Welcome to the Athletic NBA show podcast Basket Budd's edition.

I'm your host Zach Harper.

That's Josh Houston. That's Jay King.

And we've got a show for you.

We've got the conference finals.

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Boys, I tried to tell you after game six,

that it was Wolves and Seven, and guess what it was,

it was Wolves and Seven.

I am legitimately shocked.

I'm legitimately shocked because the Timberwolves just have a way of of not doing anything, right, in their

history. They've literally had one other year in which they were relevant, well, no, two other

years in their history in which they were relevant for good reasons. It was 2004 when they last made the conference finals with Kevin Garnett, Sam Cousel, LaTrell Spreewell, shout to Trenton Hassel. Troy Hudson. T. Hudd, Derek Martin. Yeah, I mean, we can name the whole roster. Troy Hudson was legit, though. Not really. One of the worst contractuals history. Great year. Great year. He didn't. He didn't. I think you're thinking of the next year. And then that Jimmy Butler year before things blew up, they were really good. And then Jimmy got hurt. And then they snuck in as the eight seed, actually beating the nuggets to get in on the last day of the year. And then other than that, it's just been crap.

It's just been one big crap factory.

And so when they were down 20 early in the third quarter, what's funny, I was watching

with my friend Miles, who I used to cover the Timberwolves with.

And Miles was just kind of like, all right, yeah, this is the wolf stuff that we do, right?

This is just, this is the disappointment.

This is wolves, whatever.

And then he started like not paying attention and just telling me about his work.

...