Zach Lowe Show LIVE From Minnesota With Rob Mahoney, Jon Krawczynski, Chris Finch, and Donte DiVincenzo

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Speaker 1 Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 1 How's it going, y'all?

Speaker 1 Thanks for coming out. Thanks for coming out.
We good? Can you hear me? Thanks, everyone, for coming out to the first ever live show.

Speaker 1 I've already told them if this is a failure, we're never doing it again.

Speaker 1 If it works, we will go on a tour and go to other places.

Speaker 1 We're going to go rapid fire through a few segments. We're going to have some fun.
Rob is here the whole time. He flew in from Los Angeles.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 look at you guys. You have a really good Western Conference basketball team.
How does that feel?

Speaker 1 Like, it's just you guys are just a normal good team.

Speaker 1 It's kind of a novel thing. Oh, completely.
How does it feel for you, though, now that there's a straight line from Prince to you playing this venue?

Speaker 1 Like, do you feel the pressure of that?

Speaker 1 There's lots of other people, too. There's lots of other people.

Speaker 1 I had no idea. They were like, this is a famous place.
Prince recorded. All right, okay.

Speaker 1 Now we're going to do Western Conference power rankings.

Speaker 1 That's what the people want, though. All right, you ready to go? We're just going to get into it.
No prelude. There's no prelude.
Oh, wait, there is a prelude. There is a prelude.

Speaker 1 Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show

Speaker 1 live

Speaker 1 from Minneapolis.

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Speaker 1 We have poster boards. We have sticky notes.
We do not know each other's lists. We thought this would be a good way to

Speaker 1 kind of address where the wolves are in the hierarchy of the Western Conference.

Speaker 1 We have some wolves higher-ups here, so this will be exciting.

Speaker 1 Okay, we're just going to go.

Speaker 1 We're going to go 15 to 1. We have not seen each other's list yet.
Rapid fire. The worst team in the Western Conference right now, Rob Mahoney, slap it on.
Is there any doubt?

Speaker 1 Yes, there is doubt. There's got to be.

Speaker 1 General rule, if you have to install new mobile staircases to let your GM exit the arena in shame, you get to the bottom of the list and then you fire him.

Speaker 1 I'm just going to spoil this right now. You guys submitted a bunch of questions for a Q ⁇ A at the end if we have time.

Speaker 1 I think five of you submitted the same exact question in different wordings, which was, is Nico Harrison the new David Khan? Five of you. Five of you.

Speaker 1 One of you in something that made Simmons proud actually used the championship belt metaphor.

Speaker 1 Has he taken the bad GM championship belt from David Kahn I went to Pelicans because do I even need to explain they're hopeless that they don't own their first-round draft pick it's not going well for two-phones Dumars over in New Orleans I can't believe I didn't even have Dallas 14 I'm gonna spoil my 14th pick no

Speaker 1 you've been keeping up with current events though

Speaker 1 We'll get there. We'll get there.

Speaker 1 Your number 14 team. Stick it on.
That's got to be the Pelicans. So who do you have the Kings? The Sacramento Kings.

Speaker 1 This is the nexus of bad vibes in the NBA right now. Yeah.
The Pelicans, we got... Although I like Derrick Queen, Derrick Queen's kind of fun.

Speaker 1 Have you enjoyed the Derrick Queen experience? Completely. That's why I'm a little surprised you have him at the bottom.
At least there's some good energy there, if not good basketball. Is there?

Speaker 1 The Mavericks,

Speaker 1 you are...

Speaker 1 Is the fandom dead in you? It's unfortunate. And if it wasn't dead, it's like, how could it live on after all this?

Speaker 1 You guys, this was your team for so long. Like the mocked, dumb team, which we will get, which we will get to the history.
And look at all of these incompetent teams.

Speaker 1 This team, if we all got together in a room and were like, let's go from De'Aaron Fox and Tyrese Halliburton and try in two years to build the stupidest possible basketball team, we could not do any worse or any better, I don't know, than the Sacramento Kick.

Speaker 1 What a miserable team to watch.

Speaker 1 I'm personally, I'm shocked it doesn't work. You know, all the pieces just seem to make sense to me, Zach.
All right, 13. I already spoiled my 13.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so we have a variation of the

Speaker 1 other way to go. Let's just do

Speaker 1 it. I got to refresh my memory if I didn't.
All right, 12. Let's do 12.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Boom.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's going great. It's going great in Memphis.

Speaker 1 Memphis, you have lower than the Utah Jazz. I do.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's not going great. You know what? I'll just put up my 11 right now.
You put up your 11 because my 11 is the Memphis Grizzlies.

Speaker 1 You guys want John Moran?

Speaker 1 The Clippers.

Speaker 1 That didn't.

Speaker 1 That seems strong. The Clippers! You have the Clippers.
I grip. All right, I'm just going to go.
I think we have different interpretations, Zach. Like, this is all vibes.
These are power rankings.

Speaker 1 This is astrology for dudes. Like, we're supposed to do it this way.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's just address all three of them. You guys, we're not even close to Minnesota yet.
This is so good. This is good news.
This is good news.

Speaker 1 I don't know. Just

Speaker 1 young and not that. I mean, Ace Bailey is a little bit fun.
Marketing's really good. Marketing's averaging 29 points a game.
Yes. They know what they're doing.

Speaker 1 Like, it's a little bit of like turning a ham bone and gummy bears into like a chopped basket for Will Hardy, but like he makes it kind of work.

Speaker 1 Do you guys remember the Memphis, Minnesota playoff series from three years ago

Speaker 1 when it was just Jaron Jackson Jr. and Carl Anthony Towns committing stupid fouls against each other the entire time? I'm happy to report that Jaron Jackson Jr.

Speaker 1 fouled out in 30 minutes last night and yet another loss for the Grizzlies. And I think Morant was like three of 16 or something with eight turnovers.
That was horrible. No one wants to be there.

Speaker 1 It's not going great. No.
It's not going great. And the Clippers, I'll just, you just talk about the Clippers.

Speaker 1 They're the slowest team by choice. Like, they wanted to be this way.
I don't understand anything they're doing. They don't seem like they could be really troubled to jog back.
They have to be low.

Speaker 1 Do you not have them coming up soon? I grandfathered them in.

Speaker 1 Yes, you did.

Speaker 1 Grandfathered them in. A little higher out of respect for they won 50 games last year.
Fair. Took the Nuggets to seven in the first round.
Yep.

Speaker 1 Still have James Harden guaranteed to shit the bed in game seven of any important playoff series. Still have Kawhi Leonard.
Still my MVP from 2017. I'm still clinging to that vote.

Speaker 1 Russ didn't deserve to win.

Speaker 1 Well, and you're an aspiration investor, we know. And what? You're an aspiration investor.
I actually have an aspiration hoodie. I almost wore it tonight.

Speaker 1 No, seriously, someone made me a fake, a friend of a friend of a friend made me an aspiration hoodie. that I feel like it's too mean to the Clippers to wear it.
Bradley Beale's out for the season.

Speaker 1 Rob,

Speaker 1 are you emotionally devastated?

Speaker 1 Did you dock him five wins just based on that? I mean, I had a visceral reaction to hearing that someone broke their hip. It sounds very painful.

Speaker 1 He was barely a part of this team, did not register at all. We wish him the best.
We do.

Speaker 1 It doesn't, they had already concluded that Hardin plus Beal was untenable defensively. Like, they were just getting blown by, blown by, blown by.
I guess I got to find who I have 10th.

Speaker 1 Did you put a 10 yet? Not yet. This is where I'm coming back to the Utah Jazz, who you love so much.

Speaker 1 Boom.

Speaker 1 Phoenix Suns. See, that's mean.

Speaker 1 Again, look, it's early. It's early, but they're frisky.
Phoenix Suns.

Speaker 1 Someone tweeted at me this week saying, someone in the national media has to be the one to write the piece about the Phoenix Suns are actually kind of good.

Speaker 1 I don't write anymore, so it can't be me.

Speaker 1 And they are kind of good, as evidenced by the fact that you have them in your top 10. I think they're over 500.
They're just like a normal play-in team as well.

Speaker 1 It turns out, out if you get rid of the bad vibes expressed that was last season's collection of stars, there's a normal thing under there that kind of works. How is it working?

Speaker 1 Jordan Ott's a good coach. He's a good coach.
He's a good coach. A lot of guys playing real hard.
It's not interesting, but it's good. Dylan Brooks is fun.
I enjoy Jill and Dylan Brooks. Did he? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 He deserves it, honestly, sometimes. He, like, second game in, they played the Clippers, and he was just like, I'm going to make James Harden mad the entire night.

Speaker 1 Just chest to chest, all the way down to the floor. It was great.

Speaker 1 I can't, I just, can I see it for a little longer before I go higher than this? These are power rankings. We're reflecting the moment.

Speaker 1 See, I go in with my prior, my Bayesian prior, I think the nerds call it, and I adjust from that. Okay, number nine.
We're up to number nine already. This is where I have these guys.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 If your star players are getting into fights on threads, you got to move down a couple spots. Wait, is that happening? Oh, yeah.
That's a real thing?

Speaker 1 Check Draymond Green's action today. He had a lot of stuff to say.
Well, I saw he was kind of defending Nico Harrison somehow. He was like,

Speaker 1 I'm putting my flag on that. Historically great tape.

Speaker 1 They need the vacation. We're like three weeks into the season.
These guys seem to hate each other already.

Speaker 1 Yeah, did you guys, as people who have first-hand experience, did you have like the under on the over-under 10 and a half months before Jimmy Butler made some controversial controversial public comments.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 the comments after last night's lust, which I watched that game, I watched Thunder Warriors. The Warriors tried.
And

Speaker 1 they tried for a little bit. It was close for a little bit.
That's admirable.

Speaker 1 The Thunder have a way.

Speaker 1 The spoiler, the Thunder are going to be very high.

Speaker 1 They have a way of like... Sorry, sorry.
They just demoralize you to the point where you could see teams being like, we don't even want to, like, I don't want to cut anymore.

Speaker 1 This is a lot of work for absolutely no payoff against this army of just mean guys with long arms. Ninth is aggressive, Rob.
I can't co-sign.

Speaker 1 That's okay.

Speaker 1 Eighth.

Speaker 1 Maybe the same team? The Portland Trail Blancers. There we go.
We got some synergy. Our first match, it looks like.

Speaker 1 Is that possible? That's the first match? The first match.

Speaker 1 They deserve a middle-in-the-pack ranking, like a young spry team we can all believe in. They run and gun.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they're fun to watch.

Speaker 1 I have no fun comments about the Blazers. Well, there's lots of fun stuff going on in their coaching staff.
There's a lot happening.

Speaker 1 Number seven for me is the aforementioned Golden State Warriors. And this is where I'll put the Phoenix Suns.
So we're, again, we're closing the loops on various tiers here, I think.

