The Ringer NBA Show - LaMelo Is Headed to Minnesota! | Real Ones

Episode Date: June 25, 2026

LaMelo Ball has been traded from Charlotte to Minnesota in exchange for Naz Reid, a 2033 unprotected first-round pick, three first-round pick swaps (2028, 2029, and 2030), and three second-round picks. Logan Murdock and Howard Beck discuss the stunning move, and examine why both teams made the trade. Did Minnesota improve, or did they drop themselves in the Western Conference hierarchy? Plus, the Lakers extended Austin Reaves to a max deal, but was it the right decision? Will Jaylen Brown be a Celtic when next season starts?(00:00) - Intro(01:30) - LaMelo Ball to Minnesota(36:50) - Austin Reaves extended(43:48) - Jaylen Brown situationHit the mailbag: [e-mail]: Logan Murdock and Howard BeckProducers: Victoria Valencia and Clifford AugustinProduction Supervision: Ben Cruz and Conor NevinsThe Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit https://fanduel.com/playwithaplan to learn more about the resources and helplines. Buy any two Ferrero Brands and you could win $1 million. Visit GoAllInAndWin.com to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's popping, Ruins, emergency edition. You know how we do. We're supposed to record tomorrow and now we're recording today because Minnesota Timberwolves decided to trade for La Mello Ball.

Yeah, you heard that right. Yes, I did that. That was for effect. The Minnesota Timberwolves traded for lamello ball. Why did they do that? We're going to get into the Y and all of those things

with myself and Howard Beck. And then we're going to talk about just the hubris of NBA pre-agency. The Alston Reeves deal. Where's Jalen Brown going to go? All of the other things that have permeated throughout the league over the last week since we last recorded. Yeah. Really, really fun episode.

We're trying to figure this out. I'm still just perplexed at Minnesota. They're just decision-making skills over the last five years. Where's it going to go? It's going to happen. I feel for all my pottiness on the shores of Lake Minatanka. All right. Enough for the intro.

Cliff, Victoria, play the theme music. What's popping? Real ones. Logan Murdoch here. Howard motherfucking back there. We plan to pot on Friday morning, but Minnesota Timberwolves had other plans for us. The Minnesota Timberwolves just traded for lamello ball,

and I will get to the trade package, but I can only describe it as something you do when you are drunk at 2 in the morning playing 2K and just say, fuck it, right? So let's, with that being said, this are the terms of the deal. The Hornets will send lamello ball and Josh Green to Minnesota in exchange for Nas Reed, an unprotected first round pick in 23, three first round pick swaps in 2028, 2029, and 2030. And three second round picks in 29, 32, and 33.

Now, this has also been like a fire set, a part of a fire cell and reinvention that the Timberwolves have been doing. and they just basically dumped Julius Randall to Brooklyn for some scraps. And now they are reshaping their roster around Anthony Edwards and All-World Talent and Lamello Ball and All-World roller coaster throughout his career. I don't know. I know how I feel about the deal, Howard. The deal looks crazy on its face. And I think it's going to look even crazier when the season starts.

There's so many ways we can go here. But first of all, let's just think, what is your first thoughts on the deal? Is it about what I think, or are you a little bit more optimistic for it? My first thought is that this is the worst possible day for us not to have the president of the La Mello Ball fan club, Raja Bell, on this show. Where are you, Roger? He's on the road to Atlanta right now. He's on the road to Atlanta. There will be no one here to defend.

defend Lamello's honor if it's necessary. It may not be necessary. We'll see where this goes. I have no idea where this is going because we're just doing this on the fly. I've had very little time to process this in my own head. I mean, my first reaction was simply, obviously, holy shit. But I think we all could see, at least by the reports last night, there were there were like strong rumblings and it was not just one media out that it was several. But even in hearing that Lamello ball was potentially available, that teams were pursuing him. My first thought was simply, you know, why now? And it's one of the questions that we're going to have to get answered in the hours and

days and weeks to come. Because the Charlotte Horn. I thought about it from Charlotte's side first. They just had their best season in a very long time. And that core group of Lamello with Concanipple, a very close runner up for rookie of the year, Brandon Miller. they've got a really nice core there. They've got a good thing going.

Charles Lee's got these guys playing in defense. And they're finally kind of ready to break through. They created an identity. And this signals to me, and the Hornets will surely push back on these kinds of interpretations. But this sort of signals to me that the Hornets didn't actually believe fully in what they had there and or had salary cap apron type concerns as they try to pay all these guys, right? you mentioned it.

Le Mello's an all-world roller coaster. Always has been. And even as he smoothed out some of the rough edges last season, there's still those wild moments. The one-legged fadeaways and the impossible three-point shots and occasionally just tunnel vision. But all that said, Minnesota clearly sees a guy who's just incredibly talented and incredibly tall for a point guard beside. So you now have this just huge backcourt.

all of Anthony Edwards's, you know, physicality and athleticism, all of the mellow ball's height and athleticism and playmaking ability. I mean, for all of the issues about him and his shot selection sometimes, he's also an incredibly gifted passer. So you have the makings here of an absolute, just explosive back court, but it comes at the cost of one of their last front court. They went for being over-indexed on the front court to now over-indexed on the back court, because they also just locked up Iyo Dissunmu with the money that they saved not trading Randalls. Not to mention that Nas Reid was like a cultural icon.

Cultural icon. Dude, could you imagine? Like there's like a vigil probably going on outside Target Center as we speak. Nas Reid was like, Nas Reid was to that team what like, I don't know, Josh Hart is to the Knicks or something. Like this guy who just you, Anthony Edwards is the engine in Minnesota.

