Bones Hyland made five of his six threes on Saturday night in Miami and led the Wolves with 23 points in a 125-124 preseason win. It was a preseason game in which both teams sat their best players, and it doesn’t change my read on him. The number that decides his season is from the spring.
Hyland made 9 of 34 threes in the playoffs, and with DiVincenzo out, the Wolves are short on guards.
What happened in Miami
Hyland started because Anthony Edwards and LaMelo Ball were both resting, per RotoWire. He finished with 23 points on 6-of-9 shooting, 5-of-6 from three, with 4 rebounds, 4 assists and 3 steals in 21 minutes. The play-by-play in the CBS Sports gametracker shows his first two threes came early in the first quarter, off passes from Terrence Shannon Jr. and Jaylen Clark, and he had no turnovers.
Miami’s starters were Tre Donaldson, Pelle Larsson, Simone Fontecchio, Nikola Jovic and Nick Richards. Ryan Conwell led the Heat with 22 points and 9 assists. The Wolves sat their regulars too: Gobert, Kuminga, Dosunmu and McDaniels didn’t play either, per the CBS box score. Hyland started with Shannon, Beringer, Clark and Lyles and was the best player on his side.
The game itself came down to the final seconds. Minnesota led 121-116 with 1:18 left and 123-121 with 38 seconds left. Vladislav Goldin put back a miss and made the free throw to give Miami a 124-123 lead with 14 seconds left. Antonio Reeves answered with a driving floater at 0:02, and Conwell’s pull-up three at the buzzer missed. The Wolves are 2-1 in the preseason.
Why I’m not moved by 5-of-6
Hyland is a shooter. Per Basketball Reference, he made 116 of 299 threes in the 2025-26 regular season, 38.8%, in 71 games and 16.6 minutes a night. One preseason night fits that profile and adds nothing to it.
The playoffs are where it went wrong. He shot 9-of-34 from three, 26.5%, across 10 games, with 8-of-24 against Denver and 1-of-10 in four appearances against San Antonio. DiVincenzo was already hurt by then, so that cold stretch came without him too. He scored 4.6 points a game on .300 shooting overall. The Denver series was merely below his norm. The San Antonio series is what cratered it. It’s 34 attempts, no bigger a sample than Saturday’s six, but it came against playoff defenses, and that’s the one I’d weigh against one October night.
The job that’s coming
Donte DiVincenzo tore his right Achilles in Game 4 of the first round on April 25, and general manager Matt Lloyd declined to give a return timeline on September 4. In our 2026-27 roster and depth chart I’m planning around DiVincenzo missing most of the year. The chart has Ball starting at point guard, Ayo Dosunmu behind him and Hyland as the third option, on a one-year, $2.8 million deal.
That’s a thin spot on a roster that has no real second creator behind Ball and Edwards. Hyland’s job is bigger than third guard. When Dosunmu plays next to Ball, or when the starters rest, the second unit needs someone who can score without needing a play drawn up. I wrote earlier that the second unit needs someone to run it, and Hyland is a scorer, not an organizer. Saturday’s four assists and zero turnovers are a good sign, in a game that didn’t count.
Pullin is the other name from the night
Zyon Pullin finished with 22 points on 7-of-9 shooting and 8-of-8 at the line, per RotoWire. He also had four turnovers in the CBS play-by-play. He went to the line to tie the game at 21-21 in the first quarter and again for the 24-23 lead at the end of it.
Pullin is on a two-way contract. Our Drew Timme versus KJ Martin piece lays out why the Wolves have one open spot and who is competing for it, and a two-way player doesn’t change that math. He played five games for Minnesota last season, averaging 8.6 minutes per Basketball Reference. A strong preseason game against Miami earns him a look when the Wolves are short on guards. It doesn’t earn him a rotation spot.
What I’d watch
Hyland’s three-point volume is the first thing. He took 4.2 threes a night in the regular season and 3.4 in the playoffs. If he’s up to five or six a game once the minutes grow and the percentage holds near 39%, that’s a real backup scorer.
The second is his minutes. He averaged 16.6 last season last season. If DiVincenzo’s absence pushes him past 20 a night, he plays more against opposing starters, and that’s where he has to hold up.
The third is whether the Wolves go to Pullin before they go to Hyland when the second unit stalls. I’d go to Hyland first, because he played 1,177 regular-season minutes for Minnesota last season and Pullin has about 43 with Minnesota. The regular season opens Wednesday, October 21, at Miami. If Hyland shoots near 39% on more attempts in real games, the Wolves have their backup scorer. If it looks like May, they need another guard.