Pablo Torre Finds Out - Share & Burn Book & Tell with Joe Mande and Mike Schur

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

How did Adam Silver end up in bed with a paper magnate? Why did a 77-point airing of grievances about A-Rod help to free Anthony Edwards? And can this all be solved with an Aspiration credit card? Plus: Moldovan bots, embroidered hats, Sporcle quizzes and one very confusing encounter at the Mall of America.• Previously on PTFO: How the Billion-Dollar War to Own the Timberwolves Went Nuclear• Further content: The Long Days and Wild Nights That Saved the Wolves from Leaving Minnesota by Jon Krawczynski Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. I auctioned off a bunch of hats for charity, and all the money obviously went to Kauai Leonard. Yeah. Right after this ad. Can either of you tell me what this is? Is that an ABA basketball? Close.

Is that a Continental Basketball Association basketball? Here's your hint for what this is behind me. Ready? Mm-hmm. Oh, is that Larry Bird? Three point contest? That's Larry Bird's fucking walk-off three. That's awesome.

Yeah. bought it at an auction. This is a tie for the money. Yo! How much did Mike Scher pay for that, Joe? What would you set the market value for Mike Scher's ownership of? I would say a staff writer's salary. There's no writers on a man on the inside.

this year because I had to get some stuff. Too many basketball. Why didn't the Field of Dreams show happen? Well, Mike decided to buy a basketball. It's kind of a short story, actually. Spent all the money on memorabilia. How uncut gems was the bidding? It wasn't that bad, mostly because it is not 100% verifiable.

This could just be a basketball. Yeah. Like, it's possible that it's just a ball. You couldn't find a provenance? There was a provenance letter that was from a guy who was like, I was there with my kid. He was a big Larry Bird fan. Bird sank the shot.

The ball bounced to us and the guy brought it over. It was like, here, you can keep this. So, like, could be lying. I don't really care as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. I'm just, I've decided it's the ball, so it's the ball. I am fairly certain that someone has scammed you now that you spell it out. Yeah, it's totally possible.

Yeah. When you live a life, the kind of life I live, you make peace with the idea that you're being scammed constantly with these things. Joe and Mike, you guys obviously know each other extremely well. Joe, I last saw in person. Maybe I'm sure I've seen you since the All-Star game in New Orleans. Yes. I saw you at that party.

Yes. And I was wearing a Le Miserab shirt. And I feel like at some point in that conversation, I discovered the thesis for why I've been telling you for months, you need to come on the show. Okay. Which is that Joe Mandy is the world's number one Minnesota Timberwolves fan. I'm in the top 10 for sure.

Who's your competition? Yeah, who else is in that top 10? I mean, probably Craig Kilbourne. They roll out the red carpet for Craig Kilbourne and Sudy Lee. Yeah, so, you know. All right. There was a humiliating moment where I was on the Jumbotron

at the Target Center last time I was there, but then she was next, and she had just won multiple. medals in the Olympics. So she got a, well, she got a reaction, which I did not get from the crowd. But yeah, I'm a timber wolves obsessive for sure. Mike, how would you explain what the Jumbotron should have said about who Joe Mandy is besides his Timberwolves fandom? It should have said comedian, comma, provocateur. That's how I would describe you.

Guy who acquired one million bots on Twitter. Oh yeah Where were they from again? Moldova Yes, Moldova The same place your basketball came from Mike We were doing We were in Parks and Rec era

Right was yeah It could have said the Jumbotron Comedian Provocateur Nialist I think that would also apply Because Joe was like Twitter is stupid This is all stupid None of this matters

I'm going to buy one million bots from Moldova for my Twitter account to make the point, and this is way pre-Elon, to make the point that follower account is stupid. I want to quote from Joe's Twitter bio, which may remain frozen in amber. Twitter is trash. Facebook's the devil.

I bought one million followers for like $400. None of this shit matters. Antarctica is melting. Watch my special on Netflix. Winky tongue-out emoji. You remember your location? Was it Hollywood, but all the O's are like Stars of David or something? That's right.

Yeah, okay. And your website is Trumpprisoncamp.com. Right. Someone bought that domain for me, and it went straight to my website. Oh. Yeah. Nice. I hesitate to inform you that the registration on that has not been kept up.

Yeah, I don't expect someone to keep that up for me. And you're also down to now 492.9. Yeah, I was purged. Yeah. Oh. Bummer. You lost like 200 bucks. Yeah. But I may have funded a Civil War in Moldova.

I don't know where that money went to, but yeah. So you guys worked together on Parks and Rec. Obviously, I looked for some Morris highlights. Oh, yeah. Hard to find on YouTube at least. I don't know if you guys can share some archival Morris footage with me. Or explain even what Morris's full name is and who he was. I think he's a lurpus.

I think he is. And then became a Lerpus, towards the end. We named a, just to fill people in here, we named a character, we gave a character on the show, the last name L-E-R-P-I-S-S. And then we decided that the Lerpus family was like the low-rent Kennedys

of the town of Pawnee, Indiana, and that they were this, like, sprawling, multi-generational dynasty of just losers, though, not, like, powerful people. So Joe played a character named Morris, who, how would you describe me? He was basically you.

He was just a dude who showed up to meetings and like, yeah. Yeah, it was very much based on me and it was just like informing people that you can download movies for free. You don't have to like rent them. Yeah. You just showed up in places and pointed out how stupid everything was.