Speaker 1 So you think the Suns... Can they sustain this? This is a real thing? I think they can sustain this, which is like a play-in-team caliber season.

Speaker 1 And the Warriors, again, like badly need a vacation or a spirit journey or something already. Okay, so we have the same top six,

Speaker 1 which I think is interesting. I thought, you know, if you could, you can't really make an argument for any of these teams.

Speaker 1 I thought maybe Warriors, optimism, you know, they started out so well, might get them in the top six. We have the same top six.
I'm guessing we have the same top two.

Speaker 1 Three, four, five, and six was a very tricky exercise to rank these four teams. So without further ado, I'm going to put up my sixth-place team.

Speaker 1 There we go.

Speaker 1 How can we justify eight and three? No LeBron. LeBron's got sciatica.
Yep. Sciatica.

Speaker 1 Has anyone here had sciatica?

Speaker 1 It's all dudes that look

Speaker 1 too old to play in the NBA.

Speaker 1 How can we justify having them solo without LeBron? Luca missed some games. Reeves is on fire.
How could dare you? How would you justify this? Because these teams are all pretty fucking good.

Speaker 1 I think this whole rank is all worthy of contention, all going to be really high-level teams. I'd have the most questions about them even still, because we've seen so little of them altogether.

Speaker 1 And LeBron is very old. He is very old.
And age is tough. It's a young man's game.
It's a young man's game. All right.
Now it's getting tricky. Number five.

Speaker 1 I'll say the Spurs.

Speaker 1 Basketball is a younger man's game, but as an old person, I am inherently skeptical of all young people, including Victor Webanyama.

Speaker 1 Really good team, still figuring a lot out. Also, my most boomer take is like, I just don't understand why double teams work on him at all.

Speaker 1 Like, how could someone a foot shorter than you really disrupt you that much? I don't understand it. I mean, look, I'm just going to say,

Speaker 1 I thought about putting him at three. I thought really hard about putting them at three.
I think this is like pretty real. They're really good.
They're good. Fox is really good.
Castle is a monster.

Speaker 1 And Castle has actually very quickly figured out the just throw it really, really high, and there's nothing anybody can do about it. This dude, Wemby is so beyond anything we've ever seen before.

Speaker 1 It's absolutely terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.
He's nuts.

Speaker 1 But fifth, like,

Speaker 1 got to show me a little bit longer. Got to show it to me a little longer.
I mean, the fifth best team in in the West is basically the fifth best team in the league.

Speaker 1 So a lot of respect being shown to the Spurs.

Speaker 1 Unnecessary. Is it?

Speaker 1 I live on the Amtrak corridor, man. It's tough times on the Amtrak corridor other than the Knicks right now.
Unless you believe in Philly, do you believe in Philly? Believe meaning what?

Speaker 1 Like, it's all, this could be the year. This could be the year.
But again, the lead's going to stay healthy the rest of the year. Paul George is almost coming back.
He is almost back.

Speaker 1 Did you remember Paul George was on the team? I did. Okay.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 Number four. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think this is where the crowd turns against us a little bit. Oh.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Do you want to just do four and three together since I'm assuming we have the same 4-3?

Speaker 1 Sure. Yeah.
Like, if you want to do that?

Speaker 1 There we go. I couldn't go any higher.
I couldn't go any higher. Couldn't go any higher.

Speaker 1 3.5 is pretty good. All right.
So here, I'll just go. Old, young, weird, proven.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm going to do. I like that.

Speaker 1 While we are in a room of our closest friend, Zach, I need to tell you something I've never told anyone else before.

Speaker 1 I am addicted to watching Julius Randall play basketball. It is.

Speaker 1 It's becoming a problem.

Speaker 1 I do hear the goosebumps every single time. Every time.

Speaker 1 I feel like it's one of the one things in life I've been waiting for, which is Julius Randle to get it for basically my entire adult life. And all of a sudden, I have everything I ever wanted.

Speaker 1 I don't know what to do. He was on the Lakers.
When he was on the Lakers, you know, Bill has his islands, and now he's now misconstrued. Well, he can afford an island.
But he's misconstrued.

Speaker 1 He tried to posit that he was on Giannis Island, and I was like, that's not, you're now missing the point of what the island is. But for a while, I was on July.
I called it Julius Randall Hill.

Speaker 1 I was alone by myself.

Speaker 1 I was trying to make fire with sticks on julius randall hill i was eating acorns now everybody wants to be a part of it he's always been good just waited for the right fit but seriously old

Speaker 1 young

Speaker 1 so weird like can this incredibly can this actually work can an nba offense built around missing shots actually

Speaker 1 actually actually work i mean i really i'm they have i think the number one or two offense in the nba maybe it maybe this has been a great plan i don't know it's just weird to me this i know you know what i know

Speaker 1 conference Conference finals two years in a row. That's what I know.

Speaker 1 All right. You got to respect it.
However,

Speaker 1 I'm sorry. I had breakfast with a bunch of people from the Timberwolves this morning, and we concluded by saying, talking about expansion, potential expansion.

Speaker 1 I said, look, you guys need to put every resource, every legal dollar you have into moving to the Eastern Conference

Speaker 1 if it ever comes up. Because these two teams,

Speaker 1 I I know one of them, you got their number, but it's just tough sledding against number two

Speaker 1 and number one. Yeah, sorry, sorry.

Speaker 1 If we're being honest, Zach,

Speaker 1 number one is the Thunder, number two might be like the Thunder missing three guys, and then number three is the Denver Nuggets.

Speaker 1 This, this, well, first of all, the Thunder have been the Thunder missing three guys, and they're 11-1, and they have a net rating of 14.5, and the number one defense.

Speaker 1 They're terrifying. Shea gets better and better every year.
The Chet Leap is happening. That's what should scary one.
The chet leap.

Speaker 1 I think he's shooting 70-something percent on twos, so something like that.

Speaker 1 This,

Speaker 1 this, barring injury, this is the NBA Finals.

Speaker 1 And you guys have to hope that somehow something befalls the Nuggets and they fall to fourth and have to play the Thunder in the second round because going through both of these teams, I know, look, the Wolves have played the Nuggets well.

Speaker 1 Completely. Really, really well.

Speaker 1 With Randall and with Kat. So there's something, there's definitely something there.
And we,

Speaker 1 I can't talk about enough Jaden McDaniels, you guys.

Speaker 1 It's all

Speaker 1 happening for Jaden McDaniels. He rules three.
The streets are happening. The pump and spin and lay it up.
It's all happening. He's so good.

Speaker 1 I mean, I think these two, ultimately, Houston and Minnesota, these are the disruptors to your beautifully laid plans.

Speaker 1 Like, if Oklahoma City and Denver is the proxy finals, these are the two teams who could really muck it up. Okay, before we bring on our next guest, most depressing situation among all of these teams.

Speaker 1 Who is the most.

Speaker 1 The Dallas Mavericks still.

Speaker 1 I think that's pretty depressing. I think it has to be the Mavericks.
You know what, though? They had Cooper Flag. It was all part of the vision.
They got Cooper Flag.

Speaker 1 But now they have to trade Anthony Davis, basically. They have to keep it.

Speaker 1 Do you guys want Anthony Davis? No.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 Who? Gobert? Gobert, Conley, throw in Dillingham? No.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 Who do they want? They want their. Yeah, who do you want? You don't feel like you need another guard?

Speaker 1 Wow. I just heard lots of noise, and I thought I heard Gerald Wilkins.
And I'm like, I don't think that's possible. Somehow, I don't think so.
So those are our power rankings.

Speaker 1 I think they're pretty good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I feel bad for the Suns.

Speaker 1 I should have had the Suns higher. I think you were very mean to them.
All right.

Speaker 1 Timberwolves. Yeah, easels are going to go away now.

Speaker 1 Thank you guys.

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Speaker 1 It's been a checkered, how many years now for the Timbo? It's like a lot of years. A lot of years.

Speaker 1 And there's nobody better to guide us through them. You guys are so lucky to have him covering all of your sports teams.
From the athletic, my buddy John Krasinski.

Speaker 1 Elizabeth, I think I lost my phone, by the way, so if you're texting me, I'm not going to get it.

Speaker 1 What's up, y'all? He's very handsome.

Speaker 1 All right, John Krusinski, how you doing? I'm doing great. Look at this.
Nice crowd.

Speaker 1 It's all for you, Zach. Thanks for coming.
This is awesome. This is awesome.

Speaker 1 Vikings, mediocre. Vikings, mediocre.
Twins, bad.

Speaker 3 Bad.

Speaker 1 Soccer team exists. I don't know much about it.
Nice little story. Nice little story.
Oh.

Speaker 1 Gophers, good.

Speaker 1 On the rise, but they got a ways to go. Timberwolves, toast of the town right now? Top of the mountain right now, right? Top of the mountain.

Speaker 1 All right, so I gave John a job, and it was also an excuse for me to go down a lot of like crazy rabbit holes.

Speaker 1 Because you guys, if the Timberwolves have done one thing really well their entire existence, it's be really crazy.

Speaker 1 We used to have have a running joke that every time he appeared on my podcast, we would wrap the segment and Twitter would check Twitter and it'd be like, Gerson Rosas has been fired for an unlike, and it would be like, god damn, again?

Speaker 1 Like, how did this keep happening? And I asked John, I want you to go back and pick, I said, the five most pivotal moments. in the history of the Timberwolves franchise.

Speaker 1 So I will, and he could define pivotal however he wanted. So I'm going to just leave it to you.
You're going to go in chronological order. We'll refer a little bit.

Speaker 1 So first of all, as I thought about this, I'm going to to go five pivotal, not the most.

Speaker 1 Every one of you all in here knows about how they almost moved to New Orleans and they didn't, about how they drafted KG and a few of those things.

Speaker 1 So we're going to go a little bit deeper, but still very pivotal moments. Honorable mention, number one, this show is a pivotal moment.
How do you know?

Speaker 1 No, I'm not pandering. I am not pandering.
Like, all of these people in here have been waiting for... People like you and the national media to pay attention to the wolves.

Speaker 1 And it's been a long, long time. And so this is a really cool thing that you're doing, Zach.
So,

Speaker 1 I didn't, I didn't, I, I, no honorable mentions. Just get to the next one.
No, here we go. All right.
Number one. Number one.
In chronological order. In chronological order for me, number one,

Speaker 1 2004, game two of the Sacramento Kings, Minnesota Timberwolves Series, Western Conference semifinals. Why am I bringing up game two and not game seven?

Speaker 1 Because in game two, Sam Cassell hits a three from the corner.

Speaker 1 Gotta do it.

Speaker 1 The big balls dance. If you listen to Flip Saunders, he says that's when the avulsion fracture on the hip happens.
That team. That's what Flip claimed, the late great Flip Saunders.

Speaker 1 Sam denies it, but that's what Flip says. And so that team would have won the championship.

Speaker 1 I'm convinced of it had Sam Cassell been fully healthy into the Western Conference finals and then into the finals. So a very pivotal moment.

