Timberwolves guard Donte DiVincenzo faces the Golden State team that helped revive his career

By all measures, Donte DiVincenzo put in a solid 25-game stint for the Sacramento Kings.

In February 2022, a four-team trade sent him west after three seasons and an NBA title with the Milwaukee Bucks. For the Kings, the shooting guard averaged 10.3 points per game off the bench.

So at the end of that season, when Sacramento rescinded his qualifying offer days before free agency opened, DiVincenzo went through “a bit of a dark time,” he admitted, “not knowing where I stood.”

“That’s why I said I give credit to Golden State for reviving my career,” said DiVincenzo, now with the Timberwolves, as his team faces the Warriors in the playoffs. “Mentally being able to get back to where I know I am, and what type of player [and] person I am.”

The Timberwolves dropped Game 1 at home against DiVincenzo’s old Golden State team, 99-88, on Tuesday. DiVincenzo scored seven points, grabbed three rebounds and recorded four assists, shooting only 1-for-7 from three.

Since joining Minnesota as part of a preseason trade that sent Karl Anthony Towns to the New York Knicks, DiVincenzo has slotted in as a high-volume shooting option off the bench with a defensive edge, averaging 11.7 points per game this regular season.

His offensive production has dipped this postseason to 7.8 points per game and just 18.4% shooting from three, forcing DiVincenzo to find other ways to chip in for the Wolves.

“He didn’t shoot the ball well in the Lakers series at all,“ said Wolves coach Chris Finch, ”but I thought he made probably more small winning plays than almost anybody else on our team in a lot of different ways — defensively, offensively.”

After his time with the Kings, a phone call with four-time NBA champion Steph Curry helped recruit DiVincenzo to the Warriors on a two-year, $9.3 million deal, with a player option on the second year.

The two-time NCAA champion at Villanova went to Golden State “a little gun-shy,” said Warriors head coach Steve Kerr — a far cry from the guard averaging 7.1 attempted three-pointers per game for the Wolves this season.

Playing alongside the NBA’s all-time leading three-point shooter helped change that.

But DiVincenzo and Curry — who strained his left hamstring in Game 1’s second quarter and is now expected to miss a significant portion of the series — didn’t talk much about shooting mechanics, said the Timberwolves guard.

“What he does shooting-wise, you can’t replicate it,” DiVincenzo said.

Instead, they regularly chatted about Curry’s mindset, his game prep and recovery routines, and even his family.

“When you have somebody of that stature talking to you just like a normal person, that helps you,” DiVincenzo said. “You’re not so focused on ‘OK, where’s your right finger at when you shoot?’ It clears your mind.”

“They gave me something special within that year,” DiVincenzo said.

DiVincenzo, again, trusted Curry and decided to give him a call after he declined his player option with Golden State and waded into the free agency waters the next offseason.

“We signed [DiVincenzo] knowing that he was going to go back into the free agent market,” said Kerr. “The idea was, ‘We’ll give you a chance to play and to improve your market, and you can come here and help us win,’ and it’s exactly what happened.”

This time, shooting a then-career-high 39.7% from three and chipping in 9.4 points per game to help Golden State to the Western Conference Semifinals earned DiVincenzo a four-year, $50 million contract with the New York Knicks, where he’d average a career-high 15.5 points per game.

“I have a long way to go on and off the court, but to know that I’m back where I feel like I belong and still have a lot of room to grow, that’s the confidence that I get,” DiVincenzo said.

DiVincenzo and Curry still keep in touch, with the Golden State guard sending him congratulations on his new baby and texts to let him know he’s following his career from afar.

“It’s been amazing to watch since the first conversation I had with him in the offseason … knowing that everything turned out the way that it was supposed to,” Curry said.

“It’s been fun to watch,” Curry said with a grin ahead of Game 1. “But I don’t want to see him do great these next two weeks.”

That playful jest by Curry, so far, has held true through Game 1.

After collectively shooting 7-for-47 from three in Game 5 against the Los Angeles Lakers, the Timberwolves shot just 5-from-29 (17.2%) on three-pointers on Tuesday. When Wolves guard Anthony Edwards was told the 12-for-76 stat in a postgame news conference, his jaw dropped and his eyes widened.

Meanwhile, Golden State shot 18-for-42 (42.9%) from three in Game 1.

“You have stretches where you shoot the ball really, really well,” Edwards said. “You have stretches where we shoot the ball really, really bad. You just hope the good outweighs the bad.”

The Warriors’ off-the-ball movement freeing up deep opportunities is something DiVincenzo brought with him to Minnesota, said Finch, but it wasn’t something the Wolves could replicate Tuesday.

Minnesota had poor spacing, said Finch, struggling to find the final pass in transition and the half-court and, as a result, “couldn’t repeatedly generate good shots.”

“We talk about a lot of movement and off-ball execution, and Golden State is probably best in the league ...” Finch said, “knowing how to space, knowing how to cut, knowing how to play off of others.”