There is truly no rhyme or reason to how many first round picks NBA stars get traded for, huh? 0 picks: OG Anunoby 1 pick: LaMelo Ball, Karl-Anthony Towns, Luka Doncic 2 picks: Jaylen Brown, Walker Kessler? 3 picks: Jaren Jackson Jr. 4 picks: Desmond Bane 5 picks: Mikal Bridges

Chris Hine made the key point on yesterday's Dane Moore episode: On-ball Terrence Shannon Jr: good player Off-ball Terrence Shannon Jr: bad player Wolves have traded $56M worth of frontcourt players for $56M worth of guards. We realistically won't see much On-ball TSJ this year.

Most anti-LaMelo trade takes I'm seeing appear to have started with the correct conclusion that you can't build a serious contender with LaMelo Ball as your #1 option and then completely ignore that that's not what's happening here. Having a low-end top-30 guy as your #2 is extremely good, actually!

In terms of prolific 3-point shooting teammates, Curry + Klay peaked at a combined 21.0 3PA/game in 2022. The NBA record is actually Harden + Gordon, who combined for 22.0 3PA/game the year Harden averaged 36 PPG. 2025 LaMelo + 2025 Ant shot a combined 21.4 3PA/game, lmao

The Wolves have a million guards now, so I did some window shopping on overpaid-but-playable PF options who might be available for pure expirings.

I'm gutted to be losing Naz, but assuming the pick swaps don't amount to much, this is an awfully cheap price for Minnesota to get back to having two star players. I'm still a LaMelo believer.

Go Wolves

Thinking of becoming a Gilmore Girl

Somehow the basketball world has decided that Zion Williamson is injury-prone and not a winner, when only the former is true. If even the Pelicans have convinced themselves of this, he's the one guy who could reopen the post-KAT-trade Timberwolves' contending window. 🧵

Initial "franchise savior" expectations for KAT eventually faded to "2nd-best player on a contender." But then the basketball gods smiled upon Minnesota and made him exactly that, and he was awesome at it. And then we traded him anyway.

Taking a nap to go from being tired to a different and worse type of tired

Texted an NBA ref to clarify this: Yes, this would have been included in a review if the Spurs had made a shot. So essentially, the KAT tip ended the game.

KAT has won his minutes in every single game of the entire playoffs this year!

Karl-Anthony Towns' Finals +/- Game 1: +14 on, -4 off Game 2: +11 on, -10 off Game 3: +6 on, -10 off Game 4: +17 on, -16 off The Knicks are +48 in 132 minutes with KAT, -40 in 60 minutes without him.

If Karl-Anthony Towns doesn't win a ring, it won't be because he wasn't good enough, it'll be because refs call fouls on him that they do not call on any other player in the league.

Now that he's no longer in direct contrast with Glen Taylor I can just say it: this guy stinks! He and ARod can go to hell! I don't even care that they brought KG back and nailed a jersey redesign, literally anyone could have done that.

Searched through my now-defunct twitter account and apparently I never formally tweeted it, so you'll all just have to trust me when I say I've been making the KAT = Dirk redemption arc comparisons since at least 2022. 🧵

Happy Sunday y'all

Jeers to Zach Lowe for suggesting otherwise and to Jon K for not pushing back, but if Brunson is shooting poorly and KAT is shooting well while making Wemby shoot poorly, KAT is clearly the Finals MVP.

I'm cozymaxing. Real snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug hours.

The Minnesota Timberwolves trading top-15 players for decidedly-not-top-15 players:

Plenty of time for his career to play out, but is Wemby already the correct answer at C for the classic "build an all-time starting 5 to play the aliens" thought experiment? No other center in history takes less off the table in terms of rim protection, perimeter containment, and floor spacing on O.

Gonna register an official prediction of Knicks in 6, because that would be good, and as we know, good things have a tendency to happen.

Going to the liquor store is for suckers. The best way to buy booze is to stake out whiskey groups on facebook and wait for the dudes who stupidly bought 200-bottle collections to get in trouble with their wives and have to sell them off at way below cost.

Thinking of emerging Tremfyant

Adopting the powerful mindset shift of viewing every meal I eat as Lunch

Screenshotting this one for the next time the Wolves are rolling

Naz Reid:

Thinking of becoming a first responder

There's genuinely value in just losing an election if it gets a career-long bulwark against progress like Amy Klobuchar out of public life. She's been gumming up the works for 2 decades already. Enough! www.startribune.com/klobuchar-pi...

The only way to beat the Wolves is by flopping. Unfortunately, all 29 other teams have no qualms about doing so.

The Wolves really benefit from playoff intensity. By the time we reach the part of the game where they try to give it away, the opposing team is too gassed to take advantage.

More than being amazed at Wemby's 12 blocks, I'm trying to figure out how he ever has a game with fewer than, like, 8.

Dry April in the books. For the sake of being counted amongst a sea of glowing "it changed everything" testimonials, my experience was that my energy levels felt similar, I didn't lose any weight, and mostly I was just periodically annoyed at being unable to have a pour of bourbon. 🤷‍♂️

Rudy Gobert legacy series. Dude played essentially flawless defense every play of every game for 6 games straight matching minutes 1:1 with the best offensive big man in NBA history.

Remember when Jordan abruptly left the Bulls and Scottie Pippen had to step into the #1 role and he did and the team stayed very good? Thinking about that right now for some reason. 😈

Certainly not the most important takeaway, but Minnesota accents this thick give the whole state a bad rap. I grew up 9 miles away from him, and I don't sound anywhere close to this fucking backwoods yokel. Get your shit under control dude.

The new NBA draft lottery will slightly reduce tanking and dramatically increase the frequency with which top draft picks go to already-competitive teams that don't really need them. It's unclear whether Adam Silver even remembers the importance of that second part.

@andersonhooper.bsky.social Ideally there'd be a way to notify you of this without revealing that I subscribe to the subreddit, but one of your tweets is the top post on r/billsimmons right now.

I think it's beautiful when a once-reviled public figure sticks around in our lives for so long that they outlast the hate and become begrudgingly beloved. Guy Fieri, Scott Stapp, Fred Durst, Mike Tyson, George W Bush... wait, hold on

Wolves are hellbent on beating the Nuggets by winning the Jokic minutes, specifically, for maximum psychic damage.

They got bad defenders but we got Jaden McDaniels

If your district votes in a representative that dies of old age, they should take away that seat. Sorry you guys voted for a dead person; California has one Senator now.

The thunder dislikers

Moreover, the Antisemitism On The Left media trope: I'm to believe the left demands Democrats go further on economic justice, reining in police and military violence, racial/gender/religious equality EXCEPT for somehow all harboring an ancient bigotry against Jews, specifically? Baby brain shit.

I you believe Hasan Piker is anything other than unequivocally good, you're overthinking it or have an agenda.

we did it everybody. 19 straight years

Generally speaking, successful politicians need to support good things or bad-but-popular things. Angie "Thank You ICE" Craig cynically tried to do the latter but landed on bad-and-unpopular. Sorry your Senate campaign is eating shit!