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These guys survived the David Conn era of Timberwolves basketball and live to tell about it. My friend Kyle Tagge, I brought this up like, I don't know, a half hour into the Game 4 recap episode last night with our guy, Artis Woods, that in 2004, it was unthinkable for a baseball team down three games to none to come back and force a Game 7 and then win the series and move on. And then the 2004 Red Sox came along. A really good team for a couple of years, a really competitive team, playoffs the year before, devastating loss to the Yankees, a grand slam walk-off by Aaron Boone.
And then they come in as the team to beat in the American League playoffs. And they run into the Yankees in the American League Championship Series. Yankees win the first game 10-7, Yankees win the second game 3-1, and then the Yankees go into Boston, actually, in Game 3, and they win 19-8. Embarrassing.
Game 4 the next night, and the Red Sox are telling reporters, don't let us get one. Don't let us get the first one. They win, walk-off, 12 innings. The next night, another walk-off win.
Game 5, okay. Things are starting to clench up a little bit for the Yankees. Red Sox win in New York. They win Game 6-42, bring it back.
Well, stay to New York for Game 7. And they blew the doors off the Yankees. It had to happen at some point in baseball. And it did for that 2004 Red Sox team.
It's going to happen at some point in the NBA. I'll just end the sentence right there. I'll just end the sentence. Why not us?
I will say that I described after Game 3 to Dane, that was a therapeutic loss. Because, and again, there's no reason to criticize takes changing after every 48 hours because the series is changing. That's the beauty of NBA playoff basketball. But after Game 3, I kind of compared it to whether you want to talk about running or horse racing or whatever, but when we got to that quarter of a mile, that final lap, that final mile in a marathon, one team just had another gear.
And if you ever run before, and that person next to you is just longer strides, pulling away, and you're like, I'm giving everything I got, and that person next to me is gaining more and more ground. That's how it felt after Game 3. So I was like, you know what? Maybe the Mavs are just the better team.
And then last night, same setup, right? Five minutes left. Tie ball game. Clutch time.
And instead of letting the opponent just outstride them to the finish line, they flipped it on. And now, do you have a series? Maybe. You really have to hammer the home like the one game at a time.
But the nature of this series and what you just said is it's all kind of flipped. Because a lot of times teams are down 3-1, let's say, but they don't have the home court, so then Game 5 goes back to the team that has the 3-1 advantage. Well, this is so wonky because the Wolves blew those first two games at home, where it's like, okay, Phil, just win Game 5. Don't worry about Game 6.
Don't worry about anything else. If you win Game 5 and it's 3-2, now it really ratchets up the pressure. I don't think Dallas has a lot of pressure on them going into Game 5. In a sense, because if it gets the 3-3, I would not want to play with my life on the line at Target Center in Game 7 if I'm Dallas.
So really impressive performance last night. I couldn't stop thinking about Andrew Bynum and the Lakers when they got bounced by the Mavs many years ago. But Andrew Bynum, I think, tried to choke slam. J.J.
Barea got ejected and just ran off the court. The Minnesota Timberwolves haven't lost four consecutive basketball games since December 28th of 2022. That was 18 months ago. They just have this stopgap that refuses them to kind of slide too much.
And it came through last night. Credit to the coaching. Credit to the players. And I think most importantly, last night, credit to Kyle Anderson and Carl Anthony Towns.
Yeah. Let's definitely put a pin in the Carl Anthony Towns conversation. I'll circle back, which we should do that. But in my thinking about the 2004 Red Sox overcoming their 3-0 deficit, the one thing that they had besides a really good team, you have to have a really good team.
There's a reason why teams in basketball are special. Baseball is a little more random. Basketball, the best team generally imposes its will over the course of seven games. It's very rare that you see massive upsets in a seven-game series.
In a game, 100%. In a series, most teams that fall down three games to none are down three games to none because they're just the inferior team. The Pacers are down three games to none despite a great fight and a high-powered offense because they're just not as good as Boston. That's not the case in this series.