Jalen Brunt's at the engine in New York. But what you think of the guys who feel like the heart and soul of it, team sometimes. Yeah, that was Nas Reid. So I always thought it was a Nas or Julius Randall thing or a Nas or Kat thing before they traded Kat for Randall. And so when they offloaded Randall, I was like, okay, cool, more kind of reshuffling the books and freeing up some money for Iodosum. Fine. You've got Nas Reid. You could just plug right in. Oops. So. Yeah, you can plug them right into a trade. Yeah. So like there's a lot of pieces of this that I, I can kind of see the outline of the the rationale in Minnesota and in Charlotte,

but I'm still trying to figure out exactly what the full vision here is and how they're going to backfill. This episode of the Ringer NBA show is presented by Ferreiro. The world is watching. Go all in for your team this summer with Ferreiro. Enter for the chance to win a range of prizes just by purchasing your favorite treats,

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Buy any two Ferreiro brands and you could win $1 million. Official rules apply. Learn more at go all in and win.com. I'll tell you what, just from an observer standpoint from 3,000 miles away, I can tell you why Charlotte did the deal.

Charlotte saw what happened in Orlando to end the season and saw there was a ceiling on that team. And then all of a sudden, they get a call from Minnesota saying, hey, we're going to give you all these picks for LaMello, who kind of, there's been a hot and cold relationship with Lamello to even say it lightly, even this season, as they have been successful. And even like this success that he had into playing game against Miami,

when we talked about that right after, right, the highs and lows of that. I honestly don't think that that is sustainable for a team that is trying to ascend in the way that they are, Hornets are trying to ascend. And, you know, there were rumblings in the beginning of the season about Lamello may be wanting out. And, you know, just the back and forth and the clashing between those two entities and a new coaching staff that wants to make its imprint.

I could definitely see the team just being like, let's just get this, let's get this problem off of our hands. And not to mention, like, well, Mello has a crazy contract. Like, you're locked in with like three more years with him if you're Minnesota, right? Like, if something goes bad, like this could go really, really, really. bad and we'll talk about the ramifications of that in the second. But from strictly as Charlotte standpoint, Howard, I see why they would do this. They're not all in on him and they have proven that they're not in on lamello ball.

And you give me a boatload of picks to get him and you get to give me off of that contract for a guy that probably fits better in our roster. And we could help build the team or you could continue to build a team around Concanipal and Brandon Miller and guys that we actually think are going to be long term guys. Hell yeah, I'll do it. Like I see you can make a case if you're sharp. Charlotte, like, this is the deal that we should do at this particular time. Well, and they also, you know, acquired Kobe White earlier this year, and they're now going

to be locking him up. So, like, you could, you could see, like, they set themselves up for this. They brought in a guy who initially was there to supplement the back court and their depth. And now they can just plug him in as the new starter in Lamello's place. Now, Kobe White is not Lamello Ball for, for good and bad, I suppose. But you're, you're not. putting yourself in a position where it's like you're having to scramble now to go find somebody to man the point guard position. Kobe White's very capable and a very good young player. I think I'm more concerned on the Minnesota side of the backfill because no Randall, no, Nas Reid, are you playing small with Jaden McDaniels now? There, are you finding somebody

cheap and free agency? It's interesting. Not for nothing. Like these are both new ownership groups, right? Like, Lori and Alex Rodriguez were putting their imprint on. I think even the Rudy Gobert trade had, I think, their stamp on it because they were in as minority partners then with the long-term agreement to take over. I think they were really influential in hiring Tim Connolly in the first place, who made that deal. And now you've got, you know, Rick Schnell in that group who owned the Hornets now,

been in place for a couple of years. Jeff Peterson, their GM, who could come from the Nets. He's been in place a couple of years. So you have two newish ownership groups and a newish front office in Charlotte that I think are all kind of trying to, you know, remake these rosters and the identity of these teams. And this is the first time since the Hornets drafted La Mello Ball that I think they were in a position where they could, you know, make a kind of a clear headed decision. Like we've had him long enough. We've got a newish, again, newish coach, newish front office, newish ownership group. And they have now decided we have the core of a great identity going forward.

with Brandon Miller and Concanipple, we don't need to ride the lamello ball roller coaster, as you put it earlier, anymore. And Minnesota, look, back-to-back conference finals, and then they backslide just a little bit this season. They traded Cap because of second apron concerns. They would have kept him in perpetuity, I think. But, you know, that was a deal they had to make and to try to give themselves some depth as well, getting Randall and Devenzo. Now no Randall, now no, Nas Reid. They're basically just deciding this is it now.

Rudy Gobert is our defense. Wait, hold on, hold on. Can we just like bask in what you just said? The This Is It Move is trading all of our picks for lamello ball. Let me back. All right. Let me hold on on the picks thing. Let me just hold up on the picks thing for a second here

because the full package of picks, it's one unprotected pick in 2033, which is, a lot of years in the future. The three first round swaps in 28, 29, and 30, swaps only matter if you're worse than the team you traded the swap two. Are the Minnesota Timberwolves going to be worse and therefore higher in the draft order than the Charlotte Horns? There's a chance.

There's a chance right now with the current makeup. There's always a chance, Logan, for sure. But I think Minnesota is betting on Ann Edwards and Lamello Ball. and whoever's around them, Gobert for now, he's getting up there in years, being better for the next few seasons, right? 2030 is four years out. So we have the 26, 27 season to burn first, but three more seasons after that, are you better than the Charlotte Hornets during that span of time, or at least for a chunk of it?

So those three swaps may never mean amount to anything. And even then, you're somewhat protected because you still have picks. They're swaps. You're getting the Hornets pick in that case. So I may have issues with or concerns with pairing lamello ball in Edwards or pairing lamellible ball in anybody because I've often been a lamello skeptic and I think you're further out on that one than I am. But I'm not concerned with what they gave up. Nazreed is an essential player for them, but lamello ball is a much higher ceiling talent,

unquestionably. They give up one actual pick or first round pick. The rest are swaps and second rounders. I don't feel like the investment is too much. I do. You would think any investment was too much. That part is true. But the other thing that I'm saying is, okay, so Anthony Edwards has a contract up until

the 28, 29 season, right? Now right now you are auditioning. He is the latest superstar that you are as a team auditioning for to make him want to resign. If I'm aunt and I'm, listen, I'm not aunt. And I don't know what's in his head right now. But if I'm in, I'm thinking, damn, dude, you just traded away a franchise pillar in Nasreed, a community pillar in Nas Reid, who was my homie.

