Bill Simmons started his latest podcast with Ryen Russillo off with a reference to that weird TLC show, using it to slam Rudy Gobert. Buckle up, Minnesota Timberwolves fans.
“Alright, we’re taping this part of the podcast,” prompted Simmons. “It is 9:45 Pacific Time. Ryen Russillo is here. We’re gonna go for, I don’t know, close to two hours, and it’s gonna be followed by an all-new Dr. Pimple Popper right after the podcast.
“That poor guy, his wife died and he had four softballs on his head, and now he’s gotta go on a TLC show. What is that show?”
“It’s not anything I’m gonna watch,” responded Russillo.
“It’s a real show they show on cable?” Simmons asked in jest.
“Yeah, I just think there’s this weird thing where people like watching these things,” offered Russillo. “But I understood like some of the zit stuff, but she’s in there with a full-blown chainsaw. Imagine being a Timberwolves fan, and you’re sitting here watching this game, and then it’s like, wait, does the Evil Dead have a different trailer?
“It would be like, ‘No, no, that’s the TLC show.’ Like, fuck off!”
“Would you rather watch Dr. Pimple Popper or Rudy Gobert for five more playoff games?” asked Simmons. “I don’t know. It’s a toss-up.”
Simmons’ Gobert hate didn’t stop there. After breaking down a few of the other playoff games, Simmons and Russillo circled back to the Timberwolves-Denver Nuggets game.
“Nuggets-T-Wolves,” prompted Simmons. “I guess my question for this one is, is there an NBA player with a lower approval rating than Gobert?
“If we were doing tracking polls, like Connor Roy is trying to get to 1% –”
“The Con heads,” interrupted Russillo.
“The Con heads, there’s some decimals, we might be able to get there,” Simmons responded. “We might have to spend some money to get there. Is Gobert at 1%?”
“I don’t know who’s left because once Utah turns on you, you know?” Russillo asked rhetorically.
“Like, he swung that elbow into Shai on Friday,” Simmons responded. “I was like, ‘Jesus fucking Christ this guy.’ He bowled over Jokic, and they didn’t even call it. It’s just those big swinging elbows. He’s a fucking menace. I hate watching him play basketball. It makes me mad any time he – this is all sports hate. It’s not real hate.
“Any time he – like he blocked Jokic today, it made me mad. I was like, ‘Fuck! Gobert got one. Damn it!’”
“That was a great block!” exclaimed Russillo.
“It was,” Simmons agreed.
“Because the other thing, too, is like he’s also a bit of a flopper, which is weird,” avers Russillo. “And he bitches a lot. And then when Mitchell and him are both in Utah and they started tracking his passes to him, which it’s pretty apparent he didn’t want to pass it to him, it’s like, do you see other guys pass it to him?
“He had an alley-oop attempt in the OKC game where he fuckin’ caught it, and the rim blocked him. Remember?”
“Yeah, I remember,” Simmons confirmed.
“Look, when he is at his worst in some of these clips – and then you add it all in, and if you’re a Timberwolves fan, you can keep lying to yourself,” offered Russillo. “But you know deep down you’re not really lying to yourself, you’re just hoping.
“Of course, it looked a little different against Denver when you weren’t playing against Jaylin Williams, who’s probably a backup power forward instead of starting at center. And Saric, your backup center is a backup small forward. So that wasn’t a great matchup for the Thunder in that one.
“But I thought the Kyle Anderson thing was kinda nasty tonight. Because they’re getting smoked, Christian Brown has been really good for them. Brown was doing kind of the Pat Bev annoying thing, where nobody’s more annoying than Pat Bev or Lowry with that, where they want to grab the ball back from you when there’s no rush for it because you’re not going to get it inbound soon enough.”
“It’s a great dick move,” said Simmons.
“It’s a total dick move, I hate it,” Russillo confirmed. “Brown wasn’t even at the Pat Bev, Lowry level. But what Kyle Anderson did there, by throwing his elbow up into him was fucking nasty. And then the funny thing is he then falls down, and Brown didn’t even do anything except he was kinda getting away from the whole thing.
“So the reason I bring it up, is that I’m telling you right now, Kyle Anderson is toasty. He runs real toasty, and if he’s calling Gobert a bitch the whole time, we should probably defend Gobert a little bit more. But none of us are going to.”
“So, 1.8% approval rating? Is he at 2%?”
Gobert was a polarizing player when the Wolves traded for him, especially after his COVID incident. But even before that, he’s always been limited offensively. Teams frequently played him off the court in the playoffs.
He had a built-in offense in Utah. However, that’s not the case here. Some people really liked the trade, but most people were against it from the beginning, and it’s not looking great now. The Timberwolves publicly say they believe the Twin Towers strategy will work. But Game 1 did little to satiate upset fans.
