Bones Hyland has played 32 minutes in four games this season. With Anthony Edwards headed for a right-knee procedure that Shams Charania said will keep him out up to two months, that number has to change. My take: whoever starts in Edwards’ spot, Hyland should be the point guard of the Wolves’ second unit, and he should get around 20 minutes a night to do it.
This isn’t a guess about a player Minnesota hasn’t seen in this role. Hyland did this job last spring. When Edwards missed most of the final month of the 2025-26 regular season, Chris Finch handed Hyland real minutes, and he answered with the best basketball of his Wolves tenure. The roster is different now, but the hole he filled is the same shape.
The bench loses its ball handler
Start with who runs the offense when LaMelo Ball sits. Ball is averaging 24.8 minutes, per Basketball Reference’s Wolves page, and he has been called for 16 fouls in four games. That leaves roughly 23 minutes of every regulation game without him, more on nights when the whistles come early. Ball’s foul problem makes 23 a minimum.
Ayo Dosunmu is the other guard creating for teammates. He has come off the bench in all four games, playing 26.3 minutes a night, and his 16 assists are second on the team behind Ball’s 25. But Dosunmu is also the obvious candidate to start next to Ball in Edwards’ place, and we’ve argued for exactly that in the case for shared scoring after Edwards’ surgery news. Promote Dosunmu, and the second unit is left without a guard who can set it up.
The full Wolves roster and depth chart shows how short that list is: it has Ball, Dosunmu and Hyland at point guard. Zyon Pullin is on a two-way deal and has played five minutes. Terrence Shannon Jr. has scored 52 points in four games and should get more shots, but he is a scorer first, and I wouldn’t ask him to organize a bench lineup for 20 minutes.
What last spring showed
I went through Hyland’s 2025-26 game log on Basketball Reference and matched it against Edwards’. Edwards missed 21 games, and Hyland played in 20 of them. In those 20 games he averaged 21.4 minutes and 11.8 points, made 45 of 116 threes (38.8%) and had 65 assists against 30 turnovers. In the 51 games he played alongside an available Edwards, he averaged 14.7 minutes and 7.2 points.
The late-season run is the part I’d show Finch. From March 17 to April 8, Edwards missed 10 of Minnesota’s 12 games, and Hyland played 25.2 minutes a night in those 10. He scored 146 points, 14.6 a game, made 29 of 76 threes (38.2%) and had 33 assists to 20 turnovers. He scored 22 against Phoenix, 23 in a win at Boston and 19 against Indiana. That’s a backup point guard producing like a starter, over a stretch long enough to mean something.
There’s a version of this that didn’t work, too. When Edwards missed four games in late October and early November of last season, Hyland played 39 minutes total across all four and scored 15 points. Finch didn’t trust him yet. By December he did: Hyland made all three of his 2025-26 starts that month, in games Edwards missed, and played more than 34 minutes in two of them. The trust was earned over a season. I wouldn’t throw it away over four games.
The case against, and why it isn’t enough
The shooting is the worry. Hyland is 2 of 10 from the field this season and 2 of 8 from three, per Basketball Reference. And as I wrote after his five-three preseason night in Miami, his playoff run was rough: 9 of 34 from three in 10 games. He played 11.6 minutes a night in those games, per Basketball Reference.
I’d weigh both of those lightly. Ten shots in 32 minutes is no sample at all. His 38.8% on 299 attempts last regular season is a real one, and so is the 38.2% in the stretch that looked most like the one Minnesota is entering now. The playoff slump also came in a smaller role than the one I’m proposing.
The minutes also say Finch hasn’t given him a real look yet. Hyland played 3:51 in the opener at Miami, 7:53 against Orlando, 15:05 against Toronto and 4:45 in the overtime loss in Cleveland. That’s a fourth guard’s role, and it was the right one with Edwards healthy. His absence changes the math.
What I want to see
Hyland came back on a one-year deal, as Darren Wolfson of KSTP reported on June 30, so this stretch matters for him as much as for the Wolves. I want three things from his first few games in a bigger role.
First, the minutes: something close to 20, with most of them spent running the offense while Ball rests. Second, the assist-to-turnover ratio. He had 188 assists against 70 turnovers last season, and if he stays near that, the bench offense won’t stall when Dosunmu is with the starters. Third, the threes: last regular season he took 4.2 a night in 16.6 minutes. With more time, I’d want five or six.
Tonight’s opponent is a fair first test. Golden State’s opponents have made 62.7% of their twos, the worst mark in the league per Basketball Reference, as we laid out in the plan to attack the Warriors inside, and Hyland scored 17 in 24 minutes against the Warriors on January 26 in a game Edwards missed. Give him the bench, keep Shannon hunting shots beside him, and let Dosunmu start. Minnesota already knows what Hyland looks like with Edwards out: a point guard who can run the bench for 25 minutes. Give him the job again.