Hello and welcome to the tampering podcast, part of the Athletic NBA Show Network.

I'm Sam Amick, National NBA writer at The Athletic, here with a couple of co-hosts that I'm super fired up to be with because my regular guys, Anthony Slater, Fred Katz, are out on that beat, doing their thing, travel grind, schedule mix-ups, all that good stuff. But we're going to turn, you know, lemons into lemonade here. We got Jay King coming from Boston. We got Will Gillery, I assume in New Orleans. Will? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. You go to tell by the shoe rack when he's got the shoe rack

you know what's going on yeah that's not a hotel shoe rack so here here's what's fun about

this week's episode first of all two of my favorites on this pod so so happy to have you guys here

we have kind of a running joke not even a joke kind of a reality on tampering that when you have Anthony Slater, who's Northern California, and now granted, Katz is a New York City boy, but we have a little bit of a West Coast bias on the tampering pod. We talk about the Western Conference a little more frequently than we do the East. I wanted to change that this week and specifically,

and this is going to be the back end of the pod. You know, Jay is master of all things, Boston Celtics,

and Jay, for a, excuse me, for a team that is 10, 11 games ahead in the east, a team that's been

dominant doing, you know, borderline historic things. You know, I wouldn't be mad at them if they felt overlooked by this, you know, little pod here because we just don't talk about the Celtics much. So we're going to do that on the back end. Will is the expert these days, not only on the New Orleans Pelicans, but the Miami Heat. We're going to use Will's voice to talk about the east at large and really kind of who do we think

is going to possibly come for the Celtics next and and give them a run for their money in the

playoffs but guys as we talked about briefly off the air i do want to check this box on the news

front and ironically with my whole preamble there about the west coast bias i'm going to go out west

um the minnesota timur wolves are having themselves a day preamble there about the West Coast Bias, I'm going to go out west.

The Minnesota Timberwolves are having themselves a day.

You know, they're fighting for the number one seed in the West, having a great season.

And then today, just minutes, you know, about an hour before we jumped on the pod,

we get this bombshell announcement from owner Glenn Taylor.

I'm not going to read the entire statement.

I'm sure a lot of the listeners have already heard this news, but the bottom line, the deal between Glenn Taylor and Alex Rodriguez and Mark Lohr and that group that was buying majority

interest in the Timberwolves and ushering in an exciting new era, that puppy has fallen apart.

And the final line is a mic drop,

if I've ever seen one in this statement from Glenn Taylor.

And here is the quote,

...