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Oh, how seductive it must have been.

You buy a basketball team. Months later, you are standing at midcourt in Minnesota holding the Western Conference Finals trophy. Confetti rains down. Cameras catch your face. For one dangerous second you cannot help but think: is this what owning a sports franchise is like?

It is not.

A few days later, the confetti is falling in Boston, and it belongs to someone else. Even worse, you are months away from being hoodwinked into believing that being on the business end of the NBA version of the Babe Ruth trade is a good idea. Soon, boos will serenade you in your home arena as even marginally adept lip readers will notice you ask your associate, “Are they booing…me?” Oh, they were.

That has been the painful, expensive education of Patrick Dumont. Buying a basketball team and understanding the NBA are not mutually inclusive, a line I wrote in November when Nico Harrison was finally fired. The new Mavericks governor inherited Mark Cuban’s human Rolodex hire and trusted the man’s confidence over the man’s competence. By the time Dumont understood the magnitude of what he had been bamboozled into signing off on by Harrison, the trade had already happened, and the booing had already started. A few rocky months later, an 18-year-old SMU freshman in a Luka Lakers jersey was sitting four rows behind him at the American Airlines Center, waiting to apologize.

What Dumont did at that game, on November 10 of last year, was admit he had been wrong. To a kid named Nicholas Dickason, who had flipped him off on opening night and come back to make it right. “Sometimes you have good intentions and you make mistakes. We all do it.” Dumont also told Dickason, according to The Athletic, that he “feels horrible for the trade” and “wants to make it up to us.”

Nico Harrison was fired the next morning.

The brakes-on crowd

I’m tired of writing about Nico Harrison.

Nobody at this site has taken him apart more often, with more long-winded metaphors, than I have. Fifteen months of column work spent litigating a single trade and a single regime, and I’d like to be done.

I have not been part of the move-on crowd. I have been part of the driving-with-the-brakes-on crowd. The people who understood that the Adelson-Dumont ownership group is not selling the team, that some of the faces tied to the trade were going to remain, and that the reset many fans wanted was not coming on their preferred timetable.

Tuesday, for the first time, a brighter horizon actually felt possible when the Mavericks introduced Masai Ujiri as the team’s new president of basketball operations and alternate governor.

Not because Patrick Dumont sold the team. Because Dumont brought in someone whose entire career has been the photographic negative of the man he replaced. Someone whose first instinct in front of a microphone was to acknowledge what happened, name the wound, and offer a path forward that did not pretend the wound was imagined.

The pivot is straightforward: Patrick Dumont trusted the schmoozer. Now he is trusting the scout.

When the Rolodex was the resume

When Mark Cuban hired Nico Harrison alongside Jason Kidd in 2021, he was hiring a Rolodex.

After years of striking out in free agency, Cuban ostensibly convinced himself that the missing ingredient at the top of his front office was relationships. Connections. Access. Harrison had been at Nike for two decades. He had the cell phone numbers of every star in the league. He had brokered deals with Kobe and Curry and Kyrie and Durant. He could schmooze. That was the pitch.

The problem, as the Mavericks would learn the hard way, is that schmoozing was a job where Harrison could not lose.

At Nike, even if you flubbed a star’s pitch meeting (the famous Steph Curry / Under Armour story comes to mind), there was always another superstar coming through the door. Nike does not compete with 29 other shoe companies for a fixed pool of talent. The next star would always be there, ready to be courted. Failure in Harrison’s previous job was, in the most consequential sense, impossible.

The NBA front office is a different planet. You compete against 29 other teams. Talent evaluation is the entire job. Many of the men who become NBA general managers spent years grinding as scouts before they ever sat in a draft room with veto power, watching gym after gym, mapping international tournaments, building the eye that eventually recognizes a hidden gem and the spine to take the swing. Harrison did none of that. He was a shoe rep with the keys to a basketball empire.

The results came on schedule. “One team source recalls a document where Harrison placed Jrue Holiday within the same trade target tier as Nikola Jokić,” Tim Cato reported at DLLS Sports last fall. Read that sentence again. A real general manager does not put Jrue Holiday and Nikola Jokić in the same tier of trade targets. A schmoozer does, because the difference between Holiday — a decorated guard whose best version was already behind him — and the generational Joker does not exist in the world of brand partnerships.

That blindness explains the Anthony Davis trade. Davis had appeared on Harrison’s Instagram a decade earlier, dousing him with ice water during the ALS Challenge. That version of Davis, the prime All-Star Davis of 2014, is the one Harrison saw when he looked at the trade assets on the Lakers roster. The brittle 30-something Davis who would play 29 regular-season games across two partial Mavericks seasons before being salary-dumped to Washington for spare parts? That Davis was invisible. Harrison saw the friend, frozen in time.

The Mavericks never endured the kind of long, semi-intentional wilderness years that let a franchise stockpile picks between eras. The Mavs leaned into asset-burning to build around Dončić. By 2025, Luka qualified for the supermax. The supermax would have given Dončić more money than any player in NBA history, along with the institutional power that comes with that contract. That power would have made Luka virtually impervious to Harrison’s outsized need for control. So Harrison did the boldest thing a schmoozer driven by ego can do. He traded the king before the king could outrank him.

“The easiest thing for me to do is nothing,” Harrison told reporters at the Cleveland press conference the day after the trade. “Everyone would praise me for doing nothing.”

He could not stand to be praised for doing nothing. He needed his shining moment. He needed his real-life PlayStation move. He needed to prove that he, the shoe executive, was the architect of a championship and not a passenger in the Luka Dončić era.

He got fired instead.

The scout’s path

Ujiri did not arrive at Tuesday’s introductory press conference from a cushy industry job. He arrived from the gym.

Ujiri’s career began as an unpaid scout in 2002, working for the Orlando Magic and the Denver Nuggets. Kiki Vandeweghe and Jeff Weltman hired him onto salary at Denver. The Dallas connections in that scouting tree are real. Amadou Gallo Fall, a longtime Mavericks scout and director, was Ujiri’s friend and mentor, and Ujiri name-checked Fall, Donnie Nelson, and Vandeweghe in his opening remarks Tuesday. The braid back to the Mavs predates this hire by twenty years.