Speaker 1 So is the problem the celebrating or that his balls were that large? I think both. Okay.
I think it was a two-pronged problem, literally.

Speaker 1 I did go back and research somewhere in my Google search injury is engine is like, did the big balls dance injure Sam Cassell? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's like, there's a whole Reddit thread about this. All you have to do is Google Sam Cassell, Big Balls Dance, and injury comes right up with it.

Speaker 1 So you think they beat the Lakers? I think they beat the Lakes. And they beat the Pistons.

Speaker 1 Yep, and I think they beat the Pistons because I think that team was just really well equipped to match up with what the Lakers were doing and then to handle the Pistons pressure.

Speaker 1 And then the next level is like, well, what does that mean for Kevin Garnett? Did he ever be traded? Did the Celtics never win in 2008? Do you guys never experience Theo Ratliff and Gerald Green?

Speaker 1 Alexi Petrov and

Speaker 1 or Marco Yarich? Doesn't Cassell turn into Marco Yarich actually? There's a lot of Marco Yarich. There's so many tentacles

Speaker 1 to that dance. I didn't know it was game two.
I knew it was that series that Flip had this theory. Who knows if it's right or not.
But I mean, if you were Sam Cassell,

Speaker 1 I think you would deny that that's how you injured yourself. You'd have to, because you can't say I lost my chance at a championship because I did this.

Speaker 1 Even as iconic as that celebration is, do you just have to like? I guess you could injure yourself doing that. I'm not going to get up and try to do it as aggressively as possible to see if

Speaker 1 I can injure myself. There's now a Surgeon General warning on that dance, so please.
I watched the video in preparation for this, and I will give it to him. He went full big balls.

Speaker 1 Like, he did not half-ass it at all. You also googled big balls? I did.
Yeah, that's gonna be a problem. So, you just went right to 2004.
So, forget KG, forget the Marberry trade.

Speaker 1 Yeah, everyone knows about that. Forget KG's contract causing a lockout, etc., etc.
Okay, go to your number two one.

Speaker 1 Number two, May of 2009, the Timberwolves decide that they're going to hire a new general manager.

Speaker 1 Who was that?

Speaker 1 Khan!

Speaker 1 At the time. I've never watched Star Trek one time, by the way.
I have no idea what Khan Khan is, who he is. So you're just doing an impression of other people doing,

Speaker 1 basically.

Speaker 1 At the time, Glenn Taylor is in poor health, so he empowers his son-in-law, Rob Moore, to do the search.

Speaker 1 And during that search, Rob Moore asks all of the candidates to fill out basically like a personality survey, like a long test that tells you all about the personality,

Speaker 1 all the way they think about life in general and all this stuff. Dennis Lindsay was one of the candidates.
Very well thought of at the time and continues to be.

Speaker 1 And so you're thinking, oh, Dennis Lindsay might be the general manager of the Timberwolves. That's great.
And when he was told that he had to do this test, he's like, no, I'm out of here.

Speaker 1 I am not doing this at all. David Kahn did do that test.
Oh, yeah, he did. Passed it with flying colors, apparently, because he got hired.

Speaker 1 And then a little while later, passed on Steph Curry in the draft. And here we are.
I'm going to tell my David Kahn story. Please do.

Speaker 1 I don't know if I should, but I will. I think you should.

Speaker 1 They paid to hear this story. So, Bill, you know, I started at Grantland, or I started at Sports Illustrated, then I went to Grantland.
Bill was my boss for a long time.

Speaker 1 Made glorious fun of many people, including David Kahn. Some of those people took it well, others did not.

Speaker 1 And some of those others would like to take out their rage against Bill on Bill's subordinates.

Speaker 1 And at the Board of Governors meeting one year in New York, I was there, and David Kahn was there representing the Timberwolves.

Speaker 1 And Glenn Taylor was also there, but David Kahn, I guess, was an alternate governor, maybe. I don't know.

Speaker 1 I said, you know, there's David Kahn. I'm going to go, never met him before.
I'm going to go introduce myself. Walk across the room.

Speaker 1 Hey, David, Zach Lowe, Granlin, just want to put a face to a name, all that. I don't know if I probably had made fun of it at some point.
He just looks me dead straight in the eye.

Speaker 1 Tell your boss he's a fucking asshole.

Speaker 1 And walks away. And I was like, okay, that's how it's going to be.
All right.

Speaker 1 Now he's killing it in Europe, though. Killing it in Europe.
Things are going well. You know, he figured it out, stabilized himself.
All right, so something else happened in 2009 in the spring.

Speaker 1 Is that going to be on your list? It is not, so let's get into it now if you want to. Well, 2009 draft.
We can't, we can't.

Speaker 1 I mean, we have to at least mention Johnny Flynn. David Kahn being hired, then begat that, which is why I went with the David Kahn hire.
Okay, go to number three. We'll just keep going.

Speaker 1 Number three is going to be a little more obscure. February 1st, 2012, the Wolves put out this press release.
And you're gonna say, why are they putting out this press release?

Speaker 1 Why are you talking about this? It was to announce that they are going to honor the 1967-68 ABA Muskies by wearing their uniforms this year. They spent one year in the ABA, and then they moved.

Speaker 1 And it's like, why are we honoring these people? Why is this important? Because those uniforms were cursed. And Ricky Rubio is wearing the Muskies uniform

Speaker 1 in March

Speaker 1 of 2012. They go into that game on fire.

Speaker 1 They are coming up. They're in the eighth seed in the West.
They are 21-19. They lose to the Lakers.
Ricky Rubio tears his ACL.

Speaker 1 That whole electrifying rookie year of rookies down the toilet, he's never the same. What would have been if he never got injured because he was wearing that uniform? That's on my list.
Brutal.

Speaker 1 It's a flashbulb moment for me because that was one of those like

Speaker 1 you could see it coming together. For a guy that everybody loved and everybody rooted for.
There's a Rubio jersey in the front row right here. Yeah, there he is.

Speaker 1 I was texting with Ricky the other day, so he's doing well. Everybody loves Ricky.

Speaker 1 Everybody loved watching Ricky play. Everybody wanted to play with Ricky because all he wanted to do is make his teammates better.

Speaker 1 And it was like a smaller, lower-level version of when Jamal Muriator is ACL, right when the Nuggets were like trying to start to really figure it out. It was just like, it broke your heart.

Speaker 1 It just broke your heart. The worst.
And Ricky had a tough run of it for a while. Okay, go to the next one.
All right, we've had three kind of rough ones.

Speaker 1 Let's finish on a high note with a couple here. Number four, 2020 draft preparation.
Gerson Rosas is leading the front office.

Speaker 1 They are working around the clock because at the time, if you remember, there's three guys at number one. It's Edwards, it's James Wiseman, it's Lamello Ball.

Speaker 1 And you're like, I don't know what the right pick is. These guys are all, you're trying to figure this out.
You're trying to get to the bottom of it. So we know they picked Edwards, but that's not...

Speaker 1 my little nugget that I have for y'all. It was why did they pick Edwards?

Speaker 1 A million different reasons in their evaluation, but one of them was that they had an interview with Lamello Ball during this process, trying to figure out, hey, is this the guy for us?

Speaker 1 And Lamello did not interview very well.

Speaker 1 And one of the questions that was asked of him is, hey, Lamello, like, okay, after you're done playing, like, what do you see yourself doing when your career is over?

Speaker 1 Like, what kind of, what do you think do you aspire to? And Lamello said, I want to be president of the United States.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 yet.

Speaker 1 And yet.

Speaker 1 Perhaps not as implausible as it might have seemed. At the time.

Speaker 1 At the time, it seemed implausible. But tell me he wouldn't have your vote.
He might now.

Speaker 1 And so that goes down, and lo and behold, Anthony Edwards is the number one pick, and now here they are contending for Western Conference Championships every year.

Speaker 1 Similarly, the James Wiseman pick kind of ruined the Warriors' two timelines experience. Yes, absolutely.
All right,

Speaker 1 one more, and we're post-2020. We're post-2020 now.

Speaker 1 I am hoping for a little audience participation in this last one because if you're talking about pivotal moments in this franchise's history, you have to say what is the greatest sequence that has ever happened on the court in this franchise's history.

Speaker 1 Big Big room.

Speaker 1 Game seven,

Speaker 1 2024

Speaker 1 Western Conference Finals in the house of the reigning champions.

Speaker 1 The Wolves are down 20 in the third quarter. It's over, right? Minnesota sports, everything goes bad, falling flat again.

Speaker 1 They start chipping away and they start chipping away and they start chipping away. Ant hits a three at the end of the third quarter.
They're in range. They're down nine

Speaker 1 and Nas Reed comes in tip dunk. It's now 89, 82, I believe it is.
And now, let me see you guys. Kevin Harlan is on the call, the first Timberwolves play-by-play radio guy ever.

Speaker 1 They're wearing the throwback uniforms. This is destiny all of a sudden is happening in front of us.
This is all happening. And what happens? It's stolen by Conley.
He pickpockets Murray.

Speaker 1 He gets it off to Reed. Corner, Edwards,

Speaker 1 Ames fires, score. They're up 10.
The whole place goes crazy in ball arena. And it's for the Timberwolves.
And they finish that off. Wow.
And that is the number one moment, Timberwolves history.

Speaker 1 I thought.

Speaker 1 How about John Krasinski on the call, ladies and gentlemen? I thought you guys were all going to help me out here. That's what I was waiting for.
But I guess.

Speaker 1 So Denver, Minnesota game seven is on my list.

Speaker 1 I thought you were going to go with the Big Rue. Big one.
Big Rue hit that turnaround.

Speaker 1 No. Big Rue hit the turnaround.
That's a moment that changed history. That's where you thought it was going to happen, but then when Reed

Speaker 1 stolen from Jamal Murray

Speaker 1 and Ann hits it, and he's talking trash to the person in the corner, like that was it. It's like, all right, they are going to the Western Conference Finals.
All right, just to check the boxes, can I?

Speaker 1 Let's go. Yeah, please.
Please.

Speaker 1 We're not commenting on it. We're just going to say these things that happened.
Marbury trade.

Speaker 1 KG trade.

Speaker 1 2011 draft, underrated Timberwolves moment. Derek Williams at number two.

Speaker 1 And if you look at the next, here are the next like eight picks in that draft.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 it's the opposite.

Speaker 1 Ennis Freedom,

Speaker 1 Tristan Thompson, Jonas Valentunis, Jan Veseli, Bismack Biambo, Brandon Knight, Kemba Walker finally, Jimmy Ferdette, and then Clay Thompson and Kawhi like five picks later.

Speaker 1 It's not, it's not, it happens. It's that, but that's the same draft.

Speaker 1 If you, you would take three, need three hours to go through all the trades Khan made on that night, trading down and down and down and down and down.

