It’s a premise befitting a new Bill Lawrence sitcom: A middling sports team and its underachieving would-be star player are stuck in a rut, prompting team management to shake things up by drafting a cocky young player with a flashy game, penchant for shit talk, and boundless charisma. The players develop an unlikely rapport and, together, reverse their team’s fortunes. If you’ve watched any number of sports comedies, you can probably imagine it — or you can just tune in to the Minnesota Timberwolves, whose pairing of unsteady former No.
1 overall draft pick (Karl Anthony Towns) with shiny new hope (Anthony Edwards) has yielded some of the most electric moments of the NBA season. And by that, I’m referring to their post-game press conferences. NBA pressers have a tendency to be staid: Players go through the motions responding to every question with non-answers about how they need to “continue to get better” simply because they’re contractually obligated to do media.
Not so following Timberwolves games, owing to the effortless buddy-comedy chemistry between its two leads. Consider this perfect patter from the pair’s joint media availability following their game-seven upset over the defending champion Denver Nuggets on May 19: Reporter: Usually in NBA history, it says you have to lose and lose big before you win. What is about this team that says — Towns: We lost last year! Reporter: But that’s different.
You have to lose at a bigger stage. Usually. Towns: .