To become a scout, Ujiri had to outwork other scouts. To become an assistant general manager, he had to outwork other scouts who had also outworked other scouts. To become an executive vice president and general manager of the Denver Nuggets in 2010, he had to demonstrate, year over year, that his hits on Kenneth Faried and Wilson Chandler and the post-Melo Nuggets roster he helped assemble were not luck. They were the work born of a process started years earlier, before the accolades.

The work paid off. In 2013, Ujiri was named NBA Executive of the Year, the only non-American ever to win the award. The Nuggets won 57 games that season, the most in the franchise’s NBA history. Then he went on to Toronto and built another contender from what remained of the Bargnani-era roster he inherited. And in 2018, he made one of the riskiest moves any general manager has ever made. He traded the longest-tenured Raptor and franchise face DeMar DeRozan for Kawhi Leonard, a one-year rental of a two-way superstar coming off an injury-marred season and a public divorce from the Spurs.

It worked. The Raptors won the 2019 championship. Kawhi left as a free agent that summer. Ujiri’s team played the long game and the short game in the same window, and won both.

The recent Toronto stretch was not pristine. The OG Anunoby trade for RJ Barrett did not yield what Ujiri wanted. The Quickley extension was rich. The Ingram trade looked desperate. The Collin Murray-Boyles draft pick is still developing. No executive bats a thousand, and the latter years in Toronto were the years when the puzzle around Ujiri stopped giving him pieces to put together.

But a championship can keep an executive in a chair past the point where the chair still fits. The Mavericks learned that lesson with the waning years of Donnie Nelson’s tenure. For Ujiri, the fit in Toronto ran long. Twelve years. Five Atlantic Division titles. Two Eastern Conference Finals appearances. One NBA championship that almost no one outside the team’s own building saw coming.

What Dallas needed and now has are the fresh eyes of a seasoned, unsentimental evaluator with the power to evoke real change. Anthony Davis and Kyrie Irving were spoken of mythologically by Nico Harrison. I do not get that sense from Masai Ujiri. He has shown, throughout his career, that he can attach to players without becoming attached to them. He can pull the trigger on a trade when the math says pull the trigger, even if the trade is for a one-year rental who might not re-sign, even if the trade involves moving the most beloved player on the roster.

Bring the calm

“I hope to bring calm,” Ujiri said early in his opening remarks Tuesday. “I hope to bring to this place winning.”

The first half of that sentence is more important than it sounds. Calm has not been a recurring feature of the Mavericks’ recent operating environment. The Harrison era was a blender. Opaque decision-making, late-night trades, manufactured dysfunction narratives served to ownership in private while the actual roster was being built around a generational player. Calm is the antidote.

It is also a tonal philosophy. Watch how Ujiri handled the inevitable Luka questions Tuesday. Asked twice (once about a healing process, once about whether he would have made the trade), Ujiri did not throw his new boss under the bus. He did not call the trade a mistake. He also did not pretend the wound was not there.

“There’s a healing process with that,” he said.

And then he gave the franchise something it had not been given by anyone in the organization since that fateful Shams bomb on a cold February night. A frame.

“Luka is a Hall of Famer, a future Hall of Famer, and that’s the past. I always say in Africa, we say when kings go, kings come, and a king went, and we have a little prince here that we’re going to turn into a king.”

That is a culturally specific framing that does real work on the grief. The throne is not empty. The loss is real. The path forward is the prince, and the prince is right there in the building, 19 years old and newly minted Rookie of the Year.

The Harrison version of this answer (and the Jason Kidd version, which I wrote about at length on Easter Sunday) was a clipped we have to move on, with the unstated insistence that there was nothing to see here, that the trade was good, that the fans were the problem for refusing to get over it. Ujiri eventually got there too, saying “we really have to move on,” but only after giving the grief oxygen first. He gave fans permission to mourn what was lost and a structure for walking toward what comes next. Different operating system entirely.

That is what calm looks like in practice. Acknowledgment plus forward motion.

The Brooklyn irony

There is a quote you should know about, if you do not already.

The date was April 19, 2014. The location was Maple Leaf Square in Toronto, where thousands of Raptors fans had gathered for a rally before Game 1 of the Eastern Conference first round against the Brooklyn Nets. The Raptors’ relatively new general manager, fresh off his Executive of the Year award in Denver, took the stage. He grabbed the microphone. He shouted “F*** Brooklyn!” at the assembled crowd.

The NBA fined him $25,000. He later said he was not taking it back, and that if the Raptors got the rematch he would say it again.

The head coach of the Brooklyn Nets at the time was asked for his response.

“You gotta tell me who the GM is,” Jason Kidd said. “I don’t even know who their GM is.”

He knows now.

This historical wrinkle matters because it tells you something about the dynamic Kidd is walking into. Asked about Kidd’s future Tuesday, Ujiri did exactly what he should have done. He praised Kidd as a Hall of Fame player. He said Kidd had done a great job. He referenced his own track record of keeping inherited coaches: George Karl in Denver for three years, Dwane Casey in Toronto for five. Both were inherited. Both were eventually replaced. Read between the lines if you wish, or do not. Either reading lands you in the same place.

What Ujiri did not do was endorse Kidd as the Mavericks’ coach. He could have. He could have said the obvious thing: that Kidd is a Hall of Fame player, that he took this team to the Finals, that Cooper Flagg’s relationship with him is real and worth preserving. Instead, Ujiri said: “…we’re going to look at this thing from head to toe.”

That is the right answer. For too long, Kidd’s halo as a Hall of Fame player and his 2024 Finals run insulated him from a dispassionate evaluation. His Dallas regular-season record finished this season hovering around .500 across five years, with three lottery-bound seasons in five. His best playoff outcomes came when he had the second-best player on the planet running the offense.

There is also a question of whether Kidd wants the new arrangement. Under Harrison, Kidd had outsized power. He had sway over personnel. He had an enabler at GM who shared his preferences. Whether Kidd was the Cleveland-hotel-room Pollyanna he claimed to be is a question I addressed at length last month. What is no longer in question is what the new front office will be. Masai Ujiri is not going to outsource personnel decisions to his head coach. The cook-with-the-groceries era is over, even if it never quite existed in the form Kidd publicly claimed.