Speaker 1 And somehow trading the rights to Nicola Miritich, Chandler Parsons, Norris Cole, and somebody else good for nothing, and then drafting a guy who was so old, it turned out, he was ineligible to actually be drafted.

Speaker 1 The immortal tan guy in the Gombo, I think his name was. Absolutely.
And they found out after the fact, or I guess they found out after the fact, that he was 27 years old. Yep.
27.

Speaker 1 You can't be drafted at age 27. That was a con special.

Speaker 1 I would have taken D-Will at that time.

Speaker 1 I was in it. I was in the D-Will camp.
He had just beaten Duke. Like, it was like, all right, this is great.
And it did not work out.

Speaker 1 Joe Smith.

Speaker 1 DeLuca shot.

Speaker 1 O.J. Mayo for Kevin Love.
Brilliant. Huge deal.
Which was unpopular. Yes.
It was unpopular. I've heard stories from their drafts party that night that

Speaker 1 team officials had to get up and be like, hey, I know you guys are all excited about OJ Mayo, but this is the trade we made. And people were like mad, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, they were furious with it because O.J. Mayo's name is fun to say, apparently.
Like, that was all I could think about. And then Kevin Love was doughy.
And, like, who is this big white guy?

Speaker 1 And it was the right pick, for sure.

Speaker 1 Kevin Love signing a three plus one instead of a five-year max, precipitating his trade to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Speaker 1 Fumbling Fumbling the contract and throwing it in the trash after when it was first offered to him.

Speaker 1 Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, yep.

Speaker 1 Okay. The whole Jimmy Butler experience we don't need to get into.

Speaker 1 Wally Zerbiak getting beaten up by Kevin Garnett in the locker room.

Speaker 1 And the time I ate dinner at a restaurant next to Nicola Pekovich and two of his friends

Speaker 1 and had never seen a human being eat so much food at one time and looked stone-faced and terrifying the entire time.

Speaker 1 Do you know who his friends were? Because he's got some friends. Shady.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Guys I didn't want to mess with, which is why one of Flip's all-time favorite stories is when KG came back late in his career. It was first practice with the team.
Peck was being lazy and KG

Speaker 1 motherfucked him like hard.

Speaker 1 And everyone stopped. He was the biggest guy in the prison yard.
And everyone stopped and was like, I don't think anyone's ever talked to Peck like this before. Like,

Speaker 1 what's going to happen? And I asked Flip, so what happened? He's like, Peck put his damn head down and started running back faster on defense. Absolutely right.

Speaker 1 But Peck was the nicest guy in person in that locker room that you could ever ask for. Turns out his career's taken a little turn since then.

Speaker 1 John Krasinski, thank you so much for showing up. Thank you.

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Speaker 1 I still have no idea what time it is, but I do know we have another guest,

Speaker 1 another guy you guys are lucky to have. Nothing but success has followed him.
The head coach of the Minnesota Turbo Whoops, Chris Finch, is in the house.

Speaker 1 I didn't even, I didn't, my name is there, I didn't get a standing ovation.

Speaker 1 Thank you for doing this. Thanks.

Speaker 3 Hey, so after a year off, this is what you're doing now?

Speaker 1 First of all, six months off, and it was a glorious six months. Yeah.
My wife was worried about me. She's like, you're such a workaholic.
What are you going to do? And I was like, watch.

Speaker 1 Watch how amazing I am at doing nothing. It was great.

Speaker 3 I mean, I bet you

Speaker 3 three-quarters of these people are going to go home and do a podcast tonight.

Speaker 1 You're going with the anti-media tropes

Speaker 1 right out of the gate.

Speaker 3 I mean, it'll qualify you to coach the Lakers, you know.

Speaker 1 It's fair. Can't argue it.

Speaker 1 It's fair.

Speaker 1 How are you feeling about the team? 7-4, beat a bunch of bad teams.

Speaker 1 You know, up and down, but all good.

Speaker 1 You did beat a bunch of bad teams. Stop yelling at me about the schedule.

Speaker 3 Appreciate the left-handed compliment.

Speaker 1 I feel good.

Speaker 3 I mean, for some reason, we started the season flat. I don't know why that is.
We found our juice now, and

Speaker 3 we're beating teams

Speaker 3 in the manner that we should. And if you follow the Timberwolves at all, which I know you probably don't,

Speaker 3 if you followed us, we've always struggled against the Blackboard.

Speaker 1 You played down. You played down.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 So anyway, it's good to see right now. But yeah, we'll see.
It was a long way to go.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 1 You like the group? Good group? Good personalities?

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. It's been a great group to work with.

Speaker 3 Good guys. I think they're really comfortable with each other, with who they need to be right now.
Everyone's kind of expanding in their own role a little bit, which is fun to see. And,

Speaker 3 you know, we have some moodiness to us, like all NBA teams, but

Speaker 3 generally, it's a great group to work with every day.

Speaker 1 Before I ask you the actual fun questions,

Speaker 1 we had a Jada McDaniel shout-out earlier, and they went to the bottom. We have to.
Yeah, we liked it.

Speaker 1 Did you think he could get this good, like with the ball in his hands in particular, this fast?

Speaker 3 Yeah, you know, listen,

Speaker 3 the question, the answer is not that simple, but I'll give it to you the best I can, okay?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 3 he had this game in him, and you could see it coming, you could see it coming. It's more of a usage puzzle, right? Like how much usage is on the floor at any one time.

Speaker 3 You have Ant, you have Julius, et cetera. So no matter what, you can have all the talent you want, and that's what happens with these three-star teams.
There's just not enough usage to go around.

Speaker 3 So it it was how do we figure out how to increase his usage, you know, maybe shuffle the rotation a little bit, break up his runs with Anthony,

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 1 all that.

Speaker 3 But the real thing is, the real, I think, catalyst to it all has been just

Speaker 3 we felt coming into last season that we were he would be able to take this type of jump but when we made the trade it was kind of we had to scrap everything just kind of get julius and dante in situated comfortable comfortable.

Speaker 3 That took a long time. We had some injuries in the middle of last season, and then we saw Jaden take the step forward when those guys weren't on the floor.
And it's just continued really from there.

Speaker 1 When you say the trade, it strikes me you could be talking about like three different things.

Speaker 1 Do you ever want to tell Tim Connolly, like, just settle down a little bit, like, throwing stuff around?

Speaker 3 He's really playing on my G-League experience. You know, he changed the roster every 48 hours.

Speaker 1 Okay, so

Speaker 1 trade number one. Yeah.

Speaker 1 How do you remember finding out that Gobert was a potential option and what was your first reaction?

Speaker 3 Well the great thing about working with Tim and his team is that it, you know, it's super collaborative and transparent. Everything's out.
He wants your input.

Speaker 3 He knows that from a coaching staff point of view that you got to have the buy-in or it's not going to work because if you don't believe in something as a coach, you know, you're not going to be all in.

Speaker 3 And we were all in right away. You know,

Speaker 3 When we found out it was a possibility, very, very bullish on the trade,

Speaker 3 thought it would make us different. We were kind of zigging when the league was zagging.
And

Speaker 3 it makes us sound like we were trying to outsmart the room. That really wasn't the case.
It was like, how do we incorporate one of the best players available who gives us everything that we need?

Speaker 3 rebounding, defense, presence at the rim. We felt he would, there's no basketball reason why he and Kat wouldn't fit well together.

Speaker 3 You know, defensively, we knew we'd have to figure out some things with Kat at the four.

Speaker 3 You know, Kat's a super gracious person, and he's going to kind of figure out a way to make everything work.

Speaker 3 So,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 3 kind of everything just lined up for us to say, let's go for it and see if we can make it work.

Speaker 1 Look, I mean, I wasn't as harsh as some of our colleagues. Why are you looking at me? No, I'm just...

Speaker 1 I came here to write a big feature about how this would work. But this was interesting.
That's right, you did.

Speaker 1 But I did have to go on TV at my former employee here about five minutes after the trade, and I did say

Speaker 1 I am in shock. I think I said disbelief.
I'm in disbelief at how much the Timberwolves gave up for Rudy Gobert. And I kind of still am, and yet you can't argue with the results.

Speaker 1 For a team that has been mired for, they did make the playoffs from like 2004 till the Jimmy Butler year, two straight Western Conference finals. The guy's a one-man defense.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 3 absolutely.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 he's a walking top-five defense all by himself, you know, at times. And

Speaker 3 with Rudy and all that, in the beginning, like, yeah, it was super bumpy. Like, all these massive trades are.
You just have to have the patience to work through them.

Speaker 3 But, you know,

Speaker 3 he has been part of the turnaround.

Speaker 1 One of my favorite things is all the times that Rudy calls for the the ball and

Speaker 1 doesn't get it.

Speaker 1 I feel like Julius Randall was intentionally not throwing him the ball for like the first three months. But when he got the three-second violation, I think it was in Toronto that Rudy got...

Speaker 1 Like, how do you handle that as a coach?

Speaker 1 Do you guys remember this? He was so... Okay.

Speaker 3 I have no idea what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 No, but you're good.

Speaker 1 You've talked to me before about how you've sat Ant during crunch time of closed games and because he was was injured or flowing the wrong way, what the game wasn't going well for him and like you deal with it and he's fine with it.

Speaker 1 Like that's another one where, did you guys lose that game? I think we did lose that game. Like that's not a great loss.

Speaker 3 No, not a great loss at all. And it was a tough moment.

Speaker 3 You know, anyone who knows Rudy knows how pride Foley can be. And like,

Speaker 3 and he's, you know, it's a bit out of character for him.

Speaker 3 He's never wanting to hurt the team in any way. And, you know, by the time I had gotten to the locker room and I was ready to rip into some souls,

Speaker 3 they were police in the locker room themselves. So that was a good thing.
And we talked it out the next day when we got to Boston. And we turned around and

Speaker 3 we played our tails off and lost at the buzzer in Boston. But yeah, I mean, listen, like,

Speaker 3 he also punched somebody in our team. So, you know,

Speaker 3 there's levels to these things.

Speaker 1 That is true.

Speaker 3 I consider it a step forward. There we go.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 You did have a wall punch during one of your playoff runs.

Speaker 3 The wall punch and the Kyle Anderson punch, same game. Okay.
Oh.

Speaker 1 Same question for the cat trade story.

Speaker 3 I may never get another job, by the way.

Speaker 1 So my cat trade story is I got laid off from ESPN.

Speaker 1 I was in Los Angeles doing television. I was not on television.
I was ironing my suit to go on television. And I flew back two days later, and a bunch of my buddies met me at my house with alcohol.

Speaker 1 And I'm three beers in, and the alert comes out two days before training camp or the season or whatever whatever it was October or September 28th or something like that that Kat gets traded and A I'm drunk and B and really tempted to tweet stuff and

Speaker 1 get my takes off on the trade and B I'm like this is actually like a top five most interesting trade that has happened in my entire career doing this and I can't say anything when did you learn about that and what was your first reaction to that because that is because Kat had been here so long and was so beloved, that's like almost more of an earthquake than the gober one.