And the name Morris came from a game we played in the room, which was Morris was the name everyone agreed should be my name. If I wasn't given a name by my parents. So everyone has like a name they, sort of real name, embodied. The movie's

25 years old, Morris. And if you don't like how I tweet, don't follow me. What are you doing now? I'm talking to you.

I'm live tweeting this dumb-ass conversation. I was a Morris. I believe... Chelsea Predi was mad that she was a Kim. I remember that. She didn't appreciate that.

Incredibly apt, though. Mine was Mark. But Morris appeared in a bunch of episodes over the years, but in the finale of the show, it leaped ahead way into the future to sort of see what happened to every character.

And we did this thing to Joe where we put Morris in like a sequence of episodes stretching out like 20, 30 years in the future. And we made his hair line recede and recede until in the finale he's like... Well, I was at four hours of makeup. I was in a ball cap for a scene with no line. Like classic just hair on the side. Joe was having avatar level prosthetics for this one. I mean, I kept getting, and then in the good plays, I play a lava monster. And for, like, for the first three episodes, I played the lava monster, I had to put on a full green, like, keyframe, like, green outfit to be, like, removed later by CGI. And then the guy on set on my fourth time putting on the suit, he was like, you know, you don't need to wear that. They're messing with you.

I'm just going to replace you. which is all a long way of me establishing that Mike sure was your boss. Yeah, technically. And the workplace that, sure, you provided and presided over, it is stunning that you are as prolific as you are given what you just told us about what you guys did. Well, I think that a key part of running a writer's room for a comedy show is that it ought to be fun all the time. Yes. Like if you're not having, if you can't have fun doing the job that Joe and I have done for many years now, there's something wrong with you as a person.

I believe that. And there are plenty of stories out here of TV comedy writers rooms where everyone is like, it was a nightmare. I hated going to work. I was miserable. And I just don't understand that. I mean, it's a, it is the best job you can have is to go to a room and goof off with your friends and write jokes. So I, I am a firm believer in, you know, it's a grueling schedule at times. like wasting time with nonsense is one of the great joys of having the job that we have. It's arguably my best, that's the thing I do best is that exact thing. Yeah, Joe is an expert at it. And it was always a delight to have him around. He was there for Parks and Rec, and then the good place he works on hacks now. Like there's always a spot in any room that I ever will run or have any influence over for Joe Mandy.

Because he's one of the world's great team player. time wasters. Yes. Which is, I feel like a euphemism for, and again, I've met enough of your writers to know this, a guy who knows a disturbing amount of sports trivia and loves naming the names of athletes. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's like a dream. And we, one of the great time wastesers for both of those shows, Parks and Rec in a Good Place,

was Sporkel quizzes. Yeah. Oh, God. It was me and Joe, and then Alan Yang was around. for a long time. Dave King also. Dave King and we would go to lunch. Coming back out of lunch, we would do a Sporkel quiz that was like,

name the top 500 all-time NBA rebounders. And between the four of us, we'd get like $460. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Or like, name every starting player on every lineup in the 2004-2005 NBA season. Getting mad at the person at the keyboard for spelling Dallum Bear wrong, you know. And at some point in every one of those quizzes, someone remembered Shays and Hayes.

Shays and Hayes was a big one. Those were two guys we always forgot. And someone would go, Shays and Hayes, and Hayes, and Hayes, and Hayes, like, as time was taking down. Petit. It was truly, truly love, like, the most enjoyable time I can remember spending. Is this the first time, Mike,

that you've seen the shirt that Joe has chosen to costume himself in today? Speaking of... I don't know. I've seen him. wear so many Anthony Edward shirts over the years. I don't remember whether this is the first time. I don't think I've seen this one before. Is this new?

This one I got, this was new. So describe what you're wearing. I am wearing a shirt I paid a man on the internet for and it's a giveaway UGA. So this is Anthony Edwards one year at Georgia and they gave away a shirt with his likeness on it. Yeah, it is some of the worst graphic design I think I've ever seen. Yeah, what's funny about Anthony Edwards is I think he refuses to go into NBA 2K to get his face scanned.

So he's never looked like himself. He's the opposite of you. You'll sit down in a chair and get made up for no reason. And the average is like, I don't even care what I look like. Yeah, I don't care what I look like. Great. Anthony Edwards, what is he to you in your fandom

as a Timberwolf supporter? I think he's already, I mean, it's not much of Mount Rushmore, but I think he's just below Garnett at this point. Like, he's the all-time, like, he's everything. God. Can I say something? you for a long time now. Yeah. I think he's above Garnett for you. I think that you're,

like, you're holding onto Garnett because he was the original, but the way that you talk about Anthony Edwards, you refer to him often as your biological son. Well, yeah. I've heard you say that you've also, you think of him as a biological son. Well, then I would say, then in that case, it's like, he's my son, but Garnett's my dad. Well, you also, I believe, said that you would jump in front of a a bullet to save Anthony Edwards, but not do that for your mom. Right. I mean, because my mom's lived a full life and she can't win a championship. Like, she'll never, she can't do that for me. Her footwork is terrible. Yeah. She's got no handles. I did once, I went to a playoff game two years ago and I stayed, there's a hotel literally across the street from the Target Center. And I recognized from like 15 floors up Anthony Edwards's dog.

And, like, took a photo from that angle of just a dog that I knew was Aunt Junior. He named his dog, Aunt Junior, which is the funniest possible name. You know, I know the funniest people in the world, and no one has named a dog themselves, Jr. That is so funny. He also has children, I believe. Yeah, he's got a lie. He can't stop. What Mike sure is the television shows, Anthony Edwards, is the children.