If these two teams were to play each other 100 times, it's not like 80-20 Mavericks. It might even be 55-45 Wolves. And now you're seeing the Wolves push back here. But the one thing the Red Sox had besides a great lineup and great pitching, like you have to have a good roster, is they just had this sort of loosey-goosey gear to their team personality.
Dude, they got down 3-0 and they said, we're the idiots. We're a bunch of idiots. That's our nickname. Cowboy up.
We're going to drink whiskey shots before game four to get us loosened up. We've got nothing to lose. Let's just go have some fun. Let's play our game.
Boom. Rip a shot before the game. Walk-off victory. Anthony Edwards brings that levity.
It's like a carefree, fun nature, but also a really serious dog of a player when it matters. And for him to be walking around, shooting around, looking at Carl and saying he's going to hit eight threes in this game, right? And does he really believe he's going to hit eight? Not necessarily, but he's pumping Carl's tires, creating a fun, loosey-goosey atmosphere.
So I don't mean, there is something to be said for don't let a team like this get the first one. Because this isn't just an inferior team that's rising up for a gentleman's sweep. This is a team that could easily rattle off four straight wins as they did against Phoenix, a really good Phoenix team. They can beat the Mavs four straight times.
I'm not saying they will for sure. But man, letting them get that win last night opens a huge door for this team. And if they don't come back and pull off the unthinkable, fire everyone, right? I think it'll actually, you know, game three to me, therapeutic loss.
You just keep getting to this final lap and you can't outrun them. But then last night, the script flips and they do outrun them. And they do show that, to your point, we actually can beat this team. This isn't, you know, I saw a lot of really, I mean, the internet has never been more full of stupid people right now.
But a lot of people say that the Wolves were just built to beat Denver, which is weird because before that they beat the Suns in four. But they couldn't beat the Mavs. And last night, all it was was just tightening of a rotation, a little smarter plays in the clutch. Again, Kyle Anderson last night was Chris Finch on the court, just breaking down plays, adjusting plays, calling audibles.
But if the Wolves do not come back, Phil, and pull this off, I think last night's win is going to make it so that this whole team, this fan base, this coaching staff, this front office, has a really sour taste in their mouth this summer. And I think that's awesome. Like, that's the scar tissue you talk about. Like, I want, if you get swept last night, you go, man, we just didn't have a chance.
The Mavs are just better than us, they're built better than us. Maybe they got, you know, more active bodies on the front line, they just have two closers. But now the Wolves can say, we actually can beat this team. And if we lose in five or we lose in six, then you really go back to that game two.
Man, we blew the coverage, right? Like, we should have never had Jaden drop off and just double Luka and made Luka get the ball out of his hands so he doesn't hit this killer three. And I think that's how you build this stuff. You know, what do you work on in the offseason?
Everyone has their report now of, this can be done, but is it too little too late, right? So, game five, though, if this is going to go down, it deserves to go down at Target Center because I think those fans, every time I've been there, man, it's been crazy. So, game five on a Thursday night, again, that place should be absolutely insane. And we'll see what happens because it hasn't been so great home court in the playoffs, but that was a real tough place to play in the regular season and opposing coaches and players said that.
So, if you're going to go down, go down swinging. And I'm excited to see these 15 guys and this fan base go down swinging if that's what happens on Thursday. You know, maybe you said something interesting about just how different everything feels now that they're pushing back and they won a game and maybe they win another one. And there's a difference between just getting swept out and thinking, well, they've got two closers.
And there's clearly a Grand Canyon gap that we didn't see between these two teams. Like, the Wolves are kind of validating that it's not a Grand Canyon gap. Even if they do lose in five, you can go back and look at the 18-point leading game, too. But it's really interesting that the franchise right now, going into game five, is sort of teetering on this fault line of they might be the better team and they might actually be the first team to come back and do this.
It's like, oh, in 155, is this the one in 155? Are they good enough as constructed to just rattle off four straight wins and get to that? Like, they can still win the championship as low as the odds are. Like, that is part of the equation, at least for me, maybe I'm a homer.
But then, like, just on the other side of the fault line is, boy, they might need a better secondary player to Anthony Edwards. There's like a whole conversation about, do you need a better secondary player? Can you do that and keep Carl in towns? Is Carl able to create his own shot often enough when the games are this tight?
