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A few days after Jaylen Clark was drafted by the Timberwolves in 2023, he stood in his Minneapolis hotel room, holding his phone and recording himself.
In the YouTube video, he unpacked his new life in real time. Timberwolves sweats, tops, shirts, and as he joked, “a million NBA socks.”
He held everything up with the kind of genuine excitement that comes from someone who had just made it, giving his fans a real glimpse of what being an NBA rookie on day one looked like.
He sounded grounded, but clearly thrilled to finally be in the NBA, a second-round pick who was simply eager to get started.
“I’m really just excited to get to work and show you all the whole shebang,” Clark said in that video.
Two years later, the message feels almost poetic.
Clark is no longer just receiving Timberwolves gear. Now, he is the face of the latest Timberwolves x Lamb Chops drop, the third collaboration between the franchise and the brand.
Jordan Dye, Founder and CEO of Shepherd Goods & Lamb Chops, is part of the team building these drops with the Timberwolves. He is a lifelong Wolves fan, which is why all three Lamb Chops collaborations have centered on the KG-era tree logo.
“That’s the Wolves I fell in love with,” Dye said. “That logo is just Minnesota to me.”
For Dye, that era is less about nostalgia than attitude — toughness, grit and players who earned everything — which is exactly how he sees Clark.
Dye first connected with Clark after sending him some gear, and over time they stayed in touch by crossing paths at games.
“Jaylen just has a realness to him,” Dye said. “He’s not trying to be anything he’s not. He shows up, he’s humble, he’s kind, and you can tell he cares about the people around him.”
However, Clark is not a natural model. He skipped his senior photos in high school and still tries to avoid being photographed in the tunnel on game nights.
Being in front of a camera is not something he seeks out, which is part of what makes his involvement in this drop feel unexpected, not just for fans, but for the people who know him best.
“My teammates are definitely going to clown me [for the photos],” Clark said at the Lamb Chops shoot. “And my family back home is probably going to be like, ‘What are you doing modeling?’ But they’ll love it.”
“I never thought I’d be doing nothing like this,” Clark added. “This is definitely dope.”
If Clark’s rise to being the face of a retail drop feels unlikely, that’s because his path with the Wolves has been anything but straightforward.
He arrived in Minnesota as a late second-round pick at No. 53, fresh off rupturing his Achilles at UCLA, an injury that forced him to miss his entire rookie season. Instead of stepping onto an NBA floor, he spent that year rehabbing, watching and waiting.
The Wolves had signed him to a two-way contract, and once he was healthy in his second year, he spent long stretches moving between Minneapolis and Des Moines with the team’s G League affiliate, the Iowa Wolves, grinding his way back into rhythm while staying mentally sharp.
Clark has been open about how much that time shaped him.
“The G League helped me a lot,” he said after practice in early February 2025. “It changed me. I was with my cousin Kelly down there every night, [he was] pushing me. It wasn’t always pretty, but it made me tougher.”
“You learn real quick that nothing is guaranteed,” Clark added. “You can be up one day and back down the next. Iowa taught me to control what I can control.”
An opening in the rotation arrived on January 29, 2025, in Phoenix, and Clark seized it, bringing the same relentless defense he had always carried with him.
“If I wasn’t ready in that Phoenix game, I’d probably be back in Iowa right now,” Clark said in early February 2025. “That’s how fast it can go.”
Since then, he has become a steady presence for the Wolves, not because of flashy numbers, but because of consistency, effort and clarity about who he is as a player.
“He’s like a dog chasing a car,” Wolves coach Chris Finch said postgame earlier this season. “He just keeps going and that’s how he plays. That’s what we love about him. He knows who he is, and he just does it to the absolute best of his ability all the time.”
That identity is a big part of why Dye wanted Clark front and center.
Lamb Chops leans into comfort and individuality, and Clark’s story, from rehab to G League to earning his place, fits naturally with that.
“Jaylen represents the city in a quiet way,” Dye said. “He works, he shows up, he doesn’t complain and people respect that.”
And for Clark, it all loops back to that hotel room video.
Back then, he was showing off practice gear, grateful just to belong.
Now, he is representing a Wolves collaboration, and when he’s home in California, his friends and family are the ones asking him about Lamb Chops.
“It’s Minnesota only,” he tells them. “I can put y’all on though.”