Yes, my grandchildren, I call them. I don't think I've told sure any of this. I've given you now on the way into the studio a heads up that I have intended this in part to be an update. In fact, something close to a closing of a loop. If I am ever so bold as to declare an investigation complete, into the Minnesota Timberwolves ownership saga. Okay, good, because I, look, I want to be up front.

I have given money to a tree planting service before, but that was more for like tube-ish vat. So I think I have nothing to worry about now if this is just. This does revive you before we get into this. Mike, sure, do you have the evidence that I asked you to bring? I don't have the actual credit card because I destroyed it. You did? What? Yeah, yeah.

I destroyed the card. But I have an aspiration, now GreenFi. I have an account. I open an account with him many years ago. So the premise of just like, who the fuck was signing up for aspiration credit cards? Oh, I get that because it was like a car, like a, you could buy carbon credits or something. Yeah, and by the way. Explain the point of why you, Mike Sher and when you bought this or signed up for it.

I have tried to remember since you asked me to come on and talk about this. I've tried to remember how I learned about aspiration. I'm 99% sure that the answer is through the LA Clippers because I go to a lot of Clippers games. I've got two friends who have seasoned tickets and I go to a lot of games. By the way, one of those friends who shall remain nameless has tickets very close to Steve Ballmer. I have sat many times behind that lunatic as he yells and screams for every James Harden stepback.

So I believe I learned, I either learned about it from the Clippers or from the Red Sox who also had a deal with aspiration. I won't now speculate who I think may have sold you the basketball, but it might be one of the parties at my mention now that you all kind of coincide. I saw this company and they were like, here's the pitch. You deposit money with us.

And then when you buy things with a debit card, we round up and the money goes to plant trees. And I was like, look, you got to put your money somewhere. And I was dumb enough to say yes. But I was smart enough to say, like, I'm not going to give them a lot of money. I'm going to give them a small amount of money. And I, because you don't use debit cards very often, but I would go to write aid or whatever and get toothpaste. and I would like use that debit card and you would be $7.83

and then $17 would get kicked up to a tree somewhere. And I... The tree being Kauai Leder. Yeah, that's right. That's six foot seven inch power forward tree type person. Yeah. And I kind of liked it.

It was like a thing I didn't think about a lot. And, you know, I was like, oh, I've planted 38 trees over the last year of going to write aid or whatever. So, you know, the only weird thing that ever happened with it is, I did go to a Clippers game once. And in like the second quarter, this guy came over to me and said, hey, do me a favor real quick.

Take this paper bag full of money over to that guy on the Clippers bench. And I was like, why? And he was like, don't worry about what are the trees. It's for the trees. It's for the trees. Yeah. And so other than that, there was nothing unusual about my aspiration account. But I am one of the people.

one of the proud few who had an aspiration debit card. You're a Los Angeles area good guy who wanted to do good guy stuff while loving sports. What's the difference? To me, it was like, look, is it better to have like city bank make money off of my debit card transaction? So I have to say that like your first report on aspiration as you started talking about it. He's now going to defend aspiration. This is what's happened.

This is an odd turn of events in this episode. As I started to listen to the report and you started mentioning aspiration, I started realizing what was going on, I was like, I had that, like, sinking feeling of like, oh, no, am I in trouble? Did I do this? Am I going to be in this episode? You're going to be in this one. In fact, you're going to be in this one. That's how I feel about it.

Anytime Moldova is in the news, I feel like, oh, no, did I fund this? As it turns out, the billionaire that I want to start with here in this sequel to the Timberwolves investigation, we got to begin with Glenn Taylor, a different billionaire, a different longtime NBA owner and Joe Mandy, how would you describe for people who've never heard of Glenn Taylor, who that is? He's the bane of my existence. He has the Morris haircut, kind of.

He has the bald head. And, yeah, just a skeleton who sits on the court side seats next to the Timberwell's bench and has, like, literally ruined 20 years of my life. A local guy. like a congressman. Yeah, something like that. He was like, yeah. He was a paper magnet. He owns like chicken slaughterhouses. There were a lot of protests against him and his chicken. Right. He was a Republican Minnesota state senator from 81 to 1990. He was assistant minority leader from 83 to 85, minority leader from 85 to 88. And it was like state senator. What do I know about that? I know

absolutely nothing. I had never been to a caucus meeting, any type of organization meeting by either party ever in my life. That's just the local Minnesota politics stuff. Point being, he has that seat next to the bench that Joe referenced, this iconic seat. And also, there is a bit of a table read I'd like you guys to do here. So I'm going to text you both a transcript. And this transcript is one of my favorite things that the athletic has published. It is the dialogue, or rather the oral history, of how Glenn Taylor bought the Timberwolves. It is a two-character play. I am hitting send on it now. Mike Sher, I'd like you to play the part of NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, who was then the deputy commissioner of the NBA, a part I was born to play. That's right. And Joe,

Mandy, I'd like you to be your bane of your own existence, Glenn Taylor. So this is from an article entitled The Long Days and Wild Nights that Save the Wolves from Leaving Minnesota by John Krasinski. And it begins with Adam Silver's recollection. I remember I got to the lobby of the hotel, picked up the house phone, asked for Mr. Taylor, and was put through to his room. He said, just come on up to my room. It wasn't like we met in the hotel lounge or something. I went to his room in fitting with sort of his modest approach to the world, he had a small room with one queen-sized bed. Okay, now me is Glenn Taylor.