Like, it's this crazy line that they're straddling right now and we'll find out more in game five and maybe in game six. It's exactly, in my mind, it's exactly what Boston just went through last year. They were down 3-0 to the Heat. They come back, force a game seven.
But I don't know, going back to that, I don't think the Miami Heat were better than the Boston Celtics, but they advanced, right? They just had a better closer. Jimmy Butler, didn't he have 50 in that game seven, if I remember? I mean, he was just awesome in that series.
And obviously, the Heat could want to play the Nuggets and lose in the finals. But what did the Celtics do when they were that close to the precipice of the finals? They ran it back with most of their guys. They knew they had cornerstones, but then they also went out and got Porzingis, and they got Drew Holiday, and they just beefed up, you know, their frontcourt and their backcourt.
So people can do whatever they want with last night's win. You can just say, hey, they were desperate, they didn't want to get swept, and now they're going to lose in five. And maybe, but I think that was an important win, if nothing else, for the psyche of these guys long-term. You've seen Jay McDaniels all series now have a coming up party.
He has been as good as advertised, both defensively, as we know, but offensively. He hit every shot that he was spoonfed last night, and it's obviously doing his thing, Nas and Carl again last night. So whatever happens moving forward, Phil, last night to me was a big moment that, hey, we can play with these guys, and if we do ultimately get bounced, there could be a lot of guys in the locker room saying, we probably should have beat them. And you couldn't have said that if you lost last night.
You couldn't have gotten swept and said, you know, we should beat them, because that's just not the case. But last night you punched back, you got off the ropes, and again, I still think a lot of the pressure, obviously, is on Minnesota here, but you make this thing 3-2, that's all you got to do. 3-2, that's it. And then make Dallas go back to Dallas and see what can happen.
If it gets to a game six in Dallas, that's a lot of pressure on Dallas. And we can have that conversation after game five and really no sooner. But let's go back to the cat thing for a second here. Yeah.
I would love to, as someone that has been probably more critical of Carl Anthony Towns over the last three or four years in the Twin Cities media than anyone, I would like to start the cat conversation with a factual praise here. A, he was excellent when he was on the court last night, and we'll get to why he wasn't on the court as part of this conversation. But I'd like to shine a light on just how great and efficient his performance was last night. I went on stat head and was just curious, because he scored 25 points on 13 shots and was a plus 15, just his impact was very, very noticeable in that game last night.
So Cat is one of only 10 players over the past five seasons in the playoffs to rack up 25 points or more on 13 or fewer shots with a plus minus of 15 or better. And the other players on this list are guys like Jimmy Butler, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Anthony Davis, but then you sprinkle in like Duncan Robinson, Mike Conley from 2020, Utah, had a performance. Where he made, let's see, he had 27 points on 13 shots and was a plus 24 in a win over Denver. So like to be that efficient at that time when your team needs it the most deserves a ton of praise.
It was also the full Cat experience in that you get the early foul trouble, then you get the fifth foul with like five minutes to go on the third, he eventually fouls out, and he probably, he should have played like 10 or 12 more minutes in that game if not for foul trouble, and Anthony Edwards once again needles him in the post-game press conference. Like, dude, why are you fouling out? But when he's on the court and he's knocking down threes like that and he's getting to the rim, you saw the best and worst versions of Cat all in one night. And at the end of the day, the best version prevailed because that was the thing that helped drive the victory.
But just a really, a really Cat-like performance in game four in every facet, Kyle. They don't win that game last night without Conley Towns. Team high, plus 15. It was a good reminder for people watching, but I think it was also a good reminder for Carl, who has clearly been in his head.
I think a lot of this was mental. Those first three games were, I don't know, the three worst big-time games he's played. I mean, he's had some playoff stinkers, but to just kind of no-show in games one, two, and three did not help to the point that we've always been talking about. There's so many things that go into a basketball game, especially in the series, but if Ant and Carl can just outscore Kyrie and Luka, and then you have that defense and you have really solid role players, if Mike Conley's playing his butt off, you can win these games.