You traded away Carl Anthony Towns, who I just saw won a championship a few weeks ago. You're trading away all of this talent. And what are we getting back, right? We're getting scraps. And you're putting a lot more responsibility on my shoulders. to be the greatest player just for us to stay afloat. You are actively taking away talent off of this roster and putting more responsibility on me to stay afloat.

And the mellow ball thing can be good, but it also can be really good. I don't look at a team with a mellow ball and the rest of that roster and say, damn, that's going to be a consensus team that is going to compete with the Oklahoma City Thunders of the world. That's going to compete with the San Antonio. Spurs of the world. That's going to even compete with the Denver Nuggets of the world.

I was talking to Cliff before this. I'm not ready to go to the air yet. But Cliff was talking about how he pushes them out of the, this trade right here pushes them out of the Western Conference race. And I was talking to him on the phone before this. And I was like, I can't necessarily disagree with you. But like, that is where we're at right now. It is, it is addition by subtraction from a roster standpoint. And how does that get back to the picks, you might ask? Well, how does it get back to the picks? How does it get back to the picks? How does it get back for the picks you might ask. Okay, there is a world here where this thing goes catastrophically terrible next season and the season's ensuing after that. And there's a world

where Anthony Edwards is like, man, F this. I see the writing on the wall. I see what we're doing here. And I don't like it. Get me the hell up out of here. All right. That's so. Don't listen. But I'm, and that has been, there have been rumblings around the league about like, okay, is Anthony Edwards the next guy to leave? And we both know that, right? And so, This isn't helping that case, in my opinion. So back to the picks. Say if everything goes to shit and you have to trade Anthony Edwards, which, I mean, I'm sure you'll get picks back.

But we'll see because it could be a Yada situation. And the picks could be, it could be really, really hard to move him and get like a Kevin Durant level, circa 2022 level hall. We'll see. But you're not putting yourself in a position to, one, make your star happy. And if your star is not happy, you're going to leave. And then you're stuck with lamello ball and a whole bunch of pick swaps. and the hornets who theoretically could be a better team

are taking advantage of that. It's a shit show going on right now. That's what I'm saying. That's why I'm saying the pick swaps mean everything because there is a world where this to Minnesota thing all goes to shit. And then the hornets are reaping the rewards of that. I mean, if I'm Tim Connolly,

I'm getting fired in that scenario anyway and I don't care. So at that point. I'm talking about the Timberwolves, man. I'm talking about the fans. The fans, dog. Do you with that room for this team. Jesus.

Hey, hold on all real quick. All of these owners, all of these front office people, all of these players, they're going to be fine. The fans are they like, come on, man. What are you doing, dog? Yeah, I know. I'm being facetious, obviously. Listen, yeah, there's a worst case scenario here. There's always a worst case scenario.

The worst case scenario of not doing anything, Logan, and not getting Anthony Edwards help in terms of scoring and playmaking and just somebody else to occupy the defense is that he's, was going to get so frustrated that he'd won out even sooner than that, which is why you and I were hearing, even if they were low murmurings, there were murmurings. And this is what happens in this league. I know some fans hated, especially if it's your guy who's the subject of the murmurings. Milwaukee Bucks fans were really annoyed with all of us for the last several years. But guess what, folks, those murmurings actually meant something. And here we are. He's gone now. We were right. Sorry. But, you know, the murmurings happened for a fucking reason. Because people around the league hear that a guy might be discontent and they start loading up trying to get him. That's how this

works. And was Anthony Edwards kind of teetering in that middle world where it was like he's got, you know, he's still firmly there, but there's a little bit of that you need to show me something soon. We've kind of maxed out here. I'm a guy who's perennially considered potentially an MVP candidate, a top, you know, 10ish player, but I don't have anything to show for it. And I'm tired getting double-teamed, right? That was one of the things we kept hearing. Anthony Edwards wants somebody else to handle some of the load here. They really didn't have that. Even when you had cat or then downgrading to Randall, even with Devencenzel coming along, you just didn't have anybody else to really carry the offensive load. And Mike Conley, like, the fact that they had to,

like, how many times they brought Mike Conley back, like 15 times or something that you need, like 40-year-old Mike Conley at point guard was always a little bit of a troubling sign. And obviously diminishing returns there. So did you need to go all out to get La Mello Ball to fill that position? Was there a middle ground somewhere? Was between a Mike Conley and Lamello Ball? Maybe. But I mean, listen, and this is where we really need Raja here to balance out,

especially you today, but maybe me as well. I'm going to have to play the part of Raja Bell. Lamello Ball is stupid fucking talented. Like, he's just incredibly talented. He's a 6-7 point guard who can hit deep threes, who can pull. off incredible shots from amazing angles and is a great passer. And he is going to from day one take a lot of pressure off Anthony Edwards and keep

defenses honest. That's what's going to happen. The back end of that is real quick, you are chasing two teams in the Spurs and Thunder that while their strengths are slightly different, they are both loaded in the front court. Like they've both got a lot of talent up front. And the Timberwolves are now just like, have to. sent out everybody. They're down to just Rudy Gobert.

And is the young French kid ready to like step into a major role that they drafted a year ago, Berringer, Berengier, Berengue? I'm not even going to, I think that's it, Baranget. I got, I got a couple of points on this. You were right to say that the Minnesota Timberwolves need guard play to compete with the San Antonio Spurs of the world and the Oklahoma City Thunder of the world. But I got news for you. You know what J-Dub is doing right now? Look at his chops.

He's like, oh, wait, I get to get LaBella Ball on a switch potentially in a playoffs. Word. Cool. Bring your ass over here. Wait, Dylan Harper, what everything we saw over the summer, he's looking at field like, oh, wait, I get LaBella Ball on a switch and I get to go to the cup on him. Oh, cool. Awesome.