Those guys in New York, they're so used to staying in the suites. I'm looking at it. I'm saying, which one do you pay $17 for? Many of the team owners' hotel rooms I've been in since then have closets that are bigger than the room that Glenn was staying in that night. He was business. I was business. It was strictly get the deal done.

and how are we going to do it? We spoke for about an hour, just me following my boss's instruction. The goal was to get Glenn on the phone with David Stern. It must have been 11 o'clock at night in New York. I said, Mr. Taylor, let's call David Stern. Straight to the point, because I wanted to get back to work and get back to Mancato.

I think his wife answered. I said, I'm so sorry I'm calling this late, but David told me to. He's got a good story to tell for this part of it. it's even worse what he says. He says there were no chairs and we both had to lay down on the bed to discuss it. There was a queen-sized bed and a phone on each side of the bed.

Nobody had a cell phone with a speakerphone on it. So for us to both talk to David, I said, all right, I'll sit on one side of the bed if you sit on the other. We ended up being on the phone with David for more than an hour. Here's this man I just met and we're both, as this call went on, you can imagine us both sort of reclining, not lying on the bed, but sort of as if you were reading a book on each side of the bed, having a conversation with each other and David Stern,

lying on this queen-sized bed in a hotel room and talking through the deal with David. He said, well, Commissioner, I think we found the guy we've been looking for for the last three years, and he's here right beside me. I think it began with us sitting on the edge of the bed on each side. I think I followed Glenn's lead. He was the first one to lay down while we were talking, and then I did too. The rest is history, so to speak.

Wow. This was how the Timberwolves were saved. They were saved by this guy, Glenn Taylor, and a young Adam Silver in bed together. Yeah, a sort of decent proposal. A very decent documented proposal. And so all of that is to say that from 94 to now April 2021, as I previously reported on this show,

Glenn Taylor does the unthinkable. I mean, as a fan, you've seen him kind of like head fake a sale. Yes, he's like, the one thing you can give him is that he was offered multiple times, I think, to move the team by selling it. And he wanted the team to stay in Minnesota. And so during the pandemic, Glenn Taylor agrees to sell the Timberwolves

and the Minnesota links to an ownership group that, on paper, from a pure, just like, guy sitting in a writer's room coming up with hypotheticals, is objectively very funny. Yes. Because Joe Mandy's team finally loosened, it seems, from the grip of that old man. Skeleton. Who now is in charge of the T-Wolfs? It's Alex Rodriguez and the man who owns diapers.com.

Well, Mark Ward. And a company called Wonder and various other things that have made him a billionaire. But the price of buying the T-Wolves and the links, do you remember, my guy? sure what they paid in April 2021. It's shockingly low compared to all other sales of all franchises in all sports before and since is all I remember. The Minnesota Timberwolves have been sold to e-commerce mogul Mark Lorne and former baseball star Alex Rodriguez. A person with knowledge of the deal tells the Associated Press they paid one and a half billion dollars to buy the team from owner Glenn Taylor. Taylor previously said the deal was contingent on Lorne and Rodriguez keeping the team in Minnesota.

Just to be very clear about the context, we would soon watch the Phoenix Suns get sold for $4 billion in 2022. The Hornets get sold for $3 billion in 2023. The Lakers get sold for $10 billion in 2025. The Celtics, Mike Shura Celtics, get sold for $6.1 billion in 2025 as well. Meanwhile, the Minnesota links alone would be valued currently at $240,000. million dollars. So the whole thing of it's the pandemic. He never wanted to do this. 1.5 is the price. The key bit of detail to that transaction is that it was a pretty complicated but deliberate mechanism called a step transaction. And a step transaction just to be very TLDR about it is you pay it over time. And the big issue here was that come March of 2024,

or Joe, Glenn Taylor announces to Timberwolves fans and the world what? He didn't want to sell the team anymore. So I just need to jump in here to clarify that this isn't exactly what Glenn Taylor, the bane of Joe Mandy's existence, the owner of the team with the worst all-time winning percentage in NBA history, the billionaire who additionally alienated his own best player, Kevin Garnett, had announced. It was slightly different.

Taylor thought his days were done as owner of the wolves when he struck a deal to sell the club three years ago. But according to Taylor's lawyers, Mark Lorry and Alex Rodriguez failed to meet the final requirement, and thus the team remains in his control. In fact, what Glenn Taylor wanted everybody to know was that Alex Rodriguez and Mark Lorry could not and did not come up with the $600 million needed to fulfill their final requirement. in order to complete that NBA franchise payment plan, this step transaction. And this is the central allegation at the heart of this ownership civil war, which did seem to blindside Alex Rodriguez and Mark Lurie, by the way, who had made the previous payments totaling $600 million without a parent issue,

and who had just spent the previous three years as Taylor's limited partners helping run the team in real life. We get an email that says we've been locked out of the building. We can no longer go into the owner's suite. We can't go into our family room. We can't talk to Tim Connolly. We can't talk to coach. All the players have reached out.

They've been extremely supportive. It's just, it hurts. It really just hurts, like, a lot. Like, I've never had this situation. I've never sued anyone. I've never been sued. Like, the fact that somebody would do that and be planning this and just ambushes.

as Alex said, and be so disingenuous. And it's just really, it's really hurtful. I don't know what else to say. He was a partner. But Glenn Taylor, on television, continued to claim the high road. I mean, you liked him at first, right? I'm assuming. Well, I like him now.

