On Monday morning, hours before the Minnesota Timberwolves shocked the NBA by beating the heavily favored San Antonio Spurs in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals, the team issued a seemingly random tweet: “btw, none of our graphics are AI.”
That sneaky subtweet racked up 83,000 likes, in part, because the Detroit Pistons had just been ratioed to hell for posting AI slop. But fans also rallied behind the fact the Wolves still employ flesh and bone graphic designers like Alejandro Meyers.
Growing up in south Texas ("I was not a Spurs fan, don't worry about that”), Meyers, now 24, was immersed in social media, sports, and art. By age 12 he’d begun toying around with graphic design. Fresh out of high school, he applied to 250+ jobs—all rejections. But eventually the T-Wolves, who’d not previously employed a full-time social media graphic designer, took a chance on the 19-year-old Texan.
"My philosophy for social media is: I want people from all around the world who aren't even fans to see the pages,” says Meyers, who contributes to online content for the Timberwolves and the Lynx. “But at the same time it’s by the fans, for the fans.”
The sports world is taking notice. In 2024, ESPN published an article on the elite trolling efforts of the Wolves online team, which includes eight folks dedicated to social media plus video and animation crews. Similar to a TV comedy writers room, the social team gathers once a week to riff out as many ideas as possible, Meyers says, though quick-turnaround posts are essential to the formula, too.
"We're PR-trained, so we can't go full-out meme and diss other fans, players, and teams, but we have a good sense of little nods we can make,” the digital content/graphic design coordinator says. “A good example is when we beat the Lakers last year, we thanked them for drafting Jaden McDaniels."
Meyers chuckles when this reporter cites reports that his Wolves-Spurs preview poster—a cinematic scene depicting a hungry wolf pack hunting a UFO stand-in for superstar Spur Victor "The Alien" Wembanyama—”mogged” the comparatively lazy work of San Antonio’s social squad. He declined to pound his chest, instead saying that each team deploys their own distinct approach to branding. PR-trained, indeed.
The Wolves social team is happy to call out artificial intelligence. While his colleagues viewed the Pistons subtweet as “a little opportunity” to rack up likes, Meyers admits, the team’s undergirding approach is anti-AI. “We have all these artists in our department, it's crazy hard work. We're totally against it,” he says.
Wolves HQ isn’t dwelling on debates over the appropriate use of tech at this particular moment, however. There’s the more pressing matter of beating the Spurs to advance to their third consecutive Western Conference finals. Meyers says his department maintains close relationships with the players, who reportedly aren’t touchy about how they’re depicted on Twitter, Instagram, etc. "They don't really care, I don't think,” he says, adding that lovable Aussie benchwarmer Joe Ingles is always an eager participant for video projects.
Where it’s one game at a time or one post at a time, Meyers says the franchise is locked in:
"We definitely stole Game 1 [from the Spurs], the vibe in the building was like, 'Damn, we got it.'"