So I'm really impressed by him last night, especially after all the noise, but I'm almost in off-season mode, so I'm really starting to give less Fs. If Conley Towns plays bad in game five, we need to criticize him for a lack of production. We need to criticize the basketball stuff. The other stuff is bullshit.
The other stuff that was going on yesterday, the other stuff that goes around this narrative, the cringe stuff, all the different words that are whistles to describe him, what is the worst part about Conley Towns? His sometimes lack of basketball IQ? His lack of production? I get it.
Let's talk about it. But I am so done with the pot shots, both on TNT and in articles and all this stuff, we don't talk about guys that actually commit crimes. Let's talk about Carl. If you think he's odd or socially awkward, that's fine.
But let's talk about basketball. And in the basketball so far this series, most of it has not been good, and last night, fifth foul, he did score 10 points after those five fouls, part of his 25, but man, yesterday was enough for me. So if you want to take pot shots at Conley Towns, I'm out. Not you, but I'm just saying in general, because it gets real nasty about how they talk about him.
And man, I'm not a big fan of cyberbullying, but some of this is just cyberbullying, what they're doing to that guy when we don't talk about, okay, Paul George doesn't have the most decorated resume when it comes to postseason stuff, and he's adored. So I am so tired of the way that some people talk about Conley Towns, and you know what I'm talking about, you know what came out yesterday, that stupid-ass article. That's enough, man. This is not why watch basketball is not how I cover basketball, and it takes a lot for me to reply to people, and that was just ridiculous.
Why didn't TNT, or did the Wolves turn TNT down in the postgame? Because Kyrie was up there, and Luka was up there after their wins, right? I don't know. Actually, they should have said Rudy Gobert.
Rudy Gobert should have walked up there with pride. His defense in the final five minutes was incredible. There's nothing to show for it on a stat sheet, but he contested a Kyrie layup, he contested a Luka mid-range jump shot. I thought he was great, but yeah, I don't know why.
It kind of felt like, I mean, with Barkley talking, Barkley was, it was wishful thinking, because he didn't want to have to travel back to snowy Minneapolis, as he called it. Dude, what's going on? What is going on with this show? There was a video, so yes, I was out walking the dog yesterday, and it looked like it was snowing because there was so much pollen in the air, and there was a video from Target Field that went around the internet.
I think John Boy posted it, and it looked like it was snowing, so people posted the video, like, oh, it's snowing. No, it's 70 degrees. They're just falling all over the place. But just back to the panel for a second.
Wouldn't you bring one of the stars of the game up on national TV? Or have they been so critical of the Wolves and thought the series was over after the 3-0 lead that they were just, like, embarrassed or ashamed? To me, it's weird that you wouldn't bring at least Anthony Edwards up to the panel. Or did he say no?
I get why they didn't invite Carl and Gobert because that panel has been clowning those guys for years and years and years, and one of the guys on that panel tried to choke out one of the players I just mentioned. But it is just, if they win game five, does one of those Wolves players get invited up? Do they say yes? Like, what if Gobert goes off for, like, 22 and 15 and four blocks or something?
Do they invite him up to hang out with Draymond Green? I'm here for this whole dynamic. If you watch post-game, how ironic, but Draymond Green will not be in attendance for game five because apparently his son has something going on, which, again, you've got personal stuff going on, but it does work out pretty conveniently that Draymond does not have to return back to Target Center where he will, again, be surrounded by a lot of chance about how he sucks. But I just, I don't know, man, yesterday kind of broke me.
It just broke me in the sense of, like, Charles Barkley can throw a lot of pot shots at people, but he also does it in kind of a self-demeaning way because you can turn it back on him and say you never want a title or whatever, blah, blah, blah. And he laughs about it. You and I talk about this all the time with our little media rants, that if you just don't take yourself too seriously, it's really hard to be made fun of. I mean, you and I are, like, two of the poster boys, but you can say whatever you want about us.
Like, we don't take this too seriously, but we take it seriously enough to try to make good content. But some of the ways that they talk about Carl, man, is, like, really offensive. Where do you drop, where do you, because I agree, that article that came out was, it was weird, it was my friends in a text thread say this about him. He basically said, hey, I know Carl's lost parents to COVID and lost Flip Saunders and been through all this other stuff, but also he's cringe.