The power dynamics around Kidd have been upended. The veterans on this roster may now be assets to be moved rather than minutes to be allocated. Klay Thompson is on the third year of his three-year contract. Daniel Gafford is a useful big man on a reasonable deal. PJ Washington is a versatile forward in his prime. Even Kyrie Irving, whom most every Mavericks fan loves, will be a trade market question if he returns from his ACL injury looking like himself and other teams come calling.

I do not get the sense that the Mavericks’ new president will hesitate to improve the roster or the asset stockpile. Ujiri has made a basketball life out of evaluating players with the eyes of a scout and the deal-making of a card shark. The mythologizing is for the rest of us.

That may not be Jason Kidd’s preferred operating environment. We are going to learn very soon whether Kidd would rather take the new dynamics or whether he would rather find a job somewhere else where he can again be both coach and shadow GM…or, for that matter, actual GM.

The full body scan

The Mavericks have needed a full body scan for a long time.

Not just the front office. The medical staff, which Ujiri flagged twice Tuesday as an area where the franchise has to get better. What fate awaits the interim general managers, Matt Riccardi and Michael Finley? The same can be asked of the coaching staff. The scouts. The development pipeline. Every player on this roster not named Cooper Flagg.

A full body scan is not as glamorous as confetti. Confetti is the schmoozer’s gift: the false sense of arrival, the borrowed credit for someone else’s hard work, the trophy you did not earn but get to hold. Confetti is what Patrick Dumont may well have mistaken for understanding when he bought this team.

A full body scan is the scout’s gift. It is unglamorous. It is slow. It involves sitting down with people and asking them to defend their work. It involves looking at processes and asking whether they produce results or just produce comfort. It is what the Mavericks needed in 2021 and did not get. It is what they needed during the aftermath of the trade and did not get. It is what they have, finally, on the table now.

The reset that a significant chunk of this fanbase wanted (every face associated with the Luka trade out of the building) was never going to happen on the timeline they wanted. Patrick Dumont and Miriam Adelson are not selling the team. Ownership stays. But what Tuesday showed is that the reset can come from a different direction. By evaluating everyone. By saying that nobody in this building is untouchable, except the 19-year-old prince who wears jersey number 32.

“This is a winning organization. We want to get back to that,” Ujiri said Tuesday.

He cannot tell you how. Yet. He is going to scan the body first.

The lottery last May gave the Mavericks two gifts in one ping-pong ball. The first was Cooper Flagg, the generational player around whom everything else now reorients. The second was the chance to bring Ujiri to Dallas. Because Ujiri, when asked Tuesday whether he would have taken this job without Flagg, did not pretend the question was unfair. He listed the Western Conference gauntlet: Wembanyama, Luka, Anthony Edwards, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokić. He said you cannot beat them without something in your pocket. And in his pocket, he has Cooper Flagg. The job was the job because Flagg was the player.

I have watched the Dallas Mavericks since 1980. The schedule last season felt like a slow-moving funeral procession, even with Cooper Flagg’s Rookie of the Year campaign in progress. Watching this team grind through the back half of a tanking season under the weight of a trade nobody wanted to talk about was harder than I expected.

Tuesday was the first day in a long time I felt actively excited to write about this team again.

Dallas finally and at long last got rid of the schmoozer and replaced him with the scout. The full body scan that this organization has needed for years can finally begin.

After the Boston Celtics’ second straight early exit from the playoffs, the topic of roster changes is inevitable. Fans like you and I can be pretty emotional in the aftermath of disappointment. Brad Stevens, however, seems to be a lot more level headed. But that doesn’t mean he won’t consider all the options before him. So let’s try to lay out the factors as calmly as possible and discuss this rationally. (Well, at least try.)

Why is this even a topic?

The Celtics won a title just 2 years ago with a roster built around Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum. So we know it can work. Shoot, Jaylen won both ECF MVP and Finals MVP, so everyone should understands that he was one of the biggest reasons for that title. I would submit that he has only gotten better since that title and just turned in his best season ever. If you only judged him on his career to this point, he would still be considered one of the many greats in the team’s history. Personally, I’m a big fan and I would like to see him retire as a Celtic after a long, productive career. I’d like to see his number retired in the banners.

So why are we talking about this? Mostly because we have to look at everything. Consider every angle before dismissing it out of hand based on emotional reflex.

For one thing, Jaylen’s value might never be higher than it is right now. He’s not a perfect player, but you can pick at nits in anyone’s game. He just proved that he can lead a solid team to a 2nd seed. You could argue that if his teammates made a few more shots or if Tatum didn’t get hurt that they’d be on to the 2nd round as planned. I think it is safe to say that a lot of teams around the league would love to have him as their leading man (and will be calling Brad to follow up on previously shot-down conversations).

There’s also the matter of spreadsheets and nerdy number crunching. Both he and Jayson are on max contracts in an era where the rules punish large payrolls. It is very hard to build a competitive roster in this era when you have multiple max guys on the roster. One could make a convincing case that breaking Brown’s contract into smaller, higher value deals would make more sense from a roster building perspective.

What does Jaylen want?

One thing that we can only speculate upon is what Jaylen Brown wants. I don’t doubt his affection for the city of Boston or the team that he’s spent his whole career with. In fact, I greatly admire his dedication to giving back to the community.

However, he’s always been somewhat in the shadow of one player or another. He said himself that this was his favorite season. Which begs the questions. Would he be happier as the number 1 option on a different team? Would he like to play for his hometown team in Atlanta? Is there another star he would like to play with?

I will note here as well: believe it or not, Jaylen is extension eligible this offseason. It just so happens that he had his best year. If he wants to leverage that to a longer term contract, will the Celtics be willing to give him the extra years? If not, how does he feel about that? Again, I don’t know anything beyond what he’s said publicly. Just thinking out loud.

What would be the return?