Second point is, you're right. Le Mello Ball has all of the town. He can pass the ball. He can score. But you know what he's yet to prove that he can do that on a high level in the postseason? He's never done it before. And that's what they need right now, right? There's other people that could have, that they could have, Jalen Brown is sitting right there. Well, they weren't like to that point. John Krasinski has reported the great John Krasinski from the athletic long time beat writer of covering the Timberwolves. God. He noted they, you know, they they poked around on Jailen Brown by the asking price. was going to be a lot higher. And again, the price for La Mello Ball just now really wasn't that high. The potential price, to your point about the swaps, is there in the in the, in the catastrophic scenario, but they didn't really have to send out much. Naz Reid, you sent out one rotation guy, one absolute, you know, one unprotected first round pick and then a bunch of swaps and second

rounders. It's not that big of an investment. I admire Tim Connolly's ambition here. The guy is not afraid to swing for the fences. He got crushed over the Rudy Gaubert. deal. And all these years later, I think it looks pretty damn good. They did go to back-to-back conference finals. This has been their most successful run, like three, four-year run in franchise history. You can't argue with that part of it. So there's a part of it. If I were a Timberwells fan, I think this would be one of those, you know, trust the Connolly process kind of things, where it's like, all right, I'm skeptical. I'm worried. I don't like losing Nas Reid, but this team has made some pretty good bets. Yeah. I don't know about that one.

champ. I'm going to, I'm in some group chats with a lot of Timberwolves fans. They are not taking that route. I'll tell you that right now. Let's stick on the ownership for a second. We talk about new ownerships in both places, right? And I think you're starting to see a smart way to go about it with new ownership in Charlotte, right? Just be patient, get assets from other people. And then you see the Timberwolves who historically like, at a perfect world, especially if you see, you know, the new apron coming, especially when they traded for Rudy Gobert because that was right after the Warriors title where there was such a backlash on teams that went over the salary cap and didn't go through the draft, right? And then that summer, you'd trade all of your draft picks for Rudy Gobert. In a perfect world, if you have a Anthony Edwards or that type of top pick, you want to build gradually. You want to build through other means through the draft. Keep it cheap and then have to pay on the back end, just like Oklahoma City did, just like how San Antonio is doing right now. What Timberwolves did is say,

hey, man, we're going to push the button really, really fast, and we're just going to figure it out. And I think that that's what they're keeping on doing. And what happens is you don't really have any, not to say an organic rise, because they did have an organic rise, but you can't keep the roster cheap enough as the team grows. So you're constantly having to make moves on the fly.

And there's not that much continuity there with the Timberwell. So yes, you had another. season of Anthony Edwards having to figure out a new roster, right? You might be able to get away with that in the Eastern Conference where it's so wide open, but in the Western Conference, this is just going to be a really hard thing. So when you look at the new ownership group of the Timberwolves right now, and then you compare that to what's going on in Charlotte. What is this move saying about Minnesota? Like, what is this saying about both front offices and both new ownership groups in your eyes? Well, I do just want to note that since they got

Rudy Gobert, the win totals, 42, so a little modest that first year, but 56, 49, 49. Like, they have put themselves in a position. Like, yeah, there are different ways to do this. And as you note, like, the organic build would be you get Anthony Edwards and then you, you just keep adding guys. And they had a lot of homegrown talent there. A lot of it is now gone through these deals. And chiefly, Carl Anthony Towns. And it is fair to say that investing in Rudy Gobert as they did effectively cost them towns and effectively cost them their entire front court now you could say because again towns for Randall Randall now a salary dump and Nas Reid gone but like it's Rudy Gobert at the time they got him we always said he's a walking top 10 defense

by himself that's what he does for you and he's still capable of of making you know whether it's elite just slightly sub elite he is that anchor and Anthony Edwards is your offensive anchor, but Anthony Edwards can't do it alone. And finding other shot creators or guys who can create and score at a super high level is not that easy either, Logan. And they weren't going to do it through the draft once you start winning 49 games a season. And besides that the draft picks were all out the window. So where else were you going to go? Where else were you going to get it? And the system is so tight now that every move you make, It used to be, like, you maybe could add somebody without giving up a ton.

Once you've hit a certain level in this league now, you can't get without giving. And it gets harder and harder. And so then you have deals like this one where effectively the bulk of the outgoing assets are swaps because they didn't even have picks to trade. I think in Minnesota, you've got an ownership group that really wants to put its stamp on things. they're new, there's a swagger there because A-Rod is A-Rod, right? Like, how many, how many, like, how many people even know that, like, Mark Lorry is the other owner? Because Alex Roderick is just, just casts such a huge- That's by design, by the way.

That's by design. Which is fine. But, like, most fans can't name most NBA owners. But it's hard to miss that Alex Rodriguez is one of the owners of the Minnesota Tempor Wolves. There's a swagger there. There's an Anthony Davis swagger that, or Anthony Davis. Swagger that was already built into this team. Like, you can't, first of all, you can't afford to sit still.

And in the Hornets case, it's just different. The Hornets are on a different timeline. They're just now starting to figure out who they are. That group, I think, has actually done a really smart, methodical job of, they didn't come in guns blazing. They came in and held onto La Mille Ball for the first couple of years and assessed where he was at, where, you know, what they were going to. getting out of Brandon Miller. Again, new front office, new coach, all within the last couple of

years. And then they finally hit this summer where they realized, okay, we've had a little bit of a breakthrough here, but it was like a breakthrough that fizzled really quickly. Is this really our core going forward? We know enough about lamella ball now to decide. Is this the guy that we want to keep building around or is there a better path? And that may we have to do with both the cap and Lamella Ball's makeup. And they clearly decided. And this is what would worry me if I were a Minnesota Timberwolves fan or the Timberwolves themselves. The Hornet saw enough of Lamello Ball to decide it was time to move on from him. Yep. And not a great sign. Now, if the rationale is going to be purely about the salary cap, maybe that's maybe that's the out. Maybe that's the public rationale.