And it's like, all right, cool article from a website, by the way, that I used to write at and I used to edit, and everyone involved in that should be embarrassed because that's not journalism. Okay, this is, Twitter's not real. The internet is full of, okay, again, if you want to criticize, put your name on it. It always says Phil Mackie, Kyle Teighe, and Judge Zolgad on these podcasts.
That's my government name. Put your government name on it. Don't use some alias or don't hide behind something. Okay, you don't like anonymous sources, good stats, bad team guy that needs to go somewhere else.
Does he need to be, as you and I say, you know, maybe the third banana. Maybe he can't be the second banana, he has to be the third. That's fine. But when you start calling him to, like, what he wears or how he talks, I mean, just listen to what I'm saying.
That's crazy. What are we doing? Because there are so many other people in sports that actually do really bad things. Carl just, his biggest, you know, I guess fault is that he just hasn't been successful, which has affected the franchise, and he's also weird.
And I don't know, man, like, we're going to start just hanging people for being weird. Like, I don't have much more time because I might be one of the weirdest people on earth. I think part of it is, and again, I agree with everything you said. That article, we've already given, like, way too much attention to that article.
It's trash. It's getting clowned all over the internet, as it should. Carl says some of the wildest stuff that, like, the stuff from last year about, was it the GQ article, or maybe it was Paul George's podcast, because there was, like, three things from last summer. But one of them was what we did, what we, the Timberwolves, did by getting to the playoffs was more impressive than what the Nuggets did by winning the championship, like, stuff like that.
The 1,500 shots thing, that was just immediately Kenny Smith and those guys are like, go a step further or two steps further and actively talk about his family dying from COVID as part of an article. Like, there is a line somewhere that hasn't crossed a lot with Carl. And I think, like, for me a couple days ago, I tweeted, he shot 27% over a three-game playoff stretch. Only 15 players in NBA history have ever had that poor of a performance or whatever the stat was.
That is a fact. That's a fact. Like, he, and I believe that he deserves to be criticized as a Supermax player for not performing well in the first three games of the series. And some people are uncomfortable with even that level of criticism in Minnesota.
I don't understand. But it does feel oddly personal beyond just, like, the factual basketball stuff with him. And I think it's because he has a quirky personality. He sometimes lets his insecurities sort of boil over into the things he says on a microphone.
But, hey, credit to that guy for bouncing back and being awesome when his team needed it in Game 4. Go do it again in Game 5. Go shot people up in Game 6, Game 7. It's all right in front of you right now for Carl.
But here's another example as we talk about Carl and we talk about the TNT show. After Game 3, which was probably Carl's worst performance of the series, Charles Barkley came on and ripped him and said, I can't believe he didn't do the podium. Charles is played. Dane's there.
Dane already cleared up. He wasn't requested to do the podium. So if you're out there on a national stage saying this guy ducked media like he's Jamal Murray when in reality, and I heard this one day in the locker rooms in Dallas they're so small and hot that they can't do the typical go into the locker room stuff so now you have to interview the players outside like in the tunnel. Carl did, surrounded by 30 reporters post-game, after Game 3.
But no one knows about it because once you get the jokes out there the jokes kind of are cemented and minted. So no one thinks Carl did post-game media after Game 3 when he did. And that's when he said, you know, so that's me defending it. But then in your case, 1,500 shots, you don't have to say that stuff because real, as I said on the call, I can't even look out like you didn't shoot 50 shots.
Here's my amateur psychological breakdown of that. He is being told, like in no uncertain terms, you've been terrible in these three games. Do you have a reason for it? Yeah.
And he sometimes has a hard time just letting it sit. Yes, I have been terrible. Period. He then goes to sort of the defense mechanism, which a lot of people would.
Like he's, I mean, I just have to laugh because I put in all this work. I put up 1,500 shots a day. He's like kind of over-exaggerating and it's unfortunate that I'm getting these bounces. And he's kind of like pulling it off of himself and putting it into like the forces of basketball nature.