The only correct answer to a smug blog title that asks “Should we trade Player X?” is “Well, it depends on the return you are getting.” So let’s roll up our sleeves and peel back the layers of that answer.

We’re just entering the summer of Giannis Rumors (part 3?) and his name is bound to come up. The Celtics have already been linked (vaguely) to the Bucks superstar. Giannis had some really nice things to say about the Boston culture this year. He’s hands down a better player than Jaylen Brown, …when healthy. And there’s the rub. I just don’t know if I trust his body to hold up much longer given his age, body type, and playing style.

I can safely predict that we’ll hear more stars linked to the Celtics in various rumors in the coming months. Kawhi Leonard? Kevin Durant? Paolo Banchero? Each has their strengths and weaknesses and concerns. Personally I’m skeptical of all of the above for one reason or another. There are other big names that you could toss around, and each would need to be considered for things like fit, style, cost, and the compensation needed on either side to get a trade done.

As I mentioned earlier, the Celtics might prefer to break Brown’s deal into smaller pieces. You could logically ask why the team would let all their elite role players go one year (Jrue, Porzingis, Horford, Kornet) only to look for guys like that a year later. However, I think the team would likely be focused on younger (and perhaps healthier) options. “Like who????“ You might ask (I know you are asking). I suppose if the Cavs flame out in the 2nd round, one of their bigs (Mobley or Allen) might be available. What about Trey Murphy III? Lauri Markkanen? Onyeka Okongwu? (See, I had the guts to put some real names out there, don’t be too hard on me. I’m not proposing these deals, just listing some names to consider.)

So is this real or just another overreaction?

Most likely the latter (even if only because trades are hard), but it is certainly going to be a topic of discussion this summer. So I figured I’d get ahead of that somewhat.

The most likely scenario is that the team will happily build around Jaylen and the core players that they already have. They do have some levers to pull in terms of adding free agents. There are smaller deals that could be made (Hauser and a pick?) and bigger ones that I would hate to consider (Derrick?). The roster is also young enough that internal improvements could be a big part of the plan as well.

So ultimately I don’t think Jaylen Brown is going to be traded and I’m perfectly happy with that. He’s an All NBA level player and a champion and has a great heart for this city and this team. There should be no rush to push him out the door.

Just remember that it is Brad’s job is to consider all his options to make this team better.

A Game 1 stinker for the Sixers against the Knicks? It wasn’t ideal, but the Sixers have rebounded from such losses already in the postseason and, in defiance of how I’ve looked at this team for so long, I have confidence they will again. Before they have a chance to do so in Game 2, here’s a fresh “5 Sixers thoughts” column from me…

Let it rip, Tyrese

Tyrese Maxey was a godsend as a late-game closer in the Sixers’ series win over the Celtics, but, even in acknowledging the magnitude of that performance and that upset, I wish he was more aggressive early in games. In that Game 1 shellacking at Madison Square Garden, Maxey attempted just one first-quarter shot. It was over at halftime.

In Game 7 against Boston, he had three first-quarter shots, tied for the fewest among the Sixers’ five starters.

I know all these guys, Maxey included, were likely gassed to start the Eastern Conference Semifinals. It’s why I’m cutting this group way more slack than I could’ve ever dreamed for a Sixers team that got run off the court in the playoffs like this, but I want to see Maxey not wait until the 11th hour to take over. Sixers fans everywhere know he has it in him.

Tiki Barber sounds like an absolute clown yet again

Tiki Barber, the former New York Giant who now works as a host at WFAN in New York, their equivalent of WIP, has a penchant for letting his mouth run. When former Giants running back Saquon Barkley signed with the Eagles during the 2024 NFL offseason, Barber stated, “He’s dead to us now.” Barkley responded by having perhaps the greatest running back season in football history while hoisting the Lombardi Trophy, something that Barber never did in his own career.

Anyway, Barber is at it again. After Joel Embiid took a shot from Mikal Bridges on a screen in Game 1, the big fella was dealing with some abdominal pain, certainly a concern as he recovers from appendicitis. After the game, Embiid remarked, “I just felt like it wasn’t necessary, but we move on. It’s playoff basketball. So, if that’s the reality of it, I guess we have to go out there and be physical, too, and do it, too.

On his radio show on Tuesday morning, Barber went after Embiid.

“If it was that bad, then don’t play,” Barber said about the Sixers center’s injuries. “It’s part of the risk of playing when you’re hurt,” Barber later said. “So, stop being a b***h.”

Barber, who fumbled the ball 35 times between the 2000 and 2003 seasons and whose Giants won the Super Bowl immediately after he retired, could have his comments come back to bite him. Embiid has proven what he can do on the court no matter his health. I would not be shocked to see him go off on a 35-point, near-triple-double tear in a Wednesday win after this.

The Adem Bona Experience

I love the energy Adem Bona has, but…

The backup center rotation behind Joel Embiid for nearly a decade continues to be, uh, something.

Shooting variance tells the tale of the modern NBA

That’s only a surface-level take, yes, but it was apparent during the Sixers’ seven-game battle with Boston and was once more in Game 1 against New York. The Knicks aren’t going to shoot 51 percent from three this whole series. Things will ebb and flow. I remain unbothered by how Monday night played out and am ready for the Sixers to fight back with a vengeance on Wednesday evening.

How is this guy still talking?

The Celtics were eliminated over the weekend. Please log off, Jaylen Brown.

The NBA Draft Combine is approaching, and three Illini players were invited to participate in Chicago. The combine will run from May 10-17 at Wintrust Arena and the Marriott Marquis. Players will compete in five-on-five scrimmages, skill drills, measurements, medical examinations, and interview sessions.

A total of 73 players were invited, including Illini standouts Keaton Wagler, Kylan Boswell, and Andrej Stojakovic. All three former Illini appear in recent NBA mock drafts and will have a chance to improve their stock during the NBA Draft Combine.

Where do the Illini rank in NBA mock drafts?