But if you think this guy's actually capable of becoming an all-MBA type player, perennial All-Star, fringe all-MBA is as great as his hype is, then you keep him. You find a way to keep him. You don't find a way to move him. And again, I don't think the return is so great that you could say, oh, it was an offer we couldn't refuse. Like, I think it's very fair, again, through a skeptical lens of Lamello Ball, I think it's very fair to conclude that the Charlotte Hornets decided it was time to get out of the Lamello Ball business. And that was the motivation for this deal for them. I agree with you. That point you just made, I was thinking about that all more. morning since the trade went out at like 6 a.m. as soon as I woke up and I'm like, oh, God.

But I think one of the reasons why I was so skeptical about it in general from Minnesota's Timberwell standpoint is that, man, people forget, Lamello Ball was the franchise in Charlotte. Was everything that Anthony Edwards was to Minnesota to start? And I'm not talking about game, just talking about how they perceived him in Charlotte. He was that. Lamello was that. and for them to give up on him this easily, and timing is everything, for them to give up on him right at the precipice as they're supposed to have success,

tells you a lot about how Charlotte thinks about him. And that's why I'm just so skeptical on the deal on Minnesota. It's like, yeah, you do have to pivot. But like, you have to have a balance of being patient and getting the right guy if you're Minnesota. And I'm just not convinced this is the right guy, right. Like, there's also a world where you can do nothing and go to the second round again

with the team that you currently have, right? And have a full training camp with D'SUU, right? Maybe be better off that way, still have a balance of size and scoring. D'SUUU-Soddy could score in a postseason setting and continue to try to build off of that. I just don't think Lamello is the guy to help you get over the hump in the Western conference, considering what you had to give up, right? Like, Nauseu is a really good basketball player, right? You still have to compete with, I don't think that we saw what happened.

The conference finals of the Western Conference showed us the high level basketball it's going to take to get out of the West. I don't think that this move necessarily puts Minnesota in the conversation to get into that level of basketball. I don't think that they're that good of a team anymore. I really don't. I think this was a level of subtraction. I don't think that they're. I wouldn't be that. And I know it's one player, I will.

Yeah. I don't. And I, and you know, we have a running gag here that if I'm wrong, we apologize. And maybe I'll apologize later if I'm wrong. But right now as I sit, I don't think they're a better basketball team with lamello ball on it. I'm sorry. I just, I simply don't think so. Rajah's not even on this call and he's already mad at you.

I can feel it. He's going to be mad at you than me for once. I mean, listen, to the point, the Hornets in the Lamello ball era. And he was, he's been hurt a lot. and that's part of it too, but hey, that's also a concern. 44 wins last year, cool, great, awesome. They finally hit mediocre. Before that, 19 wins, 21, 27, 43.

Like, this has not been a stellar team. And you can say some of that is the mellow being hurt. You can say some of that is supporting cast, but a great player is supposed to elevate everybody. I do think on that note, by the way, one thing that concern me, again, back to the Timberwolf's side of this, this, John Krasinski had a blind quote from a wolf source on social media this morning saying, this is a wolf source on the edition of Lamello Ball.

Quote, he's going to make everybody better. That was the thing that was missing. That could be read as an indictment of your current superstar, by the way, that Anthony Edwards was not making everybody better. Now, Anthony Edwards is more of a just pure score, not a playmaker. I think he is a solid playmaker. But, like, if you say that that's the thing that was missing, there's a way to read that that's not flattering toward Anthony Edwards.

I think Lemelow Ball does have the ability to make everybody better if he's willing to play that role to its hilt and not get too obsessed with a low percentage, high degree of difficulty shots all the time. I'm not sure they're worse off, though, Logan. They have traded the stability and the higher efficiency scoring of, you know, Randall, Naz Reid and basically for the high highs and potentially low lows

of lamello ball. It's a, it's, and you've traded size for guard play. How that works out, I don't know. I'm not sure that they're necessarily any worse off.

I don't know if they're any better off either. Maybe they've raised their ceiling, but that's going to depend on what comes next. And this is the other thing. We're so, we're 30 minutes into the pod before I did my usual stipulation, but here it comes. It's June 25th.

No, it's June 25th. The teams are going to have more moves to make. When people are judging the honest deal, it's the first thing I always say. Like, let's see what Miami does next. Yeah, they've got a lot of holes to fill in that roster. No, you wouldn't want to roll into the season this way, but good news is they don't have to. Same thing with Minnesota now. You've offloaded Randall and Reid.

Is there a way to backfill in the front court a little bit to make up for what you just lost in getting lamello ball? The other thing that I would like to ask, and I will ask Roger next time we see him, is who gonna be the adult in this room? Like, right? Like, we even talked about what, like, they're competing, as long as Anthony Edwards is on the roster, they're competing with Denver, San Antonio, and Oklahoma City.

All of them got adults in the room. I don't see that in Minnesota. And that's what you need to get over the hump. down the stretch of seasons. I'm sorry. I really can't. And every metric I think they've regressed. I'm sorry.

I really do. They've regressed in terms of the size on their roster, the adults in their locker room, and from a defensive standpoint. I think they'd be really good in an Eastern conference. I'm out on this trade. I'm sorry. We'll see what else happens.

They do have two adult free agents. If they resign Mike Conley and Kyle Anderson, does that satisfy your concern for adults? It depends on if Lamello respects him, which I don't know if he will. I don't know that answer. But that was another thing that was a hindrance for him actually being a franchise player in Charlotte. He wasn't the adult in the room. No. You're expecting him, you're paying him like the adult in the room in Minnesota.

soda and I just I we've seen this we've seen this already happened before like the proof is in the pudding I get the age and everything like that but you know I I am I'm low on this trade I'm sorry I every time I think about it I just do not think this is a good trade whatsoever I'm sorry yeah no my my last thought on it and not to be too glib about this but um seriously like I hope this deal includes a stipulation that Lamello has to get a driver in Minneapolis. Like don't, I don't want that guy.

That's a thing. That's a thing, no, man. These dudes are just speaking to the immaturity part of this. Like, that's a serious thing. Yeah, I don't know why they don't get drivers.

But the thing is, like, we're having all these question marks that we didn't have with previous rosters. That's why it takes, like, you can't just see, like, oh, the numbers. Oh, he scores well. He's great.