And I think the guys on the panel and other people around the league and this is the way it landed with me too are like, dude, like you don't have to let your insecurities carry you to the point where you're lying about how many shots you put up or whatever it is. Like just own it. If you have to read that game, just own it. And like that's how I interpreted the 1,500 shots thing.
He was like trying to distance him. It was like bad luck. I'm just kidding. I'm lucky bounces at the wrong time.
Well, okay. I mean like then find a victory game. Find a jump hook in the lane that's what I'm interested instead of committing offensive fouls. But again, he did in game four now it's 95-90 again because he's Mahomes-ing his way through that five-man rotation out there during that time.
But yeah, with Carl, I don't know those comments either. By the way, I just want to, you know, sometimes it's just, I wouldn't have said that. But I also, and this is kind of tied into Minnesota sports fandom, right? There's just kind of this sometimes damned if you do, damned if you don't.
And I have no interest in that. And that's, I see some of the Minnesota sports thing where every series they win, certain people are so amped but then they lose a game and they're like, oh, Minnesota sports is never going to happen Blair Walsh missed field goal. With Carl, if he answers that stuff post-game, game three, and just gives a lot of, and Ant has done this, just a lot of short answers, no, I was bad tonight. Couldn't hit shots.
No, I was team down. If he just gave me one of those real minimal 50 total words and eight questions, I think he would have gotten clowned for that too. So I am just, I came away from that being like, I didn't love what he said, but also what did someone want him to say? Yeah, I think he gets clowned for shooting 27%.
There's no way to shoot 27% over three games and have people be like, you know, it wasn't that bad. Because the reality is, if he shoots 40% or 50%, like 50% from the field, 40% from three, the Wolves are up three games to one in the series right now. So, and there's a bunch of different things and reasons why, beyond Cat, why the series is 3-1 flipped in the Mavericks' favor. But if you could flip one thing and say, have one thing go back to normal, is it Gobert in the first few games?
It would be, Carl goes back to normal three-point percentage, Carl goes back to normal two-point percentage, which was like 36% for him. They probably have a 3-1 lead in the series. And that's why your tweet after game three about the other 15 guys that have shot this poorly through three games should not be criticized because it's a real basketball thing. I just come back to, you know, if I was unemployed and I applied for 12 jobs and I never got any of them, three weeks later after I got turned down for the 12th one and then they interviewed me, what am I supposed to say?
Like, you know, like, I am such a lousy candidate. Like, do you just break yourself down in public? Or do you just, you know, those are, I'm literally kind of therapeutically saying this out loud, but I don't know what he was supposed to say and that's the stuff that bugs me out, but I will say, Dane, I thought yesterday had a really good tweet and we both kind of vibe with this and it was really long because Dane has a blue check mark and all that stuff, but he summed it up by just saying, Kat has to let go of external pressure and realize what we all have to realize. The coolest versions of ourselves are the ones where we're the most ourselves and Dane's spot on.
No one's closer to Carl covering him than Dane and that's what you and I are both trying to stress here. Just be yourself and last night in the first half, I don't think Carl was himself. I think he was the same trying to appease, trying to do what other people say, trying to attack off the dribble and that's not what this series is about. In the second half, he just planted himself in the slot, in the corner, and hit some threes, got down to the rim once, fed Rudy part of an 8-0 run and I thought in the second half, despite the foul trouble, he was more of himself.
But you know, what do we get in game five? Because he really erased some demons last night, but you are kind of judged on your last performance. So if they would have won the series last night, Carl would be getting crazy again, but there's a lot of the series left. So hey, I got one thing for you, but do you know what we're going to keep talking, but I got something for you that made me really happy last night.
Let's get to it in a second here because I want to shout out two of our friends during the playoffs, one being Legendary Golf. Oh my God, yes. Legendary Golf is a fantastic apparel company that is family owned, Minnesota based and veteran owned. So a portion of everything purchased at legendary.co.
That's lgndy.co. A portion of everything purchased goes to veteran organizations. In fact, people have been asking, hey, Mackie, where'd you get that hat that you've been rocking on these Flagrant Howls episodes? It's from Legendary.
