Naz Reid arrived in Minnesota as an undrafted free agent and leaves as one of the most beloved players in franchise history.
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MINNEAPOLIS — Outside of a pizzeria in a blue-collar section of the city, a bouquet of daisies rests at the foot of a sign that has long served as a bat signal to Minnesota Timberwolves fans.
The “Honk If You Love Naz Reid” sign has never been a more popular attraction than it has been in the days since the Timberwolves executed a blockbuster trade that sent Reid and draft compensation to Charlotte for star point guard LaMelo Ball. Fans from all over have stopped by to take pictures, share stories of one of the most popular Wolves of all time and process that he is no longer here after seven years in Minnesota.
In one case, they came to literally give Naz Reid his flowers.
“I have been a Minnesota sports fan for 30 some years now, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen an athlete leave Minnesota and the fans react this way,” said Kai Glinsek, the general manager of Parkway Pizza and creator of the sign. “On Saturday — I’m not even kidding — I think I saw close to 100 people come and take a picture with the sign.”
Photo courtesy of Jon Krawczynski / The Athletic
While excitement has swirled in the Twin Cities in anticipation of Ball’s arrival to team with Anthony Edwards, the Timberwolves’ fan base has entered a period of mourning for Reid, who inspired with his rise from undrafted rookie free agent in 2019 to G League prospect and eventual Sixth Man of the Year who has signed contracts worth nearly $170 million.
If you are a fan or observer from elsewhere who is just now seeing the tattoos, the beach towels, the pontoons and all of the fuss surrounding a player who started only 77 games in seven seasons and averaged 13.6 points last season but doesn’t understand it — or even thinks it’s weird — that’s fine. This isn’t for you.
You just had to be here to fully understand the bond. Reid was Minnesota’s version of Manu Ginóbili, a super sub with a starter’s sparkle, electricity pulsing through the crown of braids on his head and a bag that shimmered like the diamonds encrusted on his teeth.
Reid is 6-10 and from New Jersey by way of Baton Rouge, but these fans saw themselves in him. In the way he selflessly stayed in a bench role while Karl-Anthony Towns and Julius Randle got the shine. In the way he stayed in Minnesota all summer while most other players scattered across the country, quietly working on his game and emerging every fall with a new trick up his sleeve. In the way he enjoyed all of the love and attention he received, but also felt unworthy of it.
The Wolves won 42 games in Reid’s first two seasons — combined. As he, Edwards and Jaden McDaniels started to come into their own, they demanded that the Wolves be taken seriously. Reid was overlooked by everyone else coming out of college, viewed at the time as a player too big to play on the wing and too small to play at the rim. The fact that it was Minnesota that discovered this hidden gem only added to Reid’s lore.
The game didn’t start until Reid checked in, coming off the bench to unleash in-and-out dribbles, stepback 3-pointers and soaring dunks on anyone who dared to step in his path. It wasn’t a novelty. It was a phenomenon. It wasn’t a gimmick. It was an identity.
You had to be here on a summer afternoon when Reid stepped off of a boat on Lake Minnetonka and partied with Yung Gravy at a new jersey unveiling. You had to be here in the dead of winter, when the warmth of one of his Euro steps to the rim lingered through your entire drive home like a cup of hot cocoa.
You just had to be here. That’s what made it so special. That is why, upon his exit, Reid will leave a real legacy here in Minnesota. It takes many forms.
Naz Reid’s legacy is etched in skin
JC Stroebel and Jesse George started this whole thing on a whim. The Timberwolves were surging during the 2023-24 season, and Stroebel just threw out a post on social media offering to tattoo “Naz Reid.” on any who wanted one for $20. He had no idea what was coming.
Wolves fans responded in overwhelming fashion.
Stroebel and George estimate they’ve done between, at least, 1,200 to 1,500 “Naz Reid.” tattoos. What started as a lark with the hope of landing tickets to a playoff game became a full-blown movement. George and Stroebel did them at live recordings of Timberwolves podcasts. They did them to help raise funds for a super fan who needed brain surgery. They even got to meet Reid in person.
“There’s something so beautiful, especially in such a tumultuous world, to just unify over something,” Stroebel said. “And as silly as it is to have these hundreds and hundreds of tattoos of some guy’s name, really, it’s just the first leaf in a really beautiful tree where the roots grow really deep. And when you go all the way down, you realize that it’s always been about community and connection. I think that’s when sports, and humanity in general, is in its purest form, really.”
Last winter, Stroebel had his own major health scare when doctors found a tumor the size of a golf ball in his brain. The night before surgery, Stroebel watched Reid put up 33 points and seven assists in a win over Chicago, and the Timberwolves community has rallied around him, his wife and his two young children. A GoFundMe to help the family with the mounting costs of treatment and being out of work has raised almost $75,000.