He's all these things. You have to go in totality when you bring a guy into your locker room. For sure. And I don't, I think that from what we've seen with the Timberwolves and Connolly and just an overall, the overall direction of where they're going and the moves that they make, it's all off of emotion.

It's all off of, oh, let's do this. Let's do this. Oh, this looks cool. Okay, let's get this done. There's not a plan. There's not a real plan. And so, sorry Minnesota Timberwolves fans. You guys have been great to me.

I love going back and forth with you with my group chat and beyond. But it's tough, man. And I think y'all know this. think you guys know this. So we'll see what happens, but I'm down on a trade. We got more to discuss. And I want to get Howard's opinion on a lot more things that happened since we last potted.

We're going to do that after a quick break. And we are back. There's some other stuff that happened since we left that I want thoughts on from the God Howard motherfucking back. I'm just going to throw these things out here. Austin Reeves extension. How'd you feel about it? Oh, boy.

You knew he was going to get paid. So let's start here. Lakers kept Austin Reeves. Good news. That's great. That was the right move. They absolutely needed to lock him up. Did they need to pay him the max?

Should they have paid him the max? Is he going to be worth the max? And with he and Luca both making the max, where does that leave the rest of your roster? Because this roster still has a lot of work to be done. That's how I react to it, like literally in order. Keeping Austin Reeves was the right move. You know, undrafted, I think he's like all the reports that it's like the most money

and undrafted players ever made in a single contract or the, maybe the, it can't be the first max, but maybe the biggest max. Incredible. And like great fine by them, great development. And kudos to Austin Reeves for making himself into the player that he's become. And Luca clearly wanted him there. That's kind of important too. So great, you've got your one two punch now, but your one two punch are both generally negative defenders or at best hold their own for portions of a game.

You damn well better build out a great back line now. And I don't think that that's going to be Jackson Hayes and DeAndre eight. So there's so, like, there's just so much, like, and by the way, they need wing help too, wing defense. So there's a lot that they have to do still. So I guess I'll bring back the June 25th stipulation, which is I will reserve judgment on some level until we see what they do with LeBron, what they do with the rest of their cap room. The good news here just mechanically for people who I know we all glaze over the second

CBA stuff starts becoming the topic. And I'm not going to go full Bobby Marks here because I could not possibly go full Bobby marks if I wanted to. But there's a timing element here. So right now, Austin Reeves is just a cap hold. The contract won't actually be on the books until later in July, after the July moratorium is over. So in the meantime, they can operate like a team under the cap and use their cap room to sign guys.

And then once they're over the cap, they use the bird rights to give Austin Reeves's max deal. So they still have room to work with here. But some of that may go to LeBron. And then they will have that much less to work with. I think I've said it all along. I've been saying this for months. This is a huge, huge summer for the Los Angeles Lakers for Rob Polenka and the rapidly growing front office that had been understaffed forever and that the new owners are finally insisting on building out.

They need a lot of help around their new one-two punch of Luca and Austin Reeves. So I want to see what else they do. But when you lock up that much money in two guys, this is where it becomes a lot more difficult. and, you know, Lucas still wants his lob threat slash shot blocker at center. Where are you finding that guy?

He said Jackson Hayes is that guy. Sure. They've got work to do. They've got a lot of work to do. The thing is we're never in the room for these negotiations, right? Like, it's easy to say, oh, you should have held the line

and paid him like X amount less than the max. Give yourself a little bit more wiggle room. You know, who else was going to give him that kind of money. Besides, you've got his bird rights. You can give him the fifth year and the bigger raises. You've got the advantage. You shouldn't worry about the Brooklyn Nets or whoever else was going to come at him hard. It's easy for us to say because we're not in the room. You don't know where the actual line is where that would have had his agents walk, right? We don't exactly know how much Brooklyn would have given him or another team potentially.

So I get it. There are market forces at work here. Sometimes you pay a guy more than he's worth. Is he actually like a max player in the way we talk about max players? Could he? carry an entire team by himself? Probably not. But there are a lot of guys in this league making the max as number two and six. There's only like five guys in the league that actually fit that criteria. Exactly. Maybe 10. And Austin Rees is not on that list, but again, market forces. Sometimes you pay a guy what it takes to keep him. And so, you know, not ideal, but I respect it. By and large, it seems like they're going to be the same team that we saw last year this year. I mean, if they just run it back with Aiton and Smart and everybody

else, then I think they're going to, I think they're probably going to have run it back this year. It just would seem like that's where the wins seem to be going, right? Like, I feel like LeBron is going to be back. They're like they're going to do the farewell tour and they're going to figure out. The thing that I find much interesting in this is Luca Donchitz, right? Because on one hand, yes, you do have to play, you have to put the best team around him because of the talent that he has. There's also Luca Donchich who was saying like, yo, man, you see my history and you've seen the teams that I've taken the highest heights, really high heights, the types of teams. the 22 team that I took to the Western Conference Finals,

the 24 team that I took to the NBA finals. I say all that to say, he seems like a guy that says, hey man, just get the guys that I like and I'll bring us to the Promise Land, right? Like that seems to be, you know, his attitude towards things. And it seems to be his attitude towards Austin Reeves, right? He is the new dog in town.

It's very simple here. Luca Donch just wanted Austin Reeves to be his running mate. So Austin Reeves is going to be his running mate, right? And I don't see another. And also, who's the other guy that you're going to go out there and trade for that is going, that you pair with Luca at this particular point, right? Because that's what we're thinking about here, right? And it's a really hard balance when you got LeBron and the weeds, who is a league face,

all time history book face that you got to do right by, right? That's why this trade was just so nuanced and so all over the place because there was just so many tentacles from it that you have to navigate. And there's a new ownership group. But I think about Luga Dodgers is just saying like, this is my guy and this is who I want to play with. And we'll figure it out from there. And, you know, that's why NBA players aren't GMs. But you also have to take that into account, right? That's a balance.