It isn't that I don't dislike them. I know that they've taken some shots at me. I prefer they didn't, and I won't against them. Yeah, more on that in a bit. But what PTFO exclusively reported in that first Timberwolves episode that we did, alongside Joe Mandy's fellow Timberwolf superfan, the great Zach Harper,

is that Mark Lorry and Alex Rodriguez were correct. They did, in fact, meet their final requirement. According to four sources, they did, in fact, submit that, required $600 million on time. I obtained the paperwork. I obtained the contract language to prove that out. And yet...

You saw the spreadsheets of how many diapers were sold. It was a bit of, yeah, a pants-shadding, though. I mean, truly, like, the mess that happened here, Glenn Taylor's allegation is they're broke boys. Meanwhile, Adam Silver, who's on the bed with Glenn in 84, is now saying in all sorts of ways, privately and publicly, we should probably stop doing this step transaction stuff. Yeah.

Because this is a recipe for this exact disagreement. Well, yeah, you're just in this limbo where Glenn Taylor is sitting across the court from Arod and Mark Lorry. And you're... At like, playoff games. At playoff games. And you find yourself being like, I just want Arod to own my team. You know, like, I just want this to end. I want the diaper guy in.

Like, this is nuts. And then you're like, yeah, you're choosing sides, but you just want it to end because also the wolves are good for the first time. That's the key part. In a generation. Like, just like, don't let this skeleton ruin what's happening here on the floor. Like, it's such a distraction. This is the important part to me as an outsider because the other difference between

when he made the original sale and when it was supposed to go through. besides the Hornet selling for $3 billion, and the Celtics for six and the Lakers for 10, is when he made the decision the team was bad. And by the time it was time for payment number three, the team was incredible and has a generational talent. Exactly. And he's just like, ooh, I never mind.

I like this now. Wait a second. Hold on. Now they're good. I want to keep them. It seemed like the obvious read on that. Yeah. And it's important to point out that like Glenn Taylor did care about basketball.

I mean, look, did he spend money? No. Did he want the team to be good? Yes. To signing illegal contracts. Well, I was going to say. Well, Glenn Taylor was behind the illegal Joe Smith signing that just crushed the wolves for years and years. They lost so many draft picks in the process.

And he has a toxic relationship with my father, Kevin Garnett, and refuses to acknowledge him or put up his number in the rafters or put a statue outside, which he absolutely deserves. And yeah, so it's just like we just want this era to close. And it should be noted the difference between that illegal contract and all of the stuff that's been going on with the clippers and aspiration and everything else that Pablo's been reporting on is that in their case, they were dumb enough, the Timberwolves were, to just write it down. Yeah. They just wrote down on a piece of paper.

If you agree to this, we will give you more money later in case the owner of the team dies. Right. And the reason that it, the only reason that Balmer can, continues to get away with what he apparently has gotten away with, is because they weren't that dumb. They weren't as dumb as the Timberwolves were back in the chosen. They were planting trees, not turning them into paper to write anything.

And then writing stuff down on them. Yeah, yeah. It is funny that, like, the one lesson you might learn from Glenn Taylor's tenure as the guy who was so guilty of capser convention that they got docked at first, five draft picks, he was suspended for his season. Kevin McGale, the gym of the team, was also effectively suspended for a season, and various other fines and so forth, is we probably shouldn't write this. down insofar as the people were doing this secret side deal with are worried that Glenn Taylor

might die before it can be enforced. And spoiler alert, Glenn Taylor as of press time, alive. And the reason that contract got exposed was there was a separate bit of litigation between agents and that's how it got entered into the public record. And so all of that was, again, just very timber wolves. It was all very timber wolves, which is all very timber wolves, which is all to say that when this deal is falling apart, a lot of it, I think the broad perception was, of course it is. Yes, yes. Of course, like, even though Tim Connolly, who is the guy who was running the Nuggets,

who's one of the great GMs in the sport. Incredible, yeah. Who was now building this real contender. He had language in his contract that was basically like, if Glenn Taylor stays, I'm out. I will leave this team. I have been told is that Tim Connolly definitely on the side of new management. much like Joe Mandy

in the sort of emotional sort of like matrix of where is everybody who's rooting for what? So the point being that finally, finally we can get to this year when I started DMing Joe

and I was like, I think we should do an episode together because it's July 2025 and the Timberwolves are owned by Alex Rodriguez and Mark Lory. Inshallah, yeah. And I want to explain why.

So the thing that had happened which is just very, very funny to me, also takes place in the neighborhood where Joe Mandy saw Anthony Edwards dog. Okay. Because what happens here took place in a closed-door secret private arbitration, 10 blocks away from the Target Center.

And you walk in, it's a five-day arbitration hearing in downtown Minneapolis, and there are three arbiters, of course, in the front of the room, and there's a podium. And the way that I want to have you guys envision it is like some high school debate shit. Because that's how it's been described to me by multiple sources. We got dozens of people in the room.

We got the aforementioned owners and would-be owners and former owners. We got Glenn's wife Becky, of course, who's always there. Yep. And she forces the players every year to eat lasagna at her house. Oh, that's right. I've seen video of that. Yeah. Lazzani is supposedly pretty good.

I hope because it looks so whack. These guys have to go to... Good for athletes, too. Yeah. That's the food you want your athlete. Load up on lasagna. That's right. Biometric data says we want more of the lasagna.