“I’m gonna be completely candid here,” Stroebel said. “I think it’s fair to say, in a lot of ways, that the Timberwolves have kind of saved my life, man, indirectly at least.”
His recovery has had plenty of downs to go with the ups, but Stroebel presses forward with belief in his heart and “Naz Reid,” tattooed on his arm.
“I think that there is a magic that Jesse and I glimpsed, that Minnesota glimpsed, that I want to bottle up,” he said. “I want to be able to take it off its shelf and take a sip of it every once in a while, man. It’s so pure, and it’s so beautiful, and no one can take it away.”
Naz Reid’s legacy was woven in cloth
The Timberwolves hosted the Cleveland Cavaliers on March 22, 2024, as they were steamrolling toward a playoff berth that would result in the team’s first Western Conference finals run in 20 years. Reid was on his way to winning Sixth Man of the Year, and the team held a promotion giving away beach towels with his name on it, coinciding with the lake theme in that year’s City Edition uniform.
The night turned into a communal experience, a celebration of the Wolves’ rise to contenders and Reid’s role in it. Late in the game, Reid put on a highlight-reel move to force a Cavaliers timeout and, essentially, seal Minnesota’s victory. During the stoppage, play-by-play announcer Michael Grady took out his phone and documented the moment.
Thousands of towels hoisted by jubilant fans. “Made You Look” by Nas reverberating across the arena. Perfection.
“I was a little emotional in the moment because it was like something out of a movie,” Grady said. “I was just thinking about Reid in that moment and just how overwhelming that must feel for him.
The towel became more than a towel. It was a flag for Timberwolves fans to plant all over the world, a symbol of the franchise’s rise from the NBA ashes and a warning that a player with a power forward’s body, a point guard’s handle and shooting guard’s 3-ball was coming for you. There were towel sightings in Costa Rica, London, Spain, Mardi Gras and at Wrestlemania, just to name a few.
It was even there to celebrate a wedding last year. Wolves fan Holly Lopez O’Hotto asked her wedding photographer to get a picture with her husband, Dio, and the towel as a testament to the role that Reid and the Wolves have in their lives.
“It’s a part of our relationship,” she said. “A huge part of my relationship is watching Timberwolves games together or going to the games.”
Photo courtesy of Holly Lopez O’Hotto
“I don’t know if Naz Reid’s jersey will be hung in the rafters of whatever new stadium gets built in downtown Minneapolis,” Timberwolves podcaster Kyle Theige said on the Dane Moore NBA Podcast. “But it would be pretty f—ing cool if they just hung a towel. Because that’s what that guy meant to this organization, this city and this state.”
Naz Reid’s legacy is embedded in the language
When Grady was hired to call games on television for the Timberwolves in 2022, he remembers going to his first training camp and preparing to watch Edwards work his magic. The young star was certainly impressive, but someone else just kept catching his eye.
“I’m seeing this dude,” Grady recalled. “I’m seeing a guy knock down 3s, block shots, dunk on guys, and I’m like, ‘OK, I’m here for Ant, but who’s that?’”
Naz Reid.
Early in that season, reporters were gathered around Reid after a game. McDaniels, Reid’s best friend and a man of few words, walked by the gaggle and muttered, “Naz Reid” as he exited the locker room.
A meme was born.
Reid’s name turned into a Swiss Army knife in a Wolves fan’s love languages. It could be used as a greeting, an exclamation, a sign of approval and, perhaps most importantly, a secret handshake of sorts. This was before the Wolves’ revival had hit overdrive, before the back-to-back conference finals runs and before Reid fully emerged as a force to be reckoned with. When Wolves fans would spot each other in the wild, they would sidle up to one another, nod, drop a “Naz Reid” under their breath and keep it moving.
“I mean, you can go up to someone on the street that at least knows about the Timberwolves, and you can just say Naz Reid, and they’ll get it,” Lopez O’Hotto said.
Grady tried to capture the connection in his call. He played with a number of vocal devices, and settled on a McDaniels-inspired tagline.
“Two words.”
“It just became a thing, almost like a salutation,” Grady said. “It took on a life of its own, and his crowd-pleasing style of play just opened the door to saying it more and more and more.”
Naz Reid’s legacy is painted on canvas
Before he moved back to Minnesota, Adam Johnson was a teacher in the South Bronx. He had difficulty getting his students to lock in on his daily math lessons, so he started integrating drawing and painting to capture their attention. He continued the practice when he moved to Minneapolis and kept cultivating his own art away from his day job.
Johnson started posting his portraits of well-known figures. As the Wolves got rolling during the 2023-24 season, Johnson decided to pick a player for his next project. The choice was easy.