Jeremy Woo (ESPN):
Keaton Wagler – #6
Kylan Boswell – #52
Andrej Stojakovic – #54

NBADRAFT.NET:
Keaton Wagler – #6
Andrej Stojakovic – #45

Adam Finkelstein (CBS Sports):
Keaton Wagler – #7

NBA Draft Room:
Keaton Wagler – #8
Kylan Boswell – #82

USA Today:
Keaton Wagler – #6

We will have a better idea of where former Illinois players Keaton Wagler and Kylan Boswell could land following the NBA Draft Lottery on May 10. Junior guard Andrej Stojakovic appears in some mock drafts but is expected to return to college for his senior season.

Boswell has exhausted his eligibility, and Wagler is projected to be a top-10 pick, meaning both players are expected to remain in this year’s draft. Illini fans will likely get another look at them during NBA Summer League action in Las Vegas beginning in mid-July.

Boswell is still just 21 years old and will now get his opportunity to prove himself at the professional level. While the G League may be the most likely outcome initially, Boswell will have the chance to earn an NBA roster spot or sign a two-way contract. The Champaign native also spoke about how much Brad Underwood has meant to his development over the past two seasons.

“He’s (Brad Underwood) meant everything for me. How much he demands from me – I think will translate to help me just in whatever my career takes me,” said Kylan Boswell on head coach Brad Underwood.

Wagler is expected to become one of the highest Illinois basketball players ever selected in the NBA Draft. While it is unlikely he surpasses Deron Williams as the highest draft pick in program history at No. 3 overall, he could potentially tie Kendall Gill at No. 5, Red Kerr at No. 6, or George Bon Salle at No. 7. Wagler would become Illinois’ highest draft pick since Meyers Leonard was selected No. 11 overall in 2012.

Minnesota Timberwolves at San Antonio Spurs
Date: May 6th, 2026
Time: 8:30 PM CDT
Location: Frost Bank Center
Television Coverage: ESPN

Game 1 was not pretty. It was not elegant. It was not the kind of series opener that ends with everyone breathlessly talking about offensive genius or some masterclass in modern basketball.

No, this was a rock fight. It steel-cage match with a shot clock. And somehow, the Timberwolves survived it.

They walked into Frost Bank Center, stole home-court advantage, and escaped with a Game 1 win by the skin of their teeth. This was not a comfortable victory. This was the Wolves clinging to a seven-point lead late, watching it shrink to four, then two, then holding their breath as Julian Champagnie’s potential game-winning three clanged off the rim and allowed every Wolves fan to exhale.

From the opening possession, it was obvious this series was not going to look anything like the matchup with Denver. Against the Nuggets, Minnesota discovered that Denver’s rim defense was basically a velvet rope with no bouncer. Attack Jokic, make him move, pressure the paint, force rotations, rinse, repeat. Against San Antonio? Different universe. The game opened with blocks on both ends, which was appropriate because Victor Wembanyama spent the night reminding Minnesota that layups are now a privilege, not a right.

Twelve blocks.

Twelve.

Well, maybe seven or eight blocks and a few missed goaltends and fouls if you believe Chris Finch (and of course we do!). Either way, Wembanyama managed to turn the paint into a restricted military zone. The Wolves had 24 points’ worth of shots sent flying in the opposite direction, and somehow they still found enough offense to win. That alone should tell you two things: this Wolves team has some real playoff scar tissue, and this series is going to be an absolute grinder.

Minnesota did not have anyone who could match Wembanyama’s alien anatomy, because nobody does. But what the Wolves did have was collective defensive toughness. They made San Antonio work. They kept the Spurs to 102 points. They turned the game into a series of ugly possessions, hard contests, forced decisions, and physical collisions. Both teams landed punches. Both teams went on runs. Neither could fully break away.

And then there was Anthony Edwards. His 18 points will not end up on one of those glossy playoff graphics. By Ant standards, it was almost pedestrian. But if you watched the game, you understood how important his presence was. After everything with the knee, after the uncertainty, after wondering whether Minnesota’s superstar would even be available, he came back and gave the Wolves just enough downhill juice and clutch shooting to matter.

He was one of the few players who could look at Wembanyama lurking near the rim and still say, “Yeah, I’m going anyway.” He was willing to stare down that massive wingspan and launch a cold-blooded three right past it.

So many Wolves possessions became a game of cat and mouse. You could see guys driving, seeing Wemby’s shadow stretch across the lane, and suddenly reconsider the plan. Minnesota had multiple shot-clock violations. Other possessions ended in desperation heaves because the Spurs’ defense, powered by the human cell tower in the middle, had swallowed up the first, second, and third option.

So even if Ant was not fully Ant, he gave Minnesota something it desperately needed: pressure. Confidence. A killer instinct.

Julius Randle had his moments too, especially late, when Minnesota needed someone to manufacture offense through brute force. It was not always pretty, but in the fourth quarter, when the Spurs were pushing and the Wolves were trying not to cough up a game they had spent all night wrestling into their possession, Randle used his strength to bully his way into points, draw contact, and keep Minnesota upright.

Mike Conley was enormous. Filling in for the injured Donte DiVincenzo and Ayo Dosunmu, Conley reached into the old-man bag and pulled out four critical threes, the exact kind of stabilizing shot-making Minnesota needed. Every one of those makes mattered.

Naz Reid mattered too. As the third big in Minnesota’s frontcourt rotation, he gave the Wolves a needed offensive counterpunch, attacking the rim when the opportunity was there and spacing the floor when San Antonio’s defense tilted inward. Against Wembanyama, you need bigs who can force decisions. Naz did enough of that to help Minnesota survive.

But surviving Game 1 is not the same thing as solving the Spurs. That’s the danger heading into Game 2. The Wolves stole home court. They proved they can win this kind of game. They sent a little doubt into every talking head who confidently penciled San Antonio into the Western Conference Finals because Wembanyama is the future and the NBA loves a coronation story.

But now comes the real opportunity: Minnesota can leave San Antonio up 2-0.

A Game 2 win changes everything.That puts the young Spurs under the kind of psychological pressure they have not had to deal with yet. That forces Wemby and company to go on the road against a battle-tested Wolves team that has spent the last three postseasons collecting scars, receipts, and road wins in hostile buildings.

Game 1 was the first bite.