Speaker 3 I mean, that was a hard one personally.

Speaker 3 Of course, you know, again, conversational through all these processes.

Speaker 3 And the night that the trade was actually executed was a Friday night. And

Speaker 3 I was actually just talking to Dante in the green room about this.

Speaker 1 You just spoiled that Dante's here.

Speaker 1 It could be any Dante.

Speaker 1 Dante Cunningham coming back from the green room.

Speaker 1 You know?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Sorry. That's okay.

Speaker 3 I was at a Nick Nurse fundraiser at Paisley Park

Speaker 3 where he had a

Speaker 3 Prince tribute band with Sheila E.

Speaker 3 And the new power generation. It was a private concert.

Speaker 1 This is a real thing.

Speaker 3 This is a real thing, yeah. It was a Friday night he was there he had flown in

Speaker 3 and he had some of his players there I had some of us were there and you know Nick and I go a long long way back so I was there to support him and then in the middle of that I got a phone call from Tim and I had to run and we ran to Kat's house and oh you were I know Tim is talking about Tim beat me there by about a half a vodka bottle and

Speaker 3 But but no, so yeah, that one was painful because you know, I I I have I'll always have a soft spot for Kat.

Speaker 3 I mean, the way that he welcomed me here when I came, how I came, he called me at three in the three in the morning the night that I, you know, I was coming on board, and he didn't have to do any of that.

Speaker 3 He had been through a lot of trauma here, and he didn't have to be that. And then when I got here, he was one of the most coachable superstars I've ever been around.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 Some rapid-fire fun ones. Okay.
Do you still have the scooter?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 1 No? Okay.

Speaker 1 That was during the 2024, right? Was that 2024? Yeah. Yeah?

Speaker 1 Just for fun, I re-watched the Patrick Beverly play-in game celebration.

Speaker 1 Because I wanted...

Speaker 1 some of the best questions come from like what was happening with this person I'm interviewing during that crazy thing that happened and I discovered he almost ran you over on the way to the scorers table like he kind of hip-checks you were you startled or do you remember this at all?

Speaker 3 No, I only remember Mike Connolly running me over.

Speaker 1 Oh, well that was yeah, you've never you've never forgiven him for that.

Speaker 3 No, I don't remember that. I do remember, you know, some of the, you know, some of the silly commentary and stuff like that that came about that.
But you have to understand

Speaker 3 what it meant to this franchise at that moment in time. And

Speaker 3 it's not just,

Speaker 1 that's the beauty of the play-in tournament.

Speaker 3 It creates a one-game means everything situation, which we don't often see in the NBA.

Speaker 3 And we were fortunate enough to put ourselves into that position. And we had a team that...

Speaker 3 And this is mostly down to Patrick Beverly. I'll give it.
When he stepped into our locker room on day day one, he made a team full of young guys believe they could be good.

Speaker 3 And that is what he brought to our team more than anything else. He brought a lot of other things.

Speaker 1 I was going to say.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 3 technicals, delay of games,

Speaker 3 interesting film sessions.

Speaker 1 And then he wasn't on the team again the next year.

Speaker 3 Well, we traded him for Rudy.

Speaker 1 That's true. It's a good trade.
It was a good trade.

Speaker 1 Krasinski brought up game seven, Nuggets, Wolves, 2024. Yeah, that's that.
You guys are down 15 at the half, 20 early in the third quarter.

Speaker 1 Is there something you remember from halftime in the locker room or from a huddle early in the third quarter when it's like, oh, it's now up to 20?

Speaker 1 Like a moment, a conversation where you're like, all right, we're still in this or a moment of despair, like maybe we're not in this?

Speaker 3 A halftime went into the locker room. It was very calm.

Speaker 3 Some of the things that were said were

Speaker 3 exactly the right things that needed to be said by the players. There was a tremendous confidence that that we were going to still win the game.
And we

Speaker 3 probably played one of our worst halves of basketball in the entire season. Like we didn't look anything like ourselves.
The moment looked too big. We were kind of all over the place.

Speaker 3 I think Kat was like the only one that was able to maybe throw in a basket here and there. And there was just a calmness about us in the locker room that felt like we're going to win this game.

Speaker 3 And I remember walking in feeling the exact same way. And, you know, sometimes as a coach, you go in there, you're trying to sell something.

Speaker 3 But there was just this connection. and I was like, we're going to win this game if we do X, Y, and Z.
And part of that was just getting back to who we were.

Speaker 3 And we were able to do that. And it was a crazy game, and it was a crazy, even crazier series.

Speaker 1 It was.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to ask you about the Luca shot. I'm just, I don't have it anymore.
The what? The Luca shot, because I watched that one too. Yeah.

Speaker 3 What do you want to know?

Speaker 1 I mean, you were in the back, back of the bench, because you were recovering from your injury, so but you were standing. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I was trying to say, get up, don't let him shoot.

Speaker 1 And if you watch this clip, I mean,

Speaker 1 this is one of the moments we should have talked about because this is potentially 1-1 in a winnable series, like against a team that was kind of ahead of schedule in Dallas, and then against a team in Boston that was beatable for you.

Speaker 1 And I watched that shot, and you're in the back, arms crossed. It goes in.
You just look up at the scoreboard. It's like you're just, it's stoic, yeah.
But inside, you're going crazy for sure.

Speaker 3 I was also, if you go back and look at the Lillard shot, I was an assistant in Houston, I probably had the same reaction, you know. So I've been there a few times, and I'm like, yeah, I mean, just

Speaker 3 sometimes you get beat by a great player making a great shot.

Speaker 1 Okay, so sometimes

Speaker 1 I have to be a steward for the fans and ask the fan question. All right.
What does Rob Dillingham have to do?

Speaker 3 Hey, listen, it's all about consistency, right?

Speaker 3 And,

Speaker 3 you know, it is for young players when they come into the NBA, they come into two situations.

Speaker 3 They come into situations where they play a lot of empty minutes and can develop on, you know, over a period of time, or they come in and they play high-leverage, meaningful minutes.

Speaker 3 I think that the second is the best way to develop because you're playing meaningful basketball and you gotta play in a manner that doesn't hurt your team.

Speaker 3 And this goes to all young players, not about Rob. I'll come to Rob specifically.
Rob definitely has the

Speaker 3 skill set to help us, you know, create some pace, get to the paint,

Speaker 3 make the right reads, and get the

Speaker 3 ball to his teammates and fight his tail off on defense. And we see some of that.
And it's just the consistency. That's all it is, you know.

Speaker 3 And with our young depth, whether it be Rob, TJ, or Jalen Clark, and you know, hopefully soon

Speaker 3 we'll throw in Johan Berenger in there, too.

Speaker 1 Just every young guy,

Speaker 1 they're so excited.

Speaker 3 Yeah, exactly. And they should be because they're good players.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 the good thing about it is like we have really experienced

Speaker 3 six, seven guys, and those guys

Speaker 3 are good minute eaters and produce at a high level. And we don't feel married to anybody right now.
We're 11 games in.

Speaker 3 We're still feeling our way through players and through rotations and through possibilities. And if they have a good stint, great.
If they don't have a good stint, maybe we don't go back to them.

Speaker 3 But it doesn't mean that we're giving up on them moving forward.

Speaker 1 Zach, if I can borrow the stewardship for a second for the fans, for the city, for the community, for the basketball world at large.

Speaker 1 What do you actually think of the Green NBA Cup court? I think this is a very important subject. I want to get to the bottom of.

Speaker 3 Well, you know, I said I went to work the other day. I played on a green court with dark lighting in the stands.
I had no idea where I was. I was like, not target center that I'm used to.

Speaker 3 The green court, after a while, I guess you kind of get used to it.

Speaker 3 It's better than the red courts. I mean, the red courts are unwatchable.

Speaker 3 I actually think the league's doing a disservice because some of these courts are unwatchable.

Speaker 1 Yeah?

Speaker 3 Why don't we just put the big trophy on the court and call it a day?

Speaker 1 Let's go a full old man yelling at class. Why do the Celtics have a jersey with no green on it? What are we doing? Is it a gold jersey? Like, there are too many jerseys.
The courts are ugly. Yours is

Speaker 1 not great.

Speaker 3 No, it's not great. Sometimes you'll turn on the gate on the NBA and you'll see two teams.
You'll be like, who the heck's playing out there? I have no idea.

Speaker 1 It's a highlight league anyway. It's just a highlight league.

Speaker 1 All right, last one. One of the reasons I always like talking to you is Chris Finch being

Speaker 1 year five or six for you here?

Speaker 1 Five and a half. Yeah, COVID has like threw everything off.

Speaker 1 This five and a half, six-year coach of a winning NBA team is such an awesome story and an unlikely one in a lot of ways. I mean, you guys probably know his story.

Speaker 1 He coached in England, he coached in Belgium, he coached in the G League, and like now you're like the guy and you still carry yourself like someone who came up through the G League and through England.

Speaker 1 So, in preparation for this, I was like, everyone who's been through the minor, minor leagues has the story where they're like,

Speaker 1 man, this isn't the NBA. Like, whether it's a bad flight, a bad trip, an incident at a hotel, I said, give me your best, like, what the hell am I even doing here in Belarus, for instance,

Speaker 1 story. So share the one.

Speaker 1 Share the one you shared with me.

Speaker 3 Okay, so

Speaker 3 I've coached all over. I think the greatest part about my job is it's taking me to places that you would never choose to go.
And you get to spend real time there in real cities with real people.

Speaker 1 Not including Minneapolis in that. Oh, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 I have Minneapolis.

Speaker 3 So I was coaching a team. We played a game in Minsk, which is in Belarusia.

Speaker 3 And I got a phone call in the middle of the night, about three in the morning, and it was the hotel manager. And he says,

Speaker 3 come down here. We have a problem with one of your players, which is not something you ever want to hear.

Speaker 3 And so I get dressed, I go down, I walk out, and there's one of my guys. He's there with a girl that he had become friendly with over, you know, at

Speaker 3 the club. Yeah, right.
So, and then there was a big kind of Russian-looking guy there. And I said, what seems, what's the problem? And he says, well,

Speaker 3 he's trying to go up to his room. I said, yeah, we're staying here.
And he said, well,

Speaker 3 she's not allowed to go up with them. And I said,

Speaker 3 Okay, is there a problem with that? He says, yeah, if he wants to take a girl to his room, he has to choose one of ours.

Speaker 1 So, in the bar was

Speaker 3 a selection of women for the evening.

Speaker 3 And I said, this has got to go in the book.

Speaker 1 You're like, I'm drawing up pick and roll coverages for tomorrow night. You're like, what am I doing here?

Speaker 1 You guys are lucky to have Chris Finch. He's a great coach.
Thank you. He's a great guy.

Speaker 1 Thanks for coming out.

Speaker 1 Good luck.

Speaker 1 I had to ask you about Dilly. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 All right, all right, all right.

