawks Flyinggggggg pic.twitter.com/5XP6XmZO4T
— Atlanta Hawks (@ATLHawks) December 31, 2025
Edwards and Alexander-Walker are close. One would think that after a night like this one, NAW might pull Ant aside and say something that resonated. But he’s not there anymore. And the Timberwolves have to find another way through it.
“Do we care? Does something happen when we played the first quarter tonight? Or is it just cool?” Gobert told reporters in the locker room. “Make a lot of money, we play basketball, do what we do and go home and be happy. I think that’s the fine line between a team that’s playing for a championship and a team that’s full of talent but doesn’t accomplish sh-t.”
Through the first third of the season, the Wolves (21-13) seem to lack that gratitude and appreciation that Alexander-Walker always brought to the table. The Hawks (16-19) have underperformed themselves, but not because of NAW. He scored 55 points combined in two competitive losses to Oklahoma City and New York prior to the win over the Wolves. He is a core member of this group, but he isn’t taking anything for granted.
“It’s not my birthright to be able to do something like this, and I know the higher they get, the harder they fall,” Alexander-Walker said. “I’m just trying to make sure I don’t get too high and ahead of myself.”