What are the macros in this? It's thicker cheese. But in the room is also, yes, the layers, the lasagna-style layers of this room. We got lawyers, we got assistants, we got dozens of people. And so what is sort of the top line thing here that has been communicated to me and has been talked about by multiple leak sources is that Glenn Taylor's legal strategy, again, this is the thing he cares about the most. the thing he fought tooth and nail,

put his reputation on the line for assailed their reputation in the process of trying to keep his team. His legal strategy was, quote, baffling. Which is to say that something that Mark and Alex's legal team had discovered in discovery, what they had discovered, what they had found out, is that Glenn Taylor, in the months during this push and pull, had two executives

create what amounts to a burn book as in like a mean girl style list a list that has been described to me as numbered and 77 items long and this list of 77 things Glenn Taylor slash the Timberwolves hate about Mark Lurie and Alex Rodriguez

was communicating to the NBA and then to anyone who would listen, you can't approve these guys. These diapers, they have terrible absorption. Some items on this are... I'm so happy right now. Mark Lorry had dinner with Kevin Garnett and never told me.

Uh-huh. Alex Rodriguez did steroids. Sure. Yeah, he did a funny photo shoot where he was like kissing a mirror or something. It must have been in there. And has a painting in his room of him as a centaur. Yeah, right?

We also have as a coaster there. Oh, amazing. Right. Mark Lurie came in with his friends into the arena with an oval bottle of alcohol, which apparently may or may not have been a corked wine bottle, that he was accused of being alcohol at a sporting event. Oh. He accused of being a drunk.

Yeah, Arod is a liar. A rod is a cheat. A rod had the largest suspension in MLB history. Basically, a series of exhibits that were emailed back and forth, which is how they were discovered between these two executives. That's the modern version of writing it down. Yeah. And apparently in the legal proceedings, yeah, it was revealed that these were meant to be shown to the NBA to Adam Silver.

To make the case that these guys cannot possibly own an NBA team, apparently another item was they were disagreeing with us about changes that should be made to the arena. And they get to 77 things, but it's all along the lines of just like, sir, does anyone here remember that this is a hearing related to arbitration about. a legal contract. A legal proceeding. A legal proceeding. Yeah. And none of this has anything to do with anything. Unfortunately, I am told, what they do is in the room, they pursue their strategy, which is

nonetheless to bring out a series of video exhibits. One of which is, and I cannot reiterate enough, how much this is a part of their strategy, the interview that Arod did with Katie Couric? What? For the record, have you ever used sterile? human growth hormone or any other performance-enhancing substance? No. None of it is particularly relevant in a legal proceeding regarding the sale of an entirely unrelated

franchise. And sport. And also sport. Right. It is just funny to me, though. A lot of what you bill hourly, a lot of this was about, like, can we just talk about how much A-Rod allegedly sucks? That was kind of their strategy.

Can I also add here? though, that little exercise you had Joe and me do at the beginning of this, talking, right, revisiting the Adam Silver and Glenn Taylor in bed. Like, what it says to me that this was his legal strategy is that, like, that actually was predictive in some way because he, in his mind, was like, I know these guys. I'm buddies with these guys. There's a backroom, rich dude, clubhouse ethos here.

I've snuggled with one of them. Yeah. We reclined together in a bed in Minneapolis. And in his mind, he's like, I just have to appeal to their, like, rich dude, insider baseball kind of club. And they'll be with me. They won't be in. And he's just totally mistaking that level of camaraderie for a legal matter before the court in an arbitration. I'm cool.

Yeah, I'm cool. You've only suspended me once for a year. but like, I'm chill, dude. I think it's important to remember, too, that Glenn Taylor, for all of the jokes, is a two-term past chairman of the NBA Board of Governors. Yeah. 2008 to 2012 and then 2014 to 2017.

And I think a big part of all of this, like my crazy pills that I feel like I'm taking, is that you can, in fact, establish various, I would say, dispositive even, legal exhibits, and yet the only thing that matters is what this backroom conversation that's not a real justice system

is going to do. And in the balance hangs lots of principles of like you think it's framed and sold as fairness, but in reality are just a bunch of people making personal decisions in ostensibly

what they perceive to be the best interests of the league. Of the league. Basketball reasons, as I believe David Stern once said, about vetoing a certain trade

involving a guy who plays now with the guy who allegedly is Planting trees. Yeah. So that happens. And the arbitrator is like, yeah, we're going to go with the centaur guy and the diapers guy. And in reality, what happens is there is a vote

where the NBA owners have to gather. And so what I am told is that there is a vote. It's a remote call. I was told eight or nine owners plus maybe like 20 people from the league. All on like seven queen-sized mattresses. in the same room. 30 people on one tiny bed, but it's a Zoom call.

And something that's stunning to everybody is, of course, the face that pops up with some questions, even at the very end, when it seems like this has all been decided because there on a, and I'm told he was muted and didn't know it and had to be unmuted to then be told this is Glenn Taylor.

Yeah. He's just like, you know, he's not going to let this go down without a fight. But I want to give you the upshot, because we know, of course, that Glenn ultimately agrees to sell the team. The price is enforced $1.5 billion. In fairness to Glenn, if you could undo that deal, you probably should. Yeah, he only made, he only made $1.4 billion in profit. But it's not in fairness to him. He's someone who agreed to it in the first place. He had no idea how much his asset was worth. But this is the thing that Glenn ends up negotiating. the upshot of this as Joe Mandy is celebrating that finally Glenn Taylor is out of his life.

Anthony Edwards and Anthony Jr. are free from this man. What Glenn Taylor negotiates at the finish line is to have Mark Lorry and Alex Rodriguez purchased for him for the next decade. Four courtside seats next to the team bench as Joe. Mandy had initially mentioned at the top of this episode. Oh my God. He's not going anywhere. No.