Got the state of Minnesota here with a little howling wolf in the center. Love it. Been rocking this almost every day since I got it. We can go promo code at checkout howl for 20% off.
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EcoFun Motorsports, like I said, Forest Lake and Burnsville, you can snoop around to it. EcoFunMotorsports.com. That's EcoFunMotorsports.com. Okay.
I got my legendary hat in the bag headed to New Orleans for the first time in my life for a bouncer party slash golf trip, so I'm going to probably be doing some pods from an undisclosed location on Bourbon Street, but 92 degrees there and 80% humidity, I'm going to die. So I need to let him to keep me going. It's going to be sticky. Yeah, I'm curious to get your New Orleans download.
How many days, how many nights? Oh, man, too many nights and too many days, but four nights there. If anyone's listening, YouTube comments on Twitter would ever send me a message of a place to go, but never been. Bachelor party, golf trip.
That's a four-night bachelor party? I know. Wow, dude. Not excited.
Also, at some point, we need to talk about Airbnbs again. I think I've ranted before, but holy cow, I just wake up and I'm like, hey, you know what? We might charge you this, too. Oxygen tax.
We're going to have fresh air in your Airbnb and it's going to cost you $600. If you don't, it's carbon monoxide. You're just going to die. Yep, yep.
You have to pay this fee. I'm not even going to lead into this, set this up. I did send you this, but a real proud moment for me last night. John Krasinski with this tweet.
Mike Conley on Chris Finch getting onto the court and getting a technical. You forget the impact it can have when your coach is up getting technicals, yelling, and we see him hobble around to do it. It's impressive. It lit a fire in all of us.
Play some music because I deserve a plus one for that. I've been saying that all season and I love Finchie, but there is a armchair psychologist. There is a reward sometimes when you watch your coach, your leader kind of go to war for you. Just hobbling out there.
He ditched the crutches. He said, bleep it and he has now moved to the front. At one point, him and Mike and Jorge were standing together and it looked like Finch wanted the album out of the way. Finch took over two huddles in the fourth quarter if you go back and watch it.
Those guys love playing for him. He loves coaching them, but I might not know much Phil Mackey, but I know that every now and then a coach should get a technical and Chris Finch got one last night and did it lead to a win? I don't know, but that's what I'm going to tell myself. Dude, I think there's been times there's not much to criticize Finchie for over the years, but there's been times where we say, you know, it kind of feels like the team, not as much this year, but like maybe the previous two years, it kind of feels like the team could use the coach freaking out on Scott Foster right now and just send a jolt through the bench.
Speaking of Scott Foster, I know Wolves fans get all uptight whenever you see Scott Foster in one of these playoff games. His nickname is The Extender and damn it, last night The Extender did his job and made it so that there was a game. I don't think officiates a couple of things here and there. Except when he tried to absolutely nuke the series, following out Carl on a play that had been supposedly ripped out of the league.
You're not supposed to be able to lurch into guys. And then there's a really good cut up. I love when they put two videos next to each other where Scott Foster was officiating James Harden at the Rockets against the Warriors a couple years ago. Harden hits a big step back three that shouldn't have counted, but he got the and one.
And then last night, as soon as Lucas shot that and got followed by Ant, which by the way, what a moment that we'll never talk about again. But if they could have lost that game, the ball has barely left Lucas' hands and Scott Foster had nine arms and they were all doing fun pointing. Like, this is going to count, this is going to count. So that's one of those fun moments in sports where we'll probably never talk about it again after May 29th.
But if you would have hit the free throw, let's say, make a two-point game, Wolves come down, maybe split a pair, and then they tie it up. Oh my God. Yeah, that's the daunting thing is that it was a close game. Down at the end, the Wolves pulled out a close game, but that's formula.
And you're not going to be able to do this in games five, six, and seven if it gets to a seven. But just have a 19-point lead and hang on to it. Just how about one blowout win? You had a couple against Denver.
If game five could be a little bit like game six where it's just a no-doubter the entire time and you're not sweating whether Lucas is going to hit ridiculous shots in Kyrie, that would be nice. Just once in the series. That's all I ask for. You started this off with the 3-0 Red Sox and kind of saying that at some point, and that's a fact, or at some point, some team has to break through.