Speaker 1 Last guy, and then you guys can get out of here and go have some beverages.

Speaker 1 Two-time college national champion, one-time NBA champion. He wins everywhere he goes.
Dante DiVincenzo.

Speaker 2 Got a little surprise for you, man.

Speaker 2 Our jerseys come out.

Speaker 2 We're playing them in a Saturday, so we got you a little surprise.

Speaker 1 What is it? Oh, look at that.

Speaker 1 My wife is going to be so excited to have more NBA memorabilia hanging in our house. Zach, are you not going to complete the jersey swap?

Speaker 1 You got to give in time.

Speaker 1 I did not bring a Grady Dick jersey with me to complete the swap. Thank you for doing this.
You're a good sport. Do you feel at home here now? Yes, absolutely.
Yes.

Speaker 2 Very much so.

Speaker 1 Obviously, the Nova Nicks were a thing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You have said,

Speaker 1 we just talked about it. It happened so close to the season starting.
And I was reading back, you know, what was his reaction to this?

Speaker 1 And you were said, there's some quote that I read, probably by Krasinski, saying, I was home chilling, and the next thing I knew, I was flying to Minnesota. But like who actually called you?

Speaker 1 Who do you hear from?

Speaker 2 My agent.

Speaker 2 And I was actually visiting.

Speaker 2 So we were leaving for training camp that Monday after Media Day. So that weekend, my fiancé and I decided to go see her family before

Speaker 2 the season kind of kicks off. And I was up there and I got a call,

Speaker 2 I want to say, around noon, one o'clock, like, hey,

Speaker 2 this is stuff I'm hearing. Nothing really gaining traction, but just keep you posted.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 2 and then later on, it was like, hey, I think this is gonna happen, and then like 30 seconds later, it's already out, so I was getting called.

Speaker 1 So, who's the first Nova guy you hear from?

Speaker 1 The first Nova guy, it was Josh.

Speaker 1 Of course, it was Josh.

Speaker 1 Josh is glued to his phone.

Speaker 1 And were you guys all like shocked, sad? I mean, this was like such a fairy tale thing. Yeah.
You were in commercials together. You know, that's how you were doing it.

Speaker 2 That was after the fact. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I still went back and did the commercial.

Speaker 2 But no,

Speaker 2 I was kind of just shocked. It was kind of like

Speaker 2 you didn't really believe it just because,

Speaker 2 you know, we had a great year.

Speaker 2 Individually had a good year. And

Speaker 2 you're going into the season. I think the timing of everything was the real shock behind everything.
Like, I know, I've been traded before,

Speaker 2 but I haven't been traded the day before the season started. started.
So, like,

Speaker 2 that was the shock. But, you know, once you get the initial emotions out,

Speaker 2 then it's like, okay, where are we going to live? What are we going to, you know, I mean, like all those logistics of everything. That's where my mind

Speaker 2 initially went.

Speaker 1 Is it weird to not be moving around like that? Because you've now had like four or five years where you've just constantly been going new places.

Speaker 2 This is the first, I think this is the first year going this season in the last

Speaker 2 four or five seasons that I've been on. Like this is the first time I've been been on the same team yeah which is insane like so you talk about home

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 you guys have seen the commercial right with the Nova Knicks

Speaker 2 so I heard that commercial almost didn't happen yes like and because of your participation can you shed light on this so do you guys remember it was I hurt my toe that one game and the commercial was the next morning

Speaker 2 so I had this messed messed up toe, didn't really know what was going on.

Speaker 2 Went there, filmed this. It was like four, four and a half hours.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 2 my foot was huge. I was like, but if you notice, I don't do much walking in the commercial.

Speaker 2 Hey, listen, they're really good at hiding.

Speaker 1 I watched it knowing this. Yeah.
And I'm like, he doesn't look like he's moving great. Because I was waddling down the hallway, so they had to cut it.

Speaker 2 But it was a lot of fun. It was kind of weird at first, just

Speaker 2 being back for the first time. I was so excited to play against them

Speaker 2 and not get that opportunity. And I'm like, hey, let's shoot the damn commercial, I guess.

Speaker 1 Who were you actually talking shit to on their bench the first time you guys played?

Speaker 1 We knew this is coming. We need it.

Speaker 2 I knew this was coming.

Speaker 1 I wasn't. All right.

Speaker 1 First of all,

Speaker 1 everyone was rooting for you in that moment. You were the spurned one.
Everyone can relate to that.

Speaker 2 Listen,

Speaker 2 Tibbs and I had friendly banter

Speaker 2 and somebody jumped in.

Speaker 2 So then that is what escalated everything. It was going absolutely nowhere with Tibbs and I.

Speaker 2 Then what the cameras caught and all that stuff and ESPN and how it went crazy, that was someone jumped into an argument or a banter that wasn't there

Speaker 2 necessarily.

Speaker 1 And they all remained nameless.

Speaker 2 They overmay, you can assume.

Speaker 1 You remember this, right? It rhymes with.

Speaker 1 All right, let's go through some of your fun moments in your career, some of your big moments.

Speaker 2 That is a fun moment.

Speaker 1 What do you mean?

Speaker 1 It's fun for me. I'm glad it was fun for you.

Speaker 1 Game two, Sixers, Knicks.

Speaker 2 Crazy.

Speaker 1 This is the crazy Knicks comeback. Jalen Brunt, you're down five with like 30 seconds left.
Yeah, drive, kick. Jalen hits a three.

Speaker 1 And then you have two shots at a three and you make the second one.

Speaker 2 Jalen and Josh got a steal. Kick it to me.
Yeah. And I missed that shit bad.

Speaker 1 Which I had forgotten. And I was like, oh, there's another offensive rebound.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I saw Isaiah go get the ball and like you can see me the whole time.
I'm like clapping and shaking my hands. Like, please give me this ball back.

Speaker 2 And OG swung it.

Speaker 1 And as soon as it left my hand I knew it was in because I was like I need another shot at this your post-game interview in that in the arena at MSG is is one of the rare moments where an athlete looks

Speaker 1 I don't mean this in a bad way like overwhelmed by the noise the emotions

Speaker 2 it was insane the floor was shaking

Speaker 2 Like I would I didn't get off to a good start in that series.

Speaker 2 So that kind of just gave me, like, you know, you're overwhelmed with emotion. You're finally like, you get that shot to fall.
You get another win in the series.

Speaker 2 And you can kind of finally like, all right, now I'm into the series. Let's, you know, kick it off.

Speaker 1 Game six of that series, you guys win the series four games to two. You're up 114, 113 by one with 11 seconds left.
They foul you because they're losing. In Philly? Philly.

Speaker 1 No, it was in, I think it was in Philly. Yeah, it must have been in Philly.
Yeah, it was in Philly. They foul you intentionally to stop the clock.

Speaker 1 And then there's like a 45-second stoppage for some reason. The refs are talking to the review table, and you're just waiting to take these massive.

Speaker 1 So there's like a 45-second stoppage, and then Buddy Hild starts talking to you. Buddy Hild plays for the six or seven stops.

Speaker 1 And he's literally, he's like up in your business and like talking shit to you. He's touching the ball.

Speaker 3 What's he saying?

Speaker 2 Friendly banter, man.

Speaker 1 Friendly banter.

Speaker 1 So you're like, you're totally unfazed.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he was just saying, like, give me one, like, give me a miss. Like, he wanted to, you know, just get in my head to try to make me miss a shot so they had an opportunity.

Speaker 1 And you're 100% stone-cold confident. I'm going to two for two.

Speaker 2 I think I ended up smiling or something or laughing or something.

Speaker 1 Between shots, you smiled.

Speaker 2 Because buddy is just a funny dude.

Speaker 2 So, like I said, there's friendly banters. It's fun.

Speaker 1 It's fun out there.

Speaker 1 I had also forgotten you were injured when Chris Jenkins hit the shot to win the national title, and I was looking for you. This is Villanova National Title.

Speaker 1 Archie Diakono pitched to Chris Jenkins. And there's this redhead in a full dress suit, like suit and tie, coming off the bench.

Speaker 1 You must have been healthy because you sprinted out there, man. You sprinted out the head of the ball.

Speaker 2 You know, the funniest part about that is my foot was supposed to be broken.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1 that's what I'm saying. Like, you were like, I guess he's healthy.

Speaker 2 I was recovering, so I was just, I was able to move at that point.

Speaker 1 Is there any such thing on this Timberwolves team? as like a slump for you. You have the greenest green light, and you should.
That's your job.

Speaker 1 But like you could, I feel like you gave us five, six, threes in a row. You're like, I don't care.
I'm taking the next four, contested or not.

Speaker 1 Like, is it, is slump like out of your mind vocabulary now?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think it comes from

Speaker 2 my teammates and the coaching staff.

Speaker 2 The nose, I mean, the game that actually broke my nose,

Speaker 2 I started the game like one for seven, and it was just not, it was not feeling great.

Speaker 2 And all the coaches were like, just keep, they're good looks, just keep firing them and, you know, play your game.

Speaker 2 And I think ant is the you know the main one name man ants is the main one behind me like yo you better shoot that every time

Speaker 2 so when you have that next to you is it's like and i think i rattled off like four or five in a row to finish game like percentages are always going to equal out like i'm not worried about that i'm not worried about any of that in the in the initial um

Speaker 2 Because I know everything's going to work out as long as I can keep my mindset straight of just like keep letting it go, keep letting it go.

Speaker 1 How did you keep playing in that game after the colin the elbow from colin set it i'm wincing just thinking about watching it

Speaker 2 um i didn't know it was that bad looking so that we didn't have a mirror in the back so so i went back there and it's all bleeding and um they stopped the blood and i was like hey like is it broken like yeah it's kind of broken I'm like, all right, so can we break it back?

Speaker 2 Well, there was like

Speaker 2 the dilemma of when to do it, timing of when to do it. So I was like, all right, I'll just go finish the game, come back, and then we'll

Speaker 2 put it back in place. I went out there and I went up to the assistant, Mike, and I was like, yo, I'm ready.
He just like looked at me.

Speaker 1 I remember Joe Ng was like, dude, what the?

Speaker 2 And at this point, I had still not seen my nose.

Speaker 1 Oh, no.

Speaker 2 So I didn't see my nose until after the game.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I imagine you got some text with that screen.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 it was a bunch of different photos and videos of me. And I was like, that thing was like this.

Speaker 1 Outside looking in, West finals last year, 4-1, Chalk prevails, Thunder is supposed to win, they win, short series. How did it feel from inside your experience?

Speaker 1 Did you feel like, man, we're a couple of breaks away from this being 2-2, we're not that far away? How do you come out of that series?

Speaker 2 I think we learned from about all the little things throughout the regular season.

Speaker 2 Take that series out of it.

Speaker 2 We played catch-up last year, and I think that's kind of what we want to avoid. And that's our mindset of doing all the little things, becoming, making those habits early.

