Donte DiVincenzo is listed out for tonight’s opener in Miami, and nobody with the team has given a date for his return. I’ll give one: plan for mid-February. About two-thirds of the Wolves’ regular season will be played without him, and the roster should be judged that way.
Where the recovery stands
DiVincenzo tore his right Achilles about a minute into Game 4 of the first round against Denver on April 25. The Wolves won that game 112-96 to go up 3-1. Tonight is day 179 since the injury.
The public updates have been upbeat and vague, and they’ve stayed vague since July. Chris Finch said on July 9, per ClutchPoints, that it was “still too early to say. All the early signs are great though,” and added, “I would be lying if I had a medical opinion on when he would come back.” General manager Matt Lloyd declined to give a concrete timeline on September 4. On September 28, DiVincenzo told The Athletic he expects to play this season. He also told The Athletic’s Jon Krawczynski: “I’m meeting all my milestones, and I’m meeting them early.”
That’s a player who is ahead of his own schedule. It still isn’t a return date, and tonight’s injury report lists him as out with no debut set.
Why February is my number
The closest comparison is Jayson Tatum’s Achilles recovery. Tatum ruptured his on May 12, 2025, and played his first game back on March 6, 2026, against Dallas. That was 298 days later, per the NBC recap of Boston’s 120-100 win. He missed his first six shots and finished 6-of-16 for 15 points in 27 minutes.
Count 298 days from April 25 and you land on February 17, 2027. Tatum is one player with a different game, but even on his schedule DiVincenzo doesn’t play until the middle of the season. Heavy.com’s looser math says early spring if he beats the 12-month mark and a playoff return if he doesn’t.
DiVincenzo’s own phrase, “meeting them early,” is the reason to hold a February date and not a December one. Milestones are inputs for the medical staff. The Wolves have no reason to rush a 29-year-old, and the first game back won’t be the one that matters: Tatum missed his first six shots in his.
What the Wolves actually lost
His minutes have an answer. He started all 82 games last season at 30.4 minutes a night, per Basketball Reference, and the Wolves have since traded for LaMelo Ball. Ball is projected to start next to Anthony Edwards, which I covered in why Finch is right to play them together.
What’s missing is the shooting volume. DiVincenzo made 3.0 threes on 7.9 attempts a game last season, 37.9%. The team made 1,128 of 3,049 threes, 13.8 makes and 37.2 attempts per game, per Basketball Reference’s team page. So he took about a fifth of Minnesota’s threes and made about a fifth of them, in a season the Wolves went 49-33 and finished sixth in the West.
Who takes them now? Ball is the obvious answer: 3.8 makes on 10.3 attempts, 36.8%, in 72 games with Charlotte, per Basketball Reference. That’s more volume than DiVincenzo, at a similar percentage. But Ball runs the offense, and with Edwards also needing the ball, someone else has to be the shooter who stands and waits. Last season that was DiVincenzo, and now it has to come off the bench.
The names who fill in
The depth chart in our 2026-27 roster guide has Ayo Dosunmu as the first guard off the bench, and he’s shot it well. With Minnesota last season he made 1.5 of 3.6 threes a game, 41.4%, over 24 games, per Basketball Reference, but that is a lot fewer attempts than DiVincenzo’s 7.9.
Bones Hyland made 116 of 299 threes last year, 38.8%, as I wrote in the piece on his five-three preseason game. He also went 9-of-34 in the playoffs. Terrence Shannon Jr. and rookie Isaiah Evans are the other names, and both are unproven. None of them is a replacement. It’s a committee, and committees take until Christmas to figure out who is doing what.
What I’d do about it
First, stop treating DiVincenzo as a December or January return in any planning. If he is back in the middle of February, that is for the stretch run. Most of the season gets played with the guards the Wolves have now.
Second, be honest about the contract. DiVincenzo makes $12.5 million this year and is a free agent in the summer, per the roster guide. He’s a 29-year-old coming off an Achilles tear, and the best case is that he plays the last third of the regular season and the playoffs. His comeback matters less this February than next October.
Third, I’d give the shooting minutes to whoever shoots best in November without waiting on a pecking order. If one of those units stretches the floor for Edwards in the first month, it should keep the minutes even when DiVincenzo is healthy.
The Wolves are thinner at one specific job, and it will stay open into the middle of the winter. Watch the bench threes in November, not the rehab video.