That is the moral of this story. Yes. You could technically be shamed and forced to sell and have all this enforced upon you, but that dude's not going anywhere, man. Oof, all right. Good seats. They're good seats. Pablo, you said on an interview a while ago about a different subject that there is

there's a class of people in this country who have determined that shamelessness is a market inefficiency, I believe was the quote. If you were Glenn Taylor, if I were Glenn Taylor, the last place in the world I would want to be seen is courtside at a Timberwolves game for like a hundred reasons. But the shamelessness, the lack of self-reflection to think that like, okay, fine, I drove the franchise into the ground and kept it there for 20 years. I don't talk to Kevin Garnett. I blew the sale of this so badly. I made a burn. I made a burn. I burn book and tried to get away with it at an arbitration hearing. And after all that, okay, fine, I'm still going to the games. Like, and I'm sitting in the front row next to the

bench, how are you not so embarrassed that you want to slink away and hide forever? Like, I just don't understand how these people have no sense of embarrassment or chagrin. I just, it blows my mind. Built different. Like, built different. Glenn Taylor is walking back onto the court with his finger held in the air like Larry Bird, man. That's right. Yeah, he nailed it. He nailed it. He drilled the three at the end to win. I am curious what the language is, though. I wonder if it says four corsized seats for 10 years at Target Center, because there may be a new arena in the future. And then maybe he doesn't get those seats because they, yeah, I don't know. I'm trying to find a silver lining.

I like the idea of trying to find the loophole in this agreement, such that Glenn Dale just bought four cordside seats next to the Timberwolves bench in a hollowed-out husk. Yes, he still shows up. The games are across town, but he's still there. It's basically an abandoned mall, and he's just sitting in the front. It's Glenn Taylor sitting in his seat next to, yeah, the ghost of Joe Smith. I feel like I didn't deliver the congratulations that Joe Mandy was expecting necessarily. But I do think you should be optimistic about your team, man. I am.

I love them. They're so good. A couple years ago, I went to the elimination game against the Nuggets, I believe, and ended up at some sort of, like, after game party. And I remember I cornered Jared Vanderbilt and told him I loved him. And he was like, all right. And then Mark Lorry was doing a magic trick for Malik Beasley's mom. And I interrupted the magic trick to introduce myself.

And he did not, I kind of ruined the magic trick. So I think I blew it with Mark Lorry. But Arod, I could maybe foster a friendship with him. Well, as a sports fan, did you have any prior interactions with Alex? There was, when I was in high school, my mall was the Mall of America. And there was a year, I think it was my junior year of high school. I used to do a thing where the day before Yom Kippur was like a mini rum springo for me. So I would try to get into as many sins as I could, like the night before Yom Kippur.

So like I was at the Mall of America on drugs with my friend Landon, and we spotted Alex Rodriguez walking around the Mall of America. There must have been a game the next day. So my friend and I stalked him for over an hour while high on drugs. And I got into an argument with my friend Landon because I used the word. word whack in a sentence and then he told me I wasn't allowed to use that word I wasn't cool enough to pull off the word whack and I said I can use whack and We're we're mere feet from Alex Rodriguez and then we started shoving each other over my usage of the word whack and then my friend yelled hey a rod A rod turned around and then my friend pushed me into a pyramid of shoe boxes

That were in a like I believe Bloomingdale's or Macy's so my only real interaction with Alex Rodriguez is his is his is his own real interaction with Alex is him turning around briefly and seeing me and my friend on drugs falling into a pyramid of shoeboxes. Yeah. But that's my only memory of Alex Rodriguez, really. What do you think of the chances he remembers that? I'll bet there's like a 5% chance he remembers that.

I mean, it was insane. Yeah. I hesitate to say that the investigation I thought was over has just reopened. Oh, my. God. I did ask God to forgive me for that the next day. So I'm clean. On the holiest of days. I'm sorry, Lord, for maybe kind of confusing Alex Rodriguez briefly in a Macy's. Pablo, do you want to see the hats that Joe made me? I would love to see the hats.

I would love to see the hats. Actually, Mike, could you explain what this thing is? I think Joe should explain it because it's like a person in severe emotional decisions. stress is the is the headline yeah well i mean this was a moment of you know covid quarantine mania some people sell the timberwolves for 1.5 billion dollars it was the same era it was the same exact era where glenn taylor saw the sceptre of death approaching and decided to sell the team for much less than it was worth i was losing my mind trapped in my house and i started ordering hats and i taught myself how to embroider hat. So then I would match the colors of

the hats and make words out of the lettering, the letters provided by the hats. So for example, the famous Milwaukee Brewer's logo with, it's a glove, but it's got a B and an M

in the logo, that becomes crab meat. Yeah, and I put a crab in there. That's really good. Yeah, there's a crab in the middle there of the glove. The glove has caught a crab right there in the pocket. But, you know, I gave, Malaney has one, a Detroit Tigers one that says Dershowitz on it.

So, like, it was just, sometimes it was, like, sort of tailored to the person I was making them for. The Ellen Dershowitz, Detroit Tigers collab. Schuette, man, you should put that on, on a web store or somewhere. I really, I, the other one, this requires a little explanation, but I have my producing partner, Morgan Sackett, years ago started calling me Bubba,

as a nickname. I think trying to find a nickname that was like the opposite of like the vibe that I give out. Yeah, you're not a boba. This is a commission. Yes. He did a Red Sox hat for me

where the B in the Red Sox logo is the middle B in the word Bubba. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I don't, it should be noted, do not wear these. Yeah, you can't wear them.