Game 2 is where the Wolves decide whether they are satisfied with that, or whether they are ready to really sink their teeth in.

With that, here are the keys.

1. It Begins and Ends With Defense

If Game 1 made anything clear, it is that points are going to be expensive in this series.

Minnesota is not walking into this matchup and dropping 125 unless something truly bizarre happens. Wembanyama’s rim protection is too overwhelming. The Spurs can turn ordinary possessions into escape rooms. That means the Wolves have to win the same way they won Game 1: by making San Antonio just as uncomfortable.

Holding the Spurs to 102 points was a strong start, but it was not perfect. Minnesota still gave up too many easy looks, especially when San Antonio got out in transition. In the half court, the Wolves were able to lock in, communicate, and force the Spurs into tougher possessions. But when San Antonio ran off misses, pushed after makes, or caught Minnesota cross-matched, things got dicey fast.

That cannot be the tradeoff. The Wolves cannot spend 20 seconds defending beautifully only to get burned because they are late getting back the next trip. Transition defense has to be a priority. The Spurs are young, fast, and fearless. If you let them run, they will. If you let them build confidence with easy baskets, suddenly their half-court offense gets lighter too.

Minnesota’s defense has to be connected from possession one. Wall off the paint. Contest without fouling. Get back. Finish possessions with rebounds. Make San Antonio earn everything.

Because the Wolves are not winning this series in a track meet. They are winning it in the mud.

2. Stay Out of Foul Trouble

Jaden McDaniels and Julius Randle both finished Game 1 with five fouls. Stephon Castle fouled out for San Antonio. The whistle was tight, and while that spoke to the physicality of the game, it also created a dangerous tightrope for Minnesota.

The Wolves cannot afford to have McDaniels stapled to the bench for long stretches. We saw in the Denver series how quickly things shift when Jaden picks up early fouls. In Game 5 against the Nuggets, he got two quick ones and Minnesota’s defense immediately lost most of its bite. Against San Antonio, his availability is even more important. He is one of the few Wolves with the length, feet, and defensive instincts to bother multiple Spurs actions. He has to be on the floor. He has to be aggressive. But he also has to be smart.

Same goes for Randle. Same goes for Gobert. Same goes for Naz. Against Wembanyama, the Wolves need every big body they have. They cannot afford cheap fouls 30 feet from the basket. They cannot afford frustration fouls. They cannot afford reaching when verticality will do. Every whistle that sends a key Wolf to the bench makes life easier for San Antonio.

The best ability is availability, and in this series, that might be more than a cliché. It might be the difference between a 2-0 lead and a tied series.

3. Keep the Offense Moving, And Find Ways to Remove Wemby From the Play

Game 1 was a warning: if the Wolves let San Antonio’s defense get set, possessions can die slow, painful deaths.

Wembanyama changes everything. He doesn’t just block shots. He changes decisions before they happen. He makes drivers hesitate. He makes cutters pull up short. He makes guys second-guess what used to be automatic. That is how you end up with multiple shot-clock violations and late-clock prayers.

The answer is not to simply “be tougher” and drive into him anyway. That is how you end up as Block No. 13.

The answer is movement.

The ball has to move side to side. The Wolves need to make San Antonio’s defense rotate, make Wemby turn his head, make him guard multiple actions instead of letting him sit in the paint like a final boss waiting for challengers. The more static Minnesota becomes, the more powerful he gets.

One of the most encouraging wrinkles late in Game 1 was the way Randle helped wall off Wembanyama from the play, using his body to seal him and create cleaner driving lanes. That is the kind of stuff Minnesota has to lean into. Screen him. Pin him. Drag him away from the basket. Make him choose between helping and giving up something else.

You are not going to eliminate his impact. But you can make him work harder to apply it.

That means Ant attacking at the right times. Randle using his strength intelligently. Naz spacing and cutting. Conley organizing. The offense has to be active, deliberate, and patient enough not to panic when the first look disappears.

Against Denver, the Wolves could attack the rim as Plan A.

Against San Antonio, Plan A has to be creating the conditions where attacking the rim is even possible.

4. Hit Shots (And For the Love of KG, Hit Your Free Throws)

Minnesota shot 38% from three in Game 1. They needed every bit of it.

Conley’s four threes were massive. Edwards’ late shot mattered. Naz hitting from deep mattered. In a game where the rim was guarded by a skyscraper with timing, the three-point line became the team’s lifeline.

The Wolves do not need to shoot 45% from deep to win this series, but they cannot afford one of those 24% disaster nights. They need mid-30s or better. They need the open looks to go down. They need to punish the Spurs when the defense collapses or when Wembanyama is pulled out of position.

But it is not just about making shots. It is about generating the right ones. No desperation heaves because the possession got stuck. No contested threes early in the clock because someone didn’t want to drive. No wasted chances after beautiful ball movement. If the Wolves create clean looks, they have to cash them in.

And free throws? …Enough.

This has been a season-long issue, and it cannot follow them deeper into the playoffs. The margin in this series is too thin. Every point matters. When the Wolves earn trips to the line, they cannot treat them like extra credit. These are professional basketball players. Good ones. There is no reason for the free-throw percentage to resemble something from a middle school tournament.

5. Stay Physical and Keep Punishing Wembanyama

Wembanyama had a triple-double. He blocked 12 shots. His defensive impact was absurd.

He also scored just 11 points.

That is not an accident.

Minnesota did a strong job making his offensive life uncomfortable. They bodied him. They leaned into him. They denied easy catches. They made him fight for position. They forced him into an 0-for-8 night from three. Now, will that happen again? Probably not. Wemby is too good, too talented, too inevitable to expect another quiet scoring night.

But the approach has to stay the same.

Make him feel the series.

Randle has to keep using his strength. Gobert has to make him work inside. Naz has to be physical. Everyone has to box out. Every drive by San Antonio has to be met with bodies, not open lanes. The Wolves cannot allow the Spurs to live off second-chance points and easy putbacks, which nearly cost them Game 1.

This is where Minnesota’s size and experience need to matter. San Antonio has the alien. Minnesota has the grown men. Use them.

