The Loons returned this weekend, and the Twins played twice more in Detroit, but surely there’s only one news item we can talk about first today: The Timberwolves are re-signing Naz Reid.

From the outside, I bet Reid’s popularity is a bit hard to understand. This is a Timberwolves team that now has a bunch of big names - Karl-Anthony Towns, Anthony Edwards, Rudy Gobert, even Mike Conley - yet Reid may well be the most popular player on the team. There can’t be a lot of NBA teams on which the most popular player is a backup power forward.

To me, Reid was emblematic of the latest rebirth of the Timberwolves (this being the eighth or ninth time the franchise has had to start again). Especially after the Edwards pick, the Wolves were suddenly a team of young guns, with a few veterans thrown in, and it felt like they were all going to develop together. Even Towns and D’Angelo Russell, who’d been in the league for a few years, felt like part of the youth movement.

It was fun and exciting and what I said repeatedly was that, while I wanted the whole plan to work and for the Timberwolves to finally be a winning team, it was also important to me that the plan worked for this team and this set of players.

Tim Connelly rather ruined that dream, of course. He traded some of the young players (chiefly Jarred Vanderbilt) for Gobert, who then didn’t work well with Russell, which led to the Conley trade. And so that group, the one that I wanted to be great together, kind of disappeared.

Reid stayed, though. And he kept developing. He transformed from “huh, this rookie big can shoot a little” to “wow, this big guy can not only shoot but can actually put the ball on the floor and score?” And I think fans latched on to that development, to being part of watching Reid go from undrafted to coveted.

I didn’t think the Wolves would be able to re-sign him, of course. They are paying Towns and Gobert and Conley huge money, and they’re about to give the same to Edwards and Jaden McDaniels. This signing is seemingly an acknowledgment that the new Wolves owners are ready for a bit of luxury, as they luxuriate in the luxurious feeling of paying the luxury tax.

Or, I guess, that they’re about to trade Towns.

Minnesota United was back in action Saturday, and played one of those games that does tend to make you wonder why you wasted your time. The Loons put in a heck of a first half against Real Salt Lake, leading 2-0 at the break after Emanuel Reynoso created a goal for Hassani Dotson, then scored one that was put on a platter for him by Sang Bin Jeong. Then they came out in the second half, tried - and failed - to control the game and see it out, and gave up goals in the 79th and 98th minute to come out of the weekend with only one point.

The disappointing, tense game does seem to be a Loons specialty this year. They’ve played 18 games; six have been draws, and ten of the remaining 12 have been decided by a single goal. All five Minnesota wins have been one-goal wins.

This one also felt like an opportunity missed because some breaks went Minnesota’s way. RSL had a penalty canceled in the first half after a VAR review (good decision, I think), and then had a goal taken off the board in the second half after a VAR review (iffy decision at best, which also led to a strange situation in which Adrian Heath was criticizing the decision postgame even though it went in favor of his team.)

Of course, there was also a moment in which the last defender chopped down Ménder García, which could have been a red card, but wasn’t even given as a foul (or reviewed by VAR). And then there were nine minutes of stoppage time for some reason, which gave RSL time to get the equalizer. So you can’t say that all the breaks went the Loons’ way.

The summer transfer window opens July 5. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Minnesota desperately needs a new striker (and everyone seeems to think it’ll be Teemu Pukki). They also probably need another defender and maybe another defensive midfielder. But what they really need is to be able to sign that new striker and retroactively be able to play him for the entire first half of the season, because they’ve failed to take advantage of opportunities or get results in a lot of close games, and now they’re looking up at the playoff line from below.

The Twins remained the Twins over the weekend - still struggling to hit with runners in scoring position, still struggling to get runs on the board. They lost 3-2 on Saturday, and would have lost again Sunday except the Tigers started sailing the ball all around the diamond instead of throwing it to each other. Detroit gave Minnesota a run in the eighth with an error, then booted a grounder and dropped a throw to let another run score in the tenth inning, and the Twins escaped with a 6-3 win in extra innings.

This whole month, it’s felt like the team was just about to finally turn a corner. They’d right the ship and win a few in a row, and then they’d run into a wall. And then you’d write them off entirely, and suddenly they’d turn around and hit six homers and win a couple.

And while this all was happening… Tuesday marks the midpoint of the season, game 81. The Twins are 40-39. Much is made of how being in the AL Central gives them such an advantage, but they’re just 15-12 against the Central this year. They just played Detroit, a bad team, seven times in two weeks, and they lost four of them.

This is who this team is. They strike out too much and most of their hitters are league-average or worse this year. They have five good starting pitchers and three trustworthy relief pitchers, which means it may be their best pitching staff ever, but they will not hit enough to make up for it.

We’ll keep hoping that their hitters turn it around. But you have to expect that we’ll see this kind of thing for the next three months, too.

The Saints closed out their first half with a weekend split in Louisville, losing 12-1 on Saturday but winning 12-5 on Friday. Jose Miranda homered Sunday; he’s got an .816 OPS in June, good news as he tries to recover from a disastrous first couple of months.

St. Paul ended the first half 43-31, the third-best team in the International League, five games back of Norfolk and (somehow) a half-game behind Iowa.

In successful soccer news, the Minnesota Aurora clinched the division title on Saturday, beating Milwaukee 2-0 to run their record to 10-0-0. They’re playoff-bound, possibly undefeated season-bound again (they were 11-0-1 last year), and have to be thinking about doing what last year’s team couldn’t do: win a championship.

The W League playoff structure is pretty confusing, since the league itself is pretty confusing, but the Aurora are in for certain. They’ll be joined by 15 other teams, and would need to win four games in the playoffs to win the title.

TONIGHT’S SLATE

TWINS at Atlanta, 6:20pm

ON DECK

LYNX vs Seattle, Tuesday
LOONS vs FC Kaiserslautern (friendly), Wednesday

SAINTS vs Gwinnett, Wednesday
CROWS vs Thunder Bay, Wednesday
AURORA at Green Bay, Thursday
MNUFC2 vs Portland Timbers2, Sunday