Because the secondary value would be ruined if you took them out. That's right. You got to keep them pristine. for sale down the road. What other ones, Joe, did you make that I would love to buy that I can't?

I know there was one that was the West Virginia Mountaineers. It was a hat that I made Wilmer Valderrama. And I during COVID, I auctioned off a bunch of hats for charity and all the money obviously went to

Kauai Leonard. And that was the most special. Okay, I found some others. There's Houston Astros cap where the H with the star is the H in the word horny. Yeah. Uh-huh. There is a Kansas City Royals cap where the KC is naturally Kurt Cobain.

Kurt Cobain. Sure. University of Kentucky says Sepaku. Part of the thing that I think people who are just listening need to go to YouTube to fully appreciate is that it is an incredible work of embroidering. Yeah. Embry is incredible, yeah.

But I would say that the sort of like, the way you lined up the letters is manic. Oh, for sure. I was in an unhealthy place. The one that my head is blocking there is a New York Mets hat, and the lettering goes down to say the word NyQuil, onto the brim of the hat. That was impossible.

We got an A's cap where the A is pasta, the first A in pasta. Waffles. Nationals cap, that's waffles. This one, I mean, this one, the Tampa Bay Reyes, The TB is the T&B and B and roast beef. Yeah, Noah Garfinkel has that one. Shout out to now. Proudly displayed in his house, yeah.

The Cal one where it's mescal. Mezcal. Yeah. Oh, wait, look at you put a, you embroidered a drink on the side. Absolutely. A real heat check. I like, I kind of blacked this era of my life out. Yeah, this is, I did so many.

This is a Cardinals cap where it's wrestling, which is a hard thing, but the STL, yeah, right, all there. Oh, STL, wow. Wait, can you give me, tell me what it is and I'll try to guess. Let's play a game. Oh, that's good. That's good. We did that one. Okay.

Oh, these are good. The San Diego Padres, the SD. SD, let's do it? No, think more like 70s movies. I give up. Shelly Duval. Of course. Obviously. In the classic Shelley Duval, color block, gold

and brown. I'm just realizing now what a bad idea was for me to volunteer to try to guess what this would be. There's a zero point... The hometown Minnesota Twins, the T.C. for Twin Cities, Mike, is... I'm going to guess that's the middle T.C. of a word, like, watch

or... You're wrong. This is again... Think, like, 2010's movies. This one would, I mean, truly, maybe fetched the most in the secondary market today. As a hint, Trevor Cahill. So close. So close.

Timothy Shalame. Oh, shit. With an embroidered accent over the first. Okay, but this next one, this one is San Francisco Giants, SF, and it is the middle letters. We're looking for a

word. We're looking for a word. Sort of a medical word. Misfit. No. I'm sorry, transfusion. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean,

holy shit. What, you had, is that a... That says hamburger. Is that Baylor? The Baylor University says hamburger. Do you come to hamburger? The Phillies is simply pizza. Just pizza.

I did like a sort of a food run here. Yeah, you did. The Seattle Mariners. Yeah. Sushi. Yeah. Weirdly, that one's weirdly apropos. for the team.

Yeah, I know. It's on the nose. People were saying Joe fell off when they saw that one. They're like, come on, man. I came for Shelly Duval. I like his earlier stuff. Yeah.

There's a Pirates P that's just the second P in popcorn with a popcorn. Actually, Shelley Duvall is the only one I bartered. I got a,

oh yeah. All right, Mike, here you go. This one's good. New York Giants. New York Giants, NY. Is it the middle

letters or is it kind of the word? I'll give you this very specific clue. They're the last two letters of a name. A surname. And it's followed by a very specific year. Oh, my God. Anthony?

No, Coney 2012. We were looking for Coney 2012. The New York Giants. Cody 2012 collapse. Yeah. The Dershowitz one I just found is incredible. Yeah. Because it has a stitched Alan Dershowitz. Yeah.

I did a... I can't believe I survived this. This is like the true workings of a maniac. I remember you texting me pictures of these because I selected, I believe, crab meat from a number of them that you had... We're offering. I know... Seth Rogen got Shelley Duval in exchange for one of his vases.

that he that was his like manic yeah COVID he did pottery and it it was more I would say more practical or more of an art more more more dare I say of a revenue generator

you know I famously I've only lost money on any anything I've ever done so like like in terms of merchandise or this I don't know those that 400 dollars seemed to really pay off for you yes that is true in those moldoven bots

yes but I did not figure out a way to to make any money off of these hats. So I guess what we leave here at the end with is a challenge for Joe Mandy to do something with his truly new regime changed Timberwolves. Okay. The next time we gather on this program, Joe,

I would beseech you to contemplate a Shelley Duval-level tribute. Well, I got to get the new retro logo, the old, like, 90s-era logo, had like a TW on the shorts. So maybe I could do something with that. Oh, shorts. Yeah. I'll figure it out.

This is a good challenge. It's hard to just give someone to assign someone work like that. But I dare say that, much like Adam Silver and our old friend Glenn Taylor, this is the bed that Joe Mandy has made. I'll make a pledge to you, Joe, that if you make that hat, I'll purchase it from you with my aspiration, credit. Oh, my God. Yes. Yes. Yeah. We'll get some trees planted. The only way to do it.

And we'll get Uncle Dennis some new sneakers or something. This has been Pablo Torre finds out. A Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.