You have to take into account. All right. But, look, the alternative was you lowball him or come up short. He walks. He signs a four-year max with the nets or whatever. And where are you now? Like, where's that money going? Who are you signing or acquiring instead of Austin Reeves?

Who are you getting to be Lucas running mate if not him? That's what I said. Who are the guys? Who are the guys? I don't know who the guys are out there to sign. And this isn't a great for your class. But that's why you do it. They're to trade for, right?

Yeah. That's why you lock. No, we're on the same pace. I thought you were questioning it. I thought you were saying like, No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm saying we're absolutely on the same page here. Okay, other things that have happened since we last potter.

Where the hell is Jalen Brown going to play next year? I have not been playing with the trade machine, so I have not found him a new home. I don't have a configuration here. But like, listen, I don't want to overread into Brad Stevens's comments on draft night because Brad Stevens is so great at saying a lot without saying anything. Can I read the quote real quick?

Can I read the quote real? Yeah, by all means. Okay, all right. Jalen Brown. One of them. One of them. Jalen Brown is a big part of us. He's a big part of us.

I'm never going to predict the future. Every indication, everything I think about over the last few years, has been building around those guys. You never know. But at the same time, the one thing I make very clear is how valued he's always been. he's been amazing. He's been an amazing teammate and a great person to be around. Let me juxtapose that with a conversation that I had with Brad Stevens in

2023 for a piece that I was doing on Jalen Brown. This is what Brad said to me in regards to the three-way call that Jason Tatum himself and Jalen Brown had in the wake of the trade rumors of 22, right? And he says, you just have to have a direct conversation. And you just have to be able to say, this is what's real, this is what's not real. Obviously, you and Jason are the two guys that we built the whole roster around. And every expectation is for us to come and compete together and try to win two games better than we were last year, last year being the finals for them in 22.

And I'm sensing a pattern here where Brad Stevens says one thing and the Celtics are doing another thing behind the scenes. It's really frustrating to see this. only as an observer, but if I were in the shoes of Jalen Brown, where you're supposed to be a franchise guy and you feel lied to all the time, I don't know if you can come back from that, but Brad Stevens, I don't think is helping himself out at all. I don't know what he could have said better, but maybe just stop dangling one of your franchise guys, the only for sure guy on your roster at this particular point in terms of health and stats, even though he could have been better in the postseason. But I just feel like this ain't a way to treat your stars.

I mean, who hired Brad Stevens back in the day? Danny Age. Danny Ains, baby. One of the all, one of the all-time cold-blooded executives in this league, right? You know. I think people, I think the nice people call it shrewd. I don't think he would actually object to the cold-blooded part of this. Like, he makes, he make the hard decisions, right?

Whether that was trading Pearson-Garnet, whether that was trading Isaiah Thomas or not, excuse me, not paying Isaiah. Thomas, or both, I guess. But yeah, trading him after everything that Isaiah Thomas had meant there. Like, Brad Stevens, like, you know, I don't know how much he would consider Aange his mentor. He was a coach under him, not a front office guy under him. But like, that seems to be the way of things with the Celtics. And Jalen Brown has said enough. We don't need to relitigate all that stuff. But he has said enough and hinted at enough that I'm sure it's made the Celtics at least a little bit uneasy. and after you've already put him in, you can't deny. He can't stand up there and say, like, oh, no, we didn't have any discussions about Janus.

And you can't talk about that anyway, probably. But he can't deny that Jalen Brown would have gone out in a Janus deal. So you're at a point now where everybody kind of knows what the score is. Jalen Brown knows what the Celtics have tried to do and are maybe still trying to do, not with Janus, but with other teams and other targets. The Celtics surely know where Jalen Brown's head is. in terms of what he may want. It's just common sense at this point that this is going one direction.

And then it would be incredibly awkward if they got to Media Day training camp in the fall with Jaylen Brown still on the roster. Doesn't mean a deal is going to get done. But look, I look down the list. Like, there's the obvious stuff, right? The Hawks, Atlanta is home. He's from the Atlanta area. And that's a young team on the rise that has a lot of stuff.

you know, could you cobble together the right pieces to get him? But could you do it without sending out their Jalen? You probably want both Jailens. Um, or the Celtics is going to do it without that. But he's also making a lot of money, Jalen Brown. And so like this may be another one of those deals where the end result, the, the return package may not be as spectacular as everybody would expect. I do think it would be, um, pretty pick heavy. But yeah, um, in the east alone, the Hawks, the Raptors, I don't think the heat could get him. I'm sure they would love him.

They don't have the room. Out West, like, the Nuggets could really use a jolt. Yeah. The Lakers would love to have Jalen Brown. They're not going to be able to fit them now, and I don't see a Lakers Celtics trade happening anyway. The Rockets would be great. You know, there are teams that are in various states

of kind of rebuild or trying to move forward. Like, the Dallas Mavericks are another team that should be, at least investigating. I don't know who's got the goods. Again, I haven't played with the trade machine, but there's like no shortage of places you could see potentially wanting Jalen Brown as their star. The Kings on line one.

The Kings on line one. I mean, I think the Kings are too far in the hole to decide that this is the, but like, but the Grizzlies aren't, right? Like the Grizzlies just picked up Isaiah Stewart. They've got some really good young players that they've drafted over the last couple of drafts. Yeah, but they're tearing down. They're not going to.

I don't think this is a long tear down in Memphis. Yeah, but they're not going to get, like Boston isn't going to take back Jab Moran. That's, that's a lot going to happen. No, that, yes, that is a problem. I don't think Jaws the key to a Jalen Brown deal or a key to any major deal. Jaws is going to have to be probably a net negative giveaway in whatever trade that they finally make if they are able to make a trade at all. By the way, not for nothing.

Last season, early last season, it was, ah, look at these three teams that are all stuck with with these flawed or problematic point guards, John Morant, Trey Young, Lamello Ball, two of the three have now been dealt. And... Well, that's how it always goes, right?