“He’s the underdog, right?” Johnson said. “Like us as Minnesota sports fans, we’re competing with so many other things, whether it be a bigger market, weather, media bias. … I feel like it’s not a level playing field. And so we really connect with Reid because he had to fight through it. And we, as fans, we feel like we have to fight through when we’re fighting against the Golden State Warriors and the Lakers and the teams that have huge fan bases and so many other factors that give them an advantage.”
The painting took months to complete, and it just so happened that Johnson put the last brush strokes into it on the morning that Reid received his 2024 Sixth Man of the Year award in the playoffs. He offered it up to Reid, who happily accepted, and made copies that he gave away all over town to promote the arts and as a way of giving back to the community. They are hanging in windows and posted in yards everywhere you look.
Photo courtesy of Adam Johnson
Timberwolves fans devoured them. He has since done portraits of other athletes, including Edwards, Jaden McDaniels, Mike Conley, Paige Bueckers and Caitlin Clark. The Reid painting, he says, remains the most popular. He estimates he has given out thousands of them.
“There’s a world where he’s a Timberwolf again, but if it ends like this and he’s just like this cult hero,” Johnson said. “Naz is Naz. Nothing happened to tarnish how we view him. He left the organization at peak ‘Naz Reid, we love you’ level, and this actually just enhances it. … Kind of how hurt we are, it says a lot about the fan base. It says a lot about Naz, how he brought us together and how we’re sticking together. And we’re going to cheer for Naz wherever he goes.”
Naz Reid’s legacy is stained in tears
When she first heard the news that Reid had been traded, Rachel Edgar shed real tears. It’s been a tough week.
“I would love to talk about him,” she says to a caller. “I am worried that I’m going to cry. It’s kind of been embarrassing the past like day and a half.”
Edgar is a lifelong Wolves fan, old enough to remember the first glory days of Kevin Garnett and wise enough to appreciate the success of the Edwards era because she knows just how bad things can really get. Reid was here through thick and thin, and Edgar knows that doesn’t happen every day.
“I am so grateful for that stability, and I know you’ve got to give up something to get something,” she said. “This trade is very exciting, but I think there’s such an emotional connection that everybody has with him. That it makes it hard. You’ve got to show them some love on the way out, too.”
Edgar can’t wait to see Ball in the open floor, throwing lobs to McDaniels and finding Edwards for catch-and-shoot 3s that he never would have gotten without a 6-7 point guard who can see over the top of the defense. She knows the Wolves were missing that element in their 4-2 semifinals loss to the San Antonio Spurs, and that life will be so much easier for Edwards now that Ball can initiate the offense.
But she also knows there is no replacing Reid’s connection with Minnesota. She mentioned seeing Reid at the protests following George Floyd’s murder and the way he proudly spoke about how the people of Minnesota responded to ICE raids last winter.
“Now I’m getting emotional,” she said. “We don’t know the guy, but I hope he felt like his hard work was seen because it also felt like he saw us.”
Naz Reid’s legacy isn’t going anywhere
A funny thing happened as the rest of the NBA world scratched their heads and had a laugh at all of those foolish Minnesota rubes with the tattoos who had to have been regretting their decision now that Reid was gone. Business for Stroebel and George picked up.
“What’s amazing is that Jesse and I actually have had more emails and inquiries for Naz Reid tattoos post-trade than we were getting before,” Stroebel said.
Naz Reid.
Ink is thicker than water. It is permanent. No matter what life throws at them, no matter how the team changes, the tattoo endures. Seven letters for seven years in Minnesota. A name that became a rallying cry that only describes those branded as soldier survivors, slaves to a page in his dunk book.
“It’s not about the name,” Lopez O’Hotto said. “It’s about the memories surrounding that and the community that his name built in Minnesota.”
It is about possibility. About a Jersey boy who flourished in Minnesota and was loved like no other. About the blossoming of a franchise that was once an embarrassment, and all the people who weathered the losing and the dysfunction to get to the point where Reid and the Timberwolves could reward their faith. About a cancer-stricken artist who draws so much inspiration from Reid’s ascendance that he now thinks decades down the road.
“I can’t wait to be a Wolves fan 40 years from now and being on a jumbotron and flashing the barely legible Naz Reid tattoo with a bunch of other fans, man,” Stroebel said. “That’s so special.”
The day after Reid was traded, Stroebel posted a Reid highlight reel on his Instagram story with a simple tagline.
Naz Forever.
A little while later, Stroebel was alerted that Reid had reacted to a post with a heart. He then left a direct message that was, appropriately, short and sweet.
“Thank you for everything,” Reid wrote.
No, Naz. Thank you. For everything.
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Jon Krawczynski is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the Minnesota Timberwolves, the NBA and the Minnesota Vikings. Jon joined The Athletic after 16 years at The Associated Press, where he covered three Olympics, three NBA Finals, two Ryder Cups and the 2009 NFC Championship Game. You can follow Jon on x @JonKrawczynski.