Boston almost did it less than 12 months ago. But yeah, for this Timberwolves team, after re-watching it this morning, they played really good defense last night. That was the best defensive performance they've had in the series. I legitimately thought that that was the worst offensive game they've played all series.
It's clunky, very clunky. Turnovers. Yeah, 15 turnovers. The Mavs turned those into 30 points.
You missed nine free throws again, this attention to detail stuff. But why am I saying that here kind of to close? It's because it's kind of what Mike Conley has been saying post-game. I don't think the Wolves have played very good all series.
And that's credit to Dallas and Sean Sweeney, their assistant coach, in the defense that they're throwing at them. And obviously Derek Lively last night, that's a big one. But you get to go home, you're down 3-1, but you're going back to your own bed, and you haven't really played well. And all it takes is one of those play well games, right?
Like a game two in Denver, or a game six at home. If the Wolves can find it and stop playing B- basketball and play A- basketball, we might have a series on our hands. Like you said earlier, that's when the pressure immediately flips to the opponents. So game five, Thursday night, on TNT, no Draymond.
It's going to be... What else do you want, man? If they win that game, I'm pretty sure I have this right. It'll be the first time, if they win game five, it'll be the first time the Minnesota Timberwolves.
have ever played basketball in June. Yeah, because May 31st, I think it was May 31st is when they were limited by the Lakers in 2004. I know, you know I would come up with just the littlest hairs of stats, but June basketball, man, I don't care what you think, like that would be, we used to pray for times like this. Somehow, and we're wrapping the episode right now, but somehow we just made it 40 minutes without fawning over or even like saying the words to Anthony Edwards, who was a dog in that game.
Literally, he barked. He barked at one point during a tie-up, but he was guarding Luka for long stretches. I want to say someone put out a stat that Luka was like four for 12 or four for 14 when Anthony Edwards was the primary. He's organizing huddles.
The mic'd up stuff was great last night. But then him like organizing, guys, hey, get in here, get in here. Rebound. It's not fake leadership, man.
It is, this is my team. Even if it's Conley, get over here. I've got something to say, right? And then just taking over in that second half, getting to the places he needed to to hit shots to create open looks for others.
Just a magnificent, mature, near triple-double performance for Anthony Edwards. In talking about post-game stuff, whatever you think about what guys say post-game after winning the losses, I really did like what Ann said post-game after game three. And they're like, how do you not, you know, sky is falling. He's like, because I've literally been through way more than losing a bunch of basketball games.
Which actually, I should quickly shout out, friend of the show, our friend, was announced this morning. Chris Hine, who covers the Timberwolves for the Star Tribune, does a great job. It was announced he'll be writing a book on Anthony Edwards due out early 2025. Wow, let's go.
But that's going to be like a big time book. No one better to write it than Chris. But when Ann said, yeah, I've been through way worse, I thought that was legitimate. I thought that was him being, that's what I wanted him to say and that's what he said.
But then pre-game, to your point about Mike Dup, like him and Luka, not that Luka, our Luka, were just kind of, you know what I'm saying, they better kill us now, right? They better stomp us out now. They don't want us to go back to Minnesota. That energy is why he is the team's best player and the leader and something that changes all the narratives and this is not the same Timberwolves team because he's just different, man.
He's mentally different, he's physically different and it's going to set up an insane, insane game five where I think all Wolves fans are obligated to attend. I see what you did there. Yes, I see what you did there, my friend. Sip your tea.
Sip your tea. I think that's a wrap on this game four day after episode of Flagrant Howls. He's Kyle. This may be the last time you ever hear from him now that he's going to New Orleans for four nights.
Might be dead. We were texting with Grady and Jim P. Those guys are traveling. I think we might just see what happens the next few days if you're going to New Orleans and get those guys back in the mix either to preview the NBA Finals or to recap a wildly successful Timberwolves season so you'll hear from them again before it's all said and done.
All right, my friend. Safe travels to you. Good luck out there. And to the audience, thank you guys for sticking with us here on Flagrant Howls.
This is a Timberwolves lifestyle podcast. Why not us?