Speaker 2 Because if you look at the, you know, the seeding last year,

Speaker 2 it's like a game away from play-in, but you're a game away from home court.

Speaker 2 So to have that understanding in the regular season then

Speaker 2 creates those habits. So when you get to those moments, it's second nature.
I think just they had done the little things, you know,

Speaker 2 another possession more than us for a full 48. And I think that's the only thing that we learned from it.
Like talent-wise, roster-wise, coaching-wise, top to bottom, like we're right there.

Speaker 2 Like, it's not, it's not like we're chasing something that is

Speaker 2 not attainable. It's just the little things that put us to make us a great team.

Speaker 1 We were talking about that before the show because we, before you got here, we did power rankings in the Western Conference.

Speaker 1 He had the Warriors like 10th, I had them seventh, and we were talking about, I don't know if you saw last night, Jimmy Butler and Jeremy Green had some comments after their loss.

Speaker 1 Like, you know, I don't know if we're basically like, we got to get back to being serious about winning. And the Clippers are obviously struggling.

Speaker 1 And I mentioned to Rob, like, they're kind of playing like a team that feels like it's above the regular season. And if you do that in the West, like, you're ninth.

Speaker 1 That's, like, that's life in the West.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, you look at a, we started off in Portland and you look at that team.
And that team's like.

Speaker 2 You think Portland's going to be like going, oh, they're not going to be that good? They're a good team. They're hungry.

Speaker 2 Long, athletic, can play defense, pick up full court, and they're going to surprise a lot of different teams. And that's the West every single night.

Speaker 1 Where are you right now?

Speaker 1 Like, 11 games in, what's your grade for the Timberwolves? Like, where are you, and what's like the next phase for you guys?

Speaker 2 I think the next phase is just to do what we've been doing against the teams that, you know, the teams that we're supposed to be, keep doing them.

Speaker 2 And then the teams that are the good teams in the NBA,

Speaker 2 the OKCs, the Denvers, the Lakers, the Knicks, those are the teams that we need to do the exact same thing that we did against Sacramento, against Utah, and do those exact

Speaker 2 teams as well. And not have it's a consistency factor.

Speaker 2 I think just being consistent every single night, having the energy every single night, is what separates the top two, three teams in each conference.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you had a quote about how you guys are like a sometimes team on defense, not an always team on defense.

Speaker 1 I mean, a fucking bar, first of all, but also, like, how do you become that?

Speaker 1 Oh, no. I mean, right?

Speaker 2 I don't know which which game that was but

Speaker 2 it's I mean it starts with you know the head of our snake defensively is Jaden and Rudy

Speaker 2 and then you throw in and they're like their ability to affect the game is

Speaker 1 it's

Speaker 2 kind of crazy to witness sometimes of how you know Jaden can guard every single position

Speaker 2 and what he's you know yeah like he is unbelievable and to see what he's given us offensively as well

Speaker 2 it's hard to do. So I think it starts there with that energy.
But also, it's like

Speaker 2 those that had us think defensively, but everybody else has to bring it up a notch.

Speaker 2 And when we bring it up a notch and you have a full 48 minutes of guys coming off the bench, you have Jalen Clark coming off the bench, picking up full court. Like, the dude is like a pit bull.

Speaker 2 So he usually is the one that gets the game jumpstart. So we have to do it from the jump ball.

Speaker 1 Yeah, can we talk about the Jalen Clark, Jaden McDaniels thing happening through that pairing on defense? And it seems like it's really clicking. Yeah,

Speaker 2 it's a a really good duel. Jaden goes out and Jalen comes in.
It's like hell.

Speaker 1 Nuts. Look, why not, right? Like, why not the Minnesota Timberwolves? Someone's.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Someone's.

Speaker 1 Someone's got to push the thunder and the nuggets. Why not you guys? All you guys do is win.

Speaker 1 You mentioned the Lakers before as one of the teams on your list. And one of the fun subplots for me the last couple years is back-to-back first rounds, Suns, glamour glamour team.

Speaker 1 That's before you got here,

Speaker 1 and then Lakers, the ultimate glamour team. I picked against you guys both series.
I think most people did.

Speaker 1 And it's been fun just like, not only did you guys win those series, again, one before you got here, you kicked the crap out of them. And it's like, oh, yeah, no, we're just really, really good.

Speaker 1 Why don't you stop doubting and like stop falling in love with these big? And like, I regretted the Phoenix pick like five minutes into game one. I was like, oh my God, I totally blow this one.

Speaker 1 So, anyway, Dante DiVincenzo, thanks for coming out, man. Yeah, thank you, David.
Thanks for coming.

Speaker 1 We have some time for questions. Oh, please.

Speaker 1 We were fast. We didn't waste anyone's time.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Rob, feel free to take any of these. You guys think I was kidding.
First note card. Did Nico end up taking the worst GM belt ever from Khan?

Speaker 1 Rob,

Speaker 1 we can both feel this. If you could pair Ant with anyone in the league, who would it be?

Speaker 1 What do we want with Ant? What do we want for Ant? There's only one answer to the question. You can overthink it if you want.
Go ahead. What is the easy answer?

Speaker 1 Wemby? Wemby. Wemby.
I mean, Nicola. Wemby would be pretty cool.
Nah, Wemby. Wemby.
It's got to be Wemby. He's 22 years old or whatever.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Jokic? I mean, that seems like a pretty great combination to me. They would be a lot of fun together.
There'd be a good

Speaker 1 comedy duo.

Speaker 1 See, this is the angle we really need to be harnessing.

Speaker 1 Any other candidates, even? It's got to be a big.

Speaker 1 I mean, because Ant's basically a point guard now, I don't know if you heard.

Speaker 1 Yes, a lead guard. I'm sorry.
Apologies to Chris Finch.

Speaker 1 So it's got to be a big, and if it's going to be a big, it's one of those two.

Speaker 1 Giannis? I don't mind it.

Speaker 1 We already heard not Anthony Davis, we've been told. Not Anthony Davis.
Nobody, people don't want Trade. That was emphatic.

Speaker 1 That's not bad. Ivan Bobley is a good guy.
I like that.

Speaker 1 Hopefully, that wasn't Tim Connolly.

Speaker 1 Rob, you guys think I was kidding. Should Nico Harrison be federally prosecuted?

Speaker 1 You know, I've heard there's indictments on the way, you know?

Speaker 1 Okay, this is a two-parter.

Speaker 1 Whoever wrote this, kudos. Part one is not the reason for the kudos.
If Ant makes an all-defense team, does he win MVP?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 1 Not necessarily, no. I'm sorry.
I'm just sorry. Like, the top four guys are so good.
Shea,

Speaker 1 Jokic, Giannis.

Speaker 1 Who am I forgetting? I mean, Wemby might be on there. Oh, Wemby, duh.

Speaker 1 And Luca, thank you. It's just like...
It's a tough field. It's a tough field.

Speaker 1 By the way, I think... I'm actually...
I think he's overdue to make an all-defense team. I thought he would have made one by now.
Yes. He has all the tools.

Speaker 1 If he just dials in, particularly off the ball.

Speaker 1 He would like to make one. He has the ability.
I'll never forget when you you guys played the Grizzlies in the playoffs, and he was like, Give me, I want John Moran. I want every bit of John Moran.

Speaker 1 I want to beat him up when I have the ball, and I want to beat him up when he has the ball. And it was like, Okay, all right, I like this guy.

Speaker 1 Rob, this is a very important one. The second part knows, knows, I was gonna say, knows his audience, he knows his host's boss.

Speaker 1 How does this live show affect LeBron's legacy?

Speaker 1 Well, where did we put the Lakers in in the power rankings again? The Lakers were sixth in both of our power rankings.

Speaker 1 I think we're pushing LeBron down. I think in the legacy talk, I mean,

Speaker 1 the Wolves have been the talk all night.

Speaker 1 You said why not the Wolves? So then it came out. Why not the Wolves? Why not?

Speaker 1 LeBron's legacy. Should we talk? No, we forget.

Speaker 1 Does LeBron play for the Lakers next season?

Speaker 1 No. No.
The answer is he play for them this season.

Speaker 1 He just got assigned to the South Bay Lakers. I guess that counts.
Which, I guess he's going to play for the Lakers.

Speaker 1 We both can answer this. From Jordan.

Speaker 1 Nobody signed their name. So if you signed your name, I'm going to say your name, Jordan.
What Rewatchables movie would you pick to do if you curated an episode? Curated. So fancy.

Speaker 1 And with whom would you do it from the ringer? I'm contractually obligated to not answer that question. Do you have a dream Rewatchables? Aliens.
But I think they've already done it. What was it?

Speaker 1 Aliens? Aliens? Aliens Plural. Second.
Yeah, yeah. There are multiple aliens in it.

Speaker 1 What are these? I know the resurrection is good, but we'll take it.

Speaker 1 What's your pick, Zach? First of all, people talk about scary movies a lot. Like, now there's all these jump scare movies, and you know, I don't know, what was scary that came out of it?

Speaker 1 There were all the jump scare movies for the most part. Like, was Sinners supposed to be scary? No.
Was weapons supposed to be scary? Ish.

Speaker 1 I had, I watched Aliens at a sleepover when I was 12 years old, and it was the most cowardly I ever felt in my life,

Speaker 1 I wanted to go home. I was absolutely scared shitless.
It is so scary, and there's no, it's not, there's, it's just, it's a slow, methodical build.

Speaker 1 This is why it's perfect for the Rewatchables, because what are we harnessing on that podcast if not 12-year-old sleepover energy? That's really what we're trying to tap into.

Speaker 1 So, Bill has asked me this question because I want to do a Rewatchables, and he wants me to do one. And I submitted 10 movies.
Okay.

Speaker 1 They ranged in

Speaker 1 scope and theme from Ace Ventura, Pet Detective.

Speaker 1 You're not a Nature Calls guy. No.

Speaker 1 The first one. Space Balls is on my list because Space Balls 2 is coming out in a couple years.
You got the news plague. And ultimately, I think we settled on Dog Day Afternoon.

Speaker 1 Deep cut for the cinema files.

Speaker 1 70s Pacino

Speaker 1 can't be beat.

Speaker 1 Any of those. But they've done all of them.
Everyone I look up, I'm like, you already did this one. How many movies are there? They've done Heat five times.
I think they could do one again for you.

Speaker 1 Is Heat 2 a. Is that happening? That's kind of a thing.

Speaker 1 Are we sure heat's good? I'm going to put it.

Speaker 1 Let me do.

Speaker 1 Let me do Simmons.

Speaker 1 Is Michael Mann having a moment? Never stopped.

Speaker 1 This one requires some thought. What is the best? First of all, the handwriting on this is just pristine.
What is the best starting five you can build of

Speaker 1 current NBA players who have never made an all-star team, excluding rookies.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Never made an all-star team. Austin Reeves probably has to be on it at this point.

Speaker 1 Jaden, I think Jaden is the reason for the question.