The Wolves are not going to out-finesse the Spurs. They are not going to win a verticality contest with Wembanyama. They have to make this a strength battle. A positioning battle. A will battle.

Make the young team feel the older team’s weight.

The First Bite Wasn’t Enough

The Wolves stole Game 1, but stealing home court only matters if you protect the advantage it gives you. A split in San Antonio is fine. A 2-0 lead heading back to Target Center is something else entirely. That is a statement. That is pressure. That is a young Spurs team suddenly facing the reality that playoff series are not won by highlights, hype, or wingspans alone.

Minnesota has a chance to put real weight on San Antonio’s shoulders. The Spurs are talented. They are hungry. They are not going away because they dropped one close game at home. Wembanyama will adjust. Their coaches will adjust. Their guards will push harder. Their crowd will be louder. Everything about Game 2 will be more difficult.

Let it be.

The opportunity remains the same.

The Wolves have the experience. They have the scars. They have the defensive identity. They have the physicality. They have just enough offensive punch, if they execute, to make this series theirs.

But it will not happen by accident. They need to defend like Game 1 was not good enough. They need to stay out of foul trouble. They need to move the ball with purpose. They need to hit their threes. They need to stop throwing away free points at the line. They need to make Wembanyama feel bodies every single trip down the floor.

The first bite drew blood.

Now comes the next one.

This is where the apex predator does not relax after wounding its prey. It tightens the grip. It gets more physical, more focused, more relentless. It keeps attacking before the opponent has a chance to recover.

Game 1 was the warning.

Game 2 is the chance to make San Antonio truly feel the weight of the hunt.

Before Game 1 against the Minnesota Timbwolves, I chatted with Thilo Widder from our sister site Canis Hoopus about how the Spurs would need to get more creative on offense to counter the Wolves’ size advantage. We saw that play out in a tight, defensive-minded Game 1 loss for the Spurs, so today, we discuss what adjustments they’ll need to make and if the young, inexperienced squad has what it takes to make them, or will the play0ff-hardened Wolves, fresh off two straight Conference Finals appearances, show them how it’s done.

J.R. Wilco

What a game! Of course I would have preferred a different outcome, but this is what Spurs fans have been missing for the last 9 years; a high level of competition, important games, high-stakes, pressure, and … relevancy. 

Here’s what we know about this series after Game 1. It’ll be a shame if this doesn’t go the distance. That might sound weird, so I’ll clarify. As a Spurs fan, of course I want it to end in five games with San Antonio completing the Gentleman’s Sweep and running the table – no matter how unrealistic that is. But as a basketball fan, I’d love little better than to sink my teeth into 336 minutes of these two teams trading haymakers. 

I mean, come on now, Monday night’s first three plays were all blocks by tall French dudes! The game was tighter than the lid on a 10-year-old jar of grandma’s strawberry preserves. Neither team ever got a double-digit lead? Every time I thought the Spurs were going to get some breathing room, someone in a white jersey did something laughably athletic and timely to end San Antonio’s run. 

Example #1: The Spurs like to end quarters on at least a mini-run by setting up a two-for-one such that they take a shot, giving the other team the ball with about 30-ish seconds left on the clock. Well, Minnesota not only knows this, they’re aware that Fox is often the player taking the last shot, and even as he works around the Champagnie screen and gets free for a paint jumper that’s so in his sweet spot it’s in danger of giving him diabetes, Hyland leaves Julian, blocks Fox from behind and Randle gets a dunk at the buzzer. Example #2: End of the 2nd quarter Conley and Clark mess up Vassell and Fox’s pick and roll, and even though De’Aaron ends up getting into the lane with just Randle in front of him, he’s not fully in control and loses the ball. 

In neither quarter of the first half were the Spurs able to even get a shot off in their final possession. And people were criticizing Mitch Johnson for not calling a time out at the end of the 4th. But I think it would have been foolish to allow the Minny defense to get set when they’ve already shown the ability to blow up your usual end-of-quarter offense during the flow of the game. Anyway, that’s the kind of defense that needs to be put under a microscope in order to understand it so that it can be better attacked, and that’s precisely what I believe San Antonio’s coaching staff is doing right now. 

Which brings me to Finch and Co’s job prepping their team, and the expectation of the next game. With the Wolves getting to the Western Conference Finals two years in a row, you’ve been through long postseason runs, what kinds of adjustments are you used to seeing, what do you expect them to do next, and how much fun are you having?

Thilo

That was certainly something. While you guys may have missed that (long postseason runs), I don’t think Wolves fans will ever get used to it. I mean we used to have to sell first round picks for cash considerations so we could fire our coach! We’re that team!! And we just upset a two seed that was only +400 or so to sweep us!

There’s always that element of surprise with these Wolves. I try to be realistic only to have them blow those expectations out of the water, only to let me down the second I start believing. This happened during Game 7 against the Nuggets in 2023-24 and during Game 4 of the Suns series in 2024-25. I can’t wait for it to happen again now that I’m believing.

On the point of adjustments, I will give myself a quick pat on the back for calling that Fox would be the target, the supposed weakest link named by the coaching staff. That has always been the first change Chris Finch and the rest of the bench have done in the playoffs.

Finch understands, as most coaches do, that while regular season games are about how much you can keep your formula intact, the playoffs are all about how well and how quickly you can change while preventing the opposing team from getting what they’re most comfortable doing.

From the outside looking in, the Spurs seem like they want Fox, Harper, and Castle to get to the paint alongside Wembenyama to absolutely bully opposing teams inside the arc offensively while funneling everyone inside towards Wemby.

Well, they certainly did the latter half. The only issue? The Minnesota Timberwolves are a team of psychopaths.

Wemby blocked everything and it didn’t matter. Minnesota still got 50+ shots in the paint. That’s the funny realization that Finch came to. Blocks don’t always end possessions and Wemby can only do so much.

The issue with the Wolves is that they seem to flame out as that third series approaches. Every team gets the crap kicked out of them only for Minnesota to burn themselves out. It’s why I still struggle to fully believe.