How many times did we say Russell Westbrook wasn't going to get dealt, then he got dealt hell of times? No, but I'm just saying, like, I think there was, there were some, in some parts of, you know,

the NBA or at least NBA fandom, there was pushback about, you know, just about the whole theme of surrounding those three guys. And so there was, you know, the jokes about just trade them all for each other. What we've seen so far is Trajan got traded for next to nothing. Lamello Ball got traded for, you know, some stuff.

It's decent. It's respectable, but it's not some package that would blow you away. But it tells you everything you need to know about how the league actually viewed these guys. And John Morant is still stuck in Memphis because it tells you everything you need to know about how the league views John Morant. And he's going to end up going last of the three. and probably for the least of the three, which, you know, Trey Young's had a pretty low bar for that one already.

But, yeah, no, listen, I do think that the Grizzlies, the way that they're moving right now does not suggest to me some, like, long-term rebuild. But we'll see. Anthony Davis, what does he do right now? Where is he going? Is he going to be on the roster next year?

It doesn't seem so. And some team is going to be out there desperate to be like, Oh, yeah, we can get 2020 Anthony Davis. I'm like, I got news for it's not 2020 Anthony Davis. I can't remember. Somebody's going to talk themselves into thinking that and trading for him. I can't remember who floated somebody. It's just the haze of all the social media stuff and too much radio and podcasts and everything else.

Somebody throughout the idea of Anthony Davis for Jalen Brown, at least as the basis for a deal. That would be, I mean, the Celtics want to big. Yeah. And the Wizards are certainly in the midst of something. But, yeah, I don't know. I never thought at the moment that they traded for Anthony Davis and Trey Young that this was truly the path forward for the Wizards, but they just locked up Trey Young on that insane extension.

And so I guess he is their future. Anthony Davis remains to be seen. Yeah. Just a lot of hubris going on right now. Like, last thing I think I would ask is something that I've been thinking about is, has this, and me and Cliff were talking about this earlier, has this new era and new apron era, if you will, so far been helpful, right, with all of the movement, right?

Because on one hand, yeah, it's entertaining. But we just had like a really historic finals a couple weeks ago. And I feel like this is just undercutting all of that momentum as a league. And it's just turning back into the soap opera. And maybe that's what the NBA wants, right? Like they want to be a year around league. But where are we right now in terms of like this flurry of action so far? And like, you know, on a personal level, like if I'm a fan of a team and there's such

constant movement of players, star players, it's like, do I ever get to know this team? Do I ever get to grow with this team in the highs and lows? And maybe that might be undercut by this new era. But like, what did this last week tell us about where the NBA is going? That's always a question that I ask you. something I ask you again. I mean, look, the NBA has always been about as much the off-court, like, drama and spectacle as it is about the on-court.

Like, there's nothing new under the sun there. And, like, you know, 16 years ago this week, we were all sitting around, you know, watching LeBron entertain all these delegations from various parts of the country, going to Cleveland to go meet with him and his team. Where's LeBron going to go? There's always been versions of all of this. And we don't have superstar free agency anymore. pretty much dead. So we have superstar trades instead. So we get Janus and we get, I'm not going to call

Lamello Ball a superstar, but we get the Lamello Ball trade. We will have potentially a Jalen Brown trade. Like, this is the NBA offseason. This is what we love. I don't think it overshadows or undercuts the NICS championship at all. I don't think, you know, as I sit here in New York, anybody in New York gives a damn about any of that stuff. They're still all just reveling in the glory of the NICs right now. So they don't care about it. It's going to be December. and they might be like 10 and 10 and everybody's gonna be like, I don't know if we just want to chip.

Like they're, I don't think New York is even going to care about winning or losing for the next like two or three years. They're good for a while. I think they're good for a while. But the NBA, like it's always been like this because of the way that the schedule is structured, right?

We go straight from the finals to the draft and straight from the draft of free agency. And then there are just deals coming off left and right and everybody's leaking everything and there's tampering going on left and right. And so deals are being done even before they're supposed to get done and all this stuff. Like, ah, it's the fun of the NBA offseason. And I think, if anything, this should be reassuring. I think people worried that because of the second apron

restrictions and teams ducking that apron or the first apron, ducking the tax, you know, this is the closest to a hard cap the NBA's ever had. People were worried, like, is there going to be any transactions at all anymore? That's part of the fun of the NBA. And it has eliminated superstar our free agency for the most part, but it has pushed everything toward trades instead. So we still get our pyrotechnics. We still get our transaction wire. We still get, you know, social media lighting up with all the rumors. So that part of it for the league is all good. And then as far the rest of it, a lot of what we're seeing is at least partially or wholly the product of the new system. But it's created this parody where everybody thinks they've got a shot. The Minnesota Timberwolves think they've

actually got a shot to go to the finals with the mellow ball. How about that? Why not? Why not? We'll see. I think no matter what the, I personally think in getting back to Timberwells before we get out of here, I think that no matter the case and no matter the structure, no matter the apron, no matter the era, you still got to be patient and make methodical

moves. And that applied in the 1970s, when teams were trading Moses Malone for guys you've never heard of just to make short-term gains, right? But the smartest front offices and the most patient front offices are the ones that always went out. And I think that's going to be a lesson for the Timberwolves going forward. That is my two cents.

Anything else, final thoughts on the trade? Or are we already exhausted? No, I just want to clarify that I did not cover the Moses-Malone trade. I mean, yeah, but she was like 20 when that happened. No, it's not. Just to be really fucking clear. That has been another edition of real ones. We will see you guys on Tuesday now.

We're going to be recording. It's going to be a late record. You probably get into your feeds sometime Tuesday night because we're going to be recording a couple hours after free agency starts and just talking about deals. I don't know what we're going to be talking about because anything can happen in this great league that we cover. All right.

I also at some point Real ones mailbag at Gmail.com Real ones mailbag at Gmail.com. Real ones mailbag at what Howard Beck? Gmail.com. We've been neglecting them. We have been neglecting them. We will get back to you.

I promise. I promise. You know we love our real ones. All the shit. See you Tuesday. Bye. Must be 21 years and older and present in select states.

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