Speaker 1 Denny Avdi is up there. We're talking about Jamal Murray.
Jamal Murray. Jamal Murray.
Jamal Murray is the starting point guard of the team. Who's the big is the question? The bigs.

Speaker 1 All right, let's think bigs. That hasn't been rewarded.

Speaker 1 Someone said DeAndre Ayton.

Speaker 1 I feel like we've already reached the bottom of the conversation. And I'm a DeAndre Ayton optimist.

Speaker 1 I like the Jalenduran option.

Speaker 1 He might make it this year the way he's playing. This question's expiring very quickly for Jalendur.

Speaker 1 Other bigs. I think

Speaker 1 not.

Speaker 1 It's hard to make it also a team coming off the bench. OG and Anobi? Sure.

Speaker 1 Yo, Hartenstein, I don't know if that was a joke. Shout out.

Speaker 1 He's playing like really, really well. Chet.
Chet. I mean, you could pick basically the Thunders like Ben.

Speaker 1 Chet's got to be on here.

Speaker 1 Who are we missing? I feel like we're missing somebody obvious.

Speaker 1 Aaron Gordon. Oh, now you're speaking my language.
Thank you. Aaron Gordon's a great one.
Aaron Gordon.

Speaker 1 Did the Denver series make people not like Aaron Gordon here? Is he respected? Grudging respected? Respected? Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's a beautiful basketball story. He wanted to be one thing.
He was kind of in a dysfunctional place to let him explore being that thing. It didn't go well.
Then he got traded to like Nirvana.

Speaker 1 Basketball, Nirvana. He became the player he was destined to be.
May we all be so lucky for that kind of evolution in life, Zach. Another Nico Harrison, David Kahn.

Speaker 1 Okay, well, we're transitioning right into this from Andrew and Ryan. It took two people to write this question.

Speaker 1 Do you think Jaden McDaniels will make an all-star team?

Speaker 3 And when?

Speaker 1 I mean, when is a lot,

Speaker 1 Andrew and Ryan? When?

Speaker 1 I think the answer might be yes now.

Speaker 1 Like, he is

Speaker 1 an honest-to-goodness creator in a way he wasn't before. We already know he's one of the best offensive players in the league, especially at his position.

Speaker 1 Like, what would be holding him back other than

Speaker 1 Anton Julius being on his team, for example? And if the Wolves are very good, they'd probably get rewarded before him.

Speaker 1 I want to be the bad guy and go no, just to be a jerk about it um i'm gonna realize where we are i'm gonna say yeah i'm gonna say yes but if you gave me over under one and a half all-star appearances i'm taking the under i could see one year where he sneaks in as like the co-second best guy on a 60 win pace wolves team you know i could see that could that be this year because we're introducing this new all-star game format american players versus international players

Speaker 1 i'm gonna be honest with you there's not that many and it's a round-robin tournament of how many games am i supposed to be It's all very complicated, but basically, Adam Silver has the executive power very strong in this country right now to plug Jaden McDaniels on that roster if he so chooses.

Speaker 1 Wait, why? He does? Yeah, like basically, if the all-star votes created imbalance of international players to American players, they just get to decide, we want this American guy on the team.

Speaker 1 No, see, that's when Trump has to come in and make the decision.

Speaker 1 I did start the Jaden McDaniels for for Team USA 2028 bandwagon on my podcast with Silva

Speaker 1 because

Speaker 1 every Team USA needs a guy like that, doesn't need the ball, just wants to defend the hell out of everyone, can make open threes, get out in transition.

Speaker 1 I'm going to say yes, and he will make the all-star team in 2028.

Speaker 1 Did dear Zach

Speaker 1 Sean, that's very sweet.

Speaker 1 From Sean. Dear Zach, did you buy your Mets jersey? Circle, yes or no.
Sean, you're not getting the card back, man. Like,

Speaker 1 it's not the way this works.

Speaker 1 I have not purchased my Mets jersey yet. I can't decide which player speaks most deeply to my soul.

Speaker 1 I want it to be Juan Soto, but

Speaker 1 I just can't, like, something, it's like there's a wall there, and I just can't get past, I can't get past the wall.

Speaker 1 I look into his eyes, and there's nothing there, but I want to hit the baseball and look cool, which I love. Like, keep hitting the baseballs.
I love it.

Speaker 1 I mean, sometimes they're the right match on paper, but you just aren't feeling it, Zach. I think it's okay.

Speaker 1 My daughter wants Lindor. My daughter absolutely loves Francisco Lindor.
No, it has to be a current man. I have a Piazza.
I have a Hunley.

Speaker 1 Who? No, come on.

Speaker 1 Who is the Timberwolves equivalent of Mauricio? It might be Rob Dillingham. I hate to break it to you.

Speaker 1 Lots of potential. Ends up not playing.

Speaker 1 If Pete Alonzo resigns, it might be Pete Alonzo.

Speaker 1 I was at the Minneapolis Miracle parentheses humble brag.

Speaker 1 What is the coolest, best live sports experience you've been a part of?

Speaker 1 I think for me, it is Clay Thompson absolutely obliterating the Oklahoma City Thunder. You were at that game? Game six.
Oh, my God. That's a great one.
It was an act of God.

Speaker 1 I don't know how else to describe it. Unbelievable.
Were you like courtside in the good media media scene? Sadly not. Too much media at that one.

Speaker 1 I watched that one on TV.

Speaker 1 That was a heartbreaker for the Thunder. I mean, it imploded a franchise.
I'm trying to think, for work,

Speaker 1 for work, it's 1,000%

Speaker 1 Cavs Warriors game seven.

Speaker 1 The most intense thing I've ever been a part of professionally. I mean, like, I could feel my blood pressure reaching unhealthy levels.
Yeah. And I didn't care who won the game.

Speaker 1 The four minutes when it just didn't stop, like there were no stoppages and everybody missed every shot before the Kyrie shot is the most intense thing I've ever seen live.

Speaker 1 The LeBron Chasedown block happened

Speaker 1 like I was eye to eye with the block.

Speaker 1 And apologies if you heard me tell this story before. I was on press row like one level up, eye to eye.
And I was a thousand percent sure it was a goaltend.

Speaker 1 Like there was absolutely no way a human being could have made that play.

Speaker 1 And as the game was going on, I got up from my seat and ran, almost tripped over like laptop cords and ruined people's days to a monitor that I knew was like 10 seconds behind the real action because I had to see, did this guy actually do this?

Speaker 1 And I was like, god damn, that's a good block.

Speaker 1 I don't know. What about non-NBA? Non-NBA sporting event.
Yeah, I only care about the NBA.

Speaker 1 It's a sad.

Speaker 1 They get it. What was the adjective? Is it the greatest sporting event? Coolest slash best.
I mean, I was there for Luka Doncic's return game to Dallas, which was one of the most surreal. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 How is that? That's timely.

Speaker 1 I've never seen a building like that. A lot of anguish, a lot of booing, obviously, a precursor for everything that's happening right now.

Speaker 1 I don't know that we're ever going to see anything like that again.

Speaker 1 He put up 40-something in that game, didn't he? He sure did.

Speaker 1 He might. That might be a mistake, that trade.

Speaker 1 I mean, what gives you that idea, though? There's still time.

Speaker 1 I was at the Halliburton Knicks Knicks game last year. That was the high bounce.
That was absolutely.

Speaker 1 I don't think I'll ever go to a game that crazy again.

Speaker 1 That was absolutely insane. How did you feel about the aping of the Reggie choke? I didn't see it happening because I was way up in the stands and I thought the game was over and I was like,

Speaker 1 where's the elevator? What happened? So I only saw it on TV.

Speaker 1 Is anybody anti-that? That's awesome. I mean, I think the question is, like, should you just come up with your own celebration?

Speaker 1 Not in Madison Square. Not in Madison Square Garden, and not with Reggie there.
Fair.

Speaker 1 By the way, that's got to be top three if I could rewind and change history for a single game, game seven of the finals last year.

Speaker 1 Everyone asks me, I get asked all the time, would Indiana have won that game? I say, I don't know, but I'll know this. That was a coin flip.
Like, they were there to win that fucking game.

Speaker 1 They were not scared at all. If anything, the Thunder were a little bit like, oh, I thought playing at home, we might roll here, and we're not going to roll.

Speaker 1 I went to a couple good Mets games. I don't know what other, I'll tell you, I almost,

Speaker 1 when

Speaker 1 soccer,

Speaker 1 Croatia soccer, 2022 World Cup, when they beat Brazil in penalty kicks, they went down 1-0 an extra time, tied the game, went to penalty kicks.

Speaker 1 When Brazil's last kick hit the post and the game was over,

Speaker 1 I kind of thought I was having a heart attack. Like actually, I was on the floor and I kind of couldn't get off the floor and I really thought it's finally happened.

Speaker 1 I've become the sports guy who's so crazy that I'm actually having a heart attack from a game.

Speaker 1 And then I was okay. Then you just got up and you were fine.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 I mean, the Minneapolis Miracle, what's the best, what's the best, there's a twin, like a Kirby Puckett twins game, right?

Speaker 1 I have a Homer Hankey, by the way, at my house, a 1987 original Homer Hankey. Do you even know what that is? I have zero idea.

Speaker 1 You could tell me anything. When they played in the Metrodome, they won two World Series?

Speaker 1 Yeah. 87 and 91.
Is that right?

Speaker 1 Now you are pandering.

Speaker 1 I do remember exactly where I was

Speaker 1 in my college dorm room lounge when Gary Anderson missed the field goal. I do remember that.

Speaker 1 One day it's going to happen. This is, I'll conclude by saying this.
People are like, one of the questions was, why are you here?

Speaker 1 Like, why did you pick Minneapolis?

Speaker 1 So I've never done one of these before.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I just didn't feel comfortable doing it at Adios Pan. It wasn't the right fit.
And I was like, you know what, I'll try it. And we wanted to check, like, any LA, New York, those are obvious.

Speaker 1 It's like, let's find, let's test drive it, see if anyone actually cares.

Speaker 1 Rabid sports fans, great city, probably feels a a little bit underserved by the national media. I bet people will come out.

Speaker 1 And my best buddy from college lives here, and he's here tonight. We went to a wild game last night.

Speaker 1 Three on three in overtime in hockey. I didn't know that was a thing.
It was great. So that's why I'm in Minneapolis, because it's awesome, and the fans are awesome.

Speaker 1 And it's always the one people forget. when they do the trivia of like name all the cities that have every major sports team it's like

Speaker 1 minneapolis really it's a great city so anyway first time live show thank you guys all so much for coming out um

Speaker 1 thank you thank you to rob mahoney

Speaker 1 thank you to chris finch dante di vincenzo john krasinski

Speaker 1 thank you to all of you i'll be hanging around for a little bit uh

Speaker 1 we're done go wolves

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Speaker 1 Call 1-800-GAMBLBR or visit rg-help.com. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/slash chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland.
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