As far as what to expect, I assume that nothing will change as far as paint volume goes. The biggest change will be who is taking those shots. Ayo Dosumnu will be coming back and did the same to the Nuggets. I think the biggest difference will come with how Rudy Gobert is deployed. Maybe he isn’t a head-to-head matchup with Wemby (Randle did a better job, truth be told), and is instead used to overwhelm the Wemby-less minutes.

That’s where my first question comes in. Wembanyama was not the biggest let down of the two main stars, but he is far more crucial than Fox. How do you think the approach changes, or do you think it’s just a question of hitting shots instead of missing them? Additionally, do Wemby’s gaudy blocked shot numbers actually hide the fact that his rebounding/defensive play finishing left a lot to be desired? How do you deal with that?

J.R.

First, when you’re talking about comparing one game to the next, it’s never just about one factor, even if it’s hitting shots. Let’s say that you look at the average score of a player and figure that he can be depended on to deliver that. Well, over a season he can, but in a single game there are too many variables. It’s easy to say, “We’ll be fine on Wednesday because those outside shots will drop,” but maybe Minnesota gets to the line more and hits all of their free throws. Or San Antonio doubles their average turnovers and starts hemorrhaging transition points. There are just far too many factors involved in every game to imagine a single category improving and then expect everything else to stay the same. 

As for Wemby’s play, it’s wild to think that in a game when he tallied a dozen blocks and 15 boards, that his defense and rebounding could have been better, but there it is. Wemby still leaves his feet for fakes when he’s around the basket, and I don’t think anything besides time and seasoning will cure it. I don’t know whether this is conventional basketball wisdom, but it’s my firm belief that jumping to challenge midrange or perimeter shots is fundamentally sound. But when it comes to big men around the basket, they should raise their arms to challenge but keep their feet to be available for the rebound. This goes doubly for Wemby because he’s so tall that he affects shots sometimes even when he doesn’t make a move to block. Bottom line, the idea of defense is to get a stop, not to get blocks. I like it when he denies a guy, but I like ending an offensive possession even more. 

The Wolves decided that they’d just keep attacking regardless of how many blocks he got, and you can’t argue with the results. As to how you deal with that, I’m not sure but it’s got to be a team thing. Funneling drivers to Wemby definitely works when Gobert is on the court, begging to be ignored, but when Minnesota goes small you’ve got to find someone better than Shannon for Vic to guard. He’s so fast that the instant Victor gets hung on a screen, it’s over. 

But all is not lost. I don’t expect Fox to have two stinkers in a row, and some regression to the team’s mean for threes can be expected unless the Timberwolves have some magic potion that makes the team they’re playing forget how to shoot open looks from deep. That would sound laughable, but it seemed to happen to Denver, and we know what happened in Game 1. 

How about your take on Game 2: do you think it’ll be as close as Monday, and do you see the Spurs solving some part of what Finch has planned?

Thilo

I actually texted a boss at another gig (who among us does not have too many jobs?) about this today and said “I’m expecting a 20-point win for San Antonio because anything else would set off alarm bells.”

So let’s just say, I think San Antonio will solve something, I just wonder what that will be.

It’s hard to win a game on the road, especially with how intense the Frost Bank Center looked to be during stretches of that fourth quarter. It’s even harder to win two games on the road. It’s impossibly hard to win the first two games in a series on the road in the second round against a higher seed team.

The last time I can remember away teams taking 2-0 leads regularly was during the bubble and this is so vastly different.

I will say though, I harped on about playoff experience during the first episode (?) of this series, and that is something that I think will continue to be relevant. Mitch Johnson is not Gregg Popovich. He has not been here. He likely wouldn’t be here if Pop had the health to stick around.

Yeah, it is hard to win on the road, but it’s probably easier to imagine winning on the road when you have a track record (which the Wolves now shockingly do) than when your rotation has 90% of its career playoff minutes coming from old man Harrison Barnes.

Maybe that’s too short or dismissive of an answer, but I truly think it comes down to that. Experience matters and the Spurs – the dynastic, ever relevant Spurs – lack that right now.

To that point, it’s kind of hard to see who will lead the team in this series. It feels a little premature for Wemby to take that over alongside all his on-court roles, and Fox surely needs to play better for that to happen. Castle and Harper are not good enough to outshow their age in that regard too.

People will laugh at this comparison, but the Pistons have Tobias Harris. The Wolves have Mike Conley. The Thunder needed Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein. Vets are important, and the Spurs don’t have a ton of them to unite behind. 

Every team needs that. Every single championship team stresses the importance of those guys. Who will be that underappreciated, often unutilized guy to step up? It remains to be seen how the game will turn out, but that’s what I’ll be watching for.

LeBron James and the Lakers pulled off one of the biggest upsets in NBA Playoffs history in the first round, defeating the Houston Rockets despite missing the services of MVP candidate Luka Doncic. But for King James' record 23rd NBA season to continue, he'd have to pull off a miracle by dethroning the reigning champs, the Oklahoma City Thunder. And that's a miracle that probably won't come true if you watched Game 1 on Tuesday night.

Despite a great game by LeBron, the Lakers lost by 18 points, signifying this could be a quick series. But on the bright side for the four-time NBA MVP, he's got something to look forward to when his team gets eliminated.

RELATED: Watch LeBron James' awesome YouTube golf debut

According to J.R. Smith, who appeared on FanDuel's "Run It Back" on Tuesday, the 2016 championship Cleveland Cavaliers squad has a 10-year reunion trip planned. And not just any trip, but a big-time golf trip now that James has caught the golf bug bad.

Smith, one of the best celebrity golfers around, was asked about LeBron's new love of the game. And he revealed the following:

"Scotland, Northern Ireland . . . a golf trip," Smith says in the clip. "These boys want to play 36 holes a day . . . I don't know how many they'll finish."

Nice little jab by J.R. there, but you can tell he's thrilled that LeBron has become a golfer.

"They're locked in," Smith says with a smile. "I'm like, OK, now we talking. Now we talking."

Sounds amazing, J.R. And if you guys need any help planning—or anyone to round out your group, please let us know.

RELATED: A celebrity golfer's tough round & Rory McIlroy's movie(?) cameo