The Athletic’s Jon Krawczynski Talks LaMelo, Jaylen Brown & More

The Minnesota Timberwolves had been circling LaMelo Ball for two years before they finally landed him, and The Athletic's Jon Krawczynski had the receipts. He went to bed having just written about Minnesota's long infatuation with the Charlotte guard, then woke up to the blockbuster itself.

"The Timberwolves have been kind of infatuated with LaMelo Ball for like two years now," Krawczynski said on the show. They believed his size, shooting and playmaking would fit perfectly next to Anthony Edwards, and they had checked in with Charlotte repeatedly, only to get "the stiff arm" every time. When word spread late on draft night that the Hornets were gauging the market, Tim Connelly, one of the league's most aggressive dealmakers, pounced. Krawczynski said the sides negotiated until roughly 4:35 a.m. before the deal was done.

The package sent Naz Reid, pick swaps, a future first and second-rounders to Charlotte, with Josh Green also heading to Minnesota. Pair it with the earlier Julius Randle trade to Brooklyn, and the Wolves look nothing like the bully-ball team that once overwhelmed opponents with Rudy Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns up front.

"The identity of their team has changed remarkably over the last couple of days," Krawczynski said. The roster is now guard-heavy with a clear hole at power forward. He floated Jaden McDaniels sliding to the four, a smaller lineup with Ball, Edwards and Ayo Dosunmu, and Green as a possible flip for size. "You cannot have any holes" in the West, he warned, and Minnesota still has work to do.

The strategic logic, he argued, is a shift in who the Wolves are built to beat. Denver is no longer the team to climb over. Krawczynski put San Antonio and Oklahoma City at the top of the mountain now, two teams that smothered Edwards by throwing multiple defenders at him without fear of anyone else burning them. LaMelo changes that calculus.

"It's just going to be a lot harder to double Anthony Edwards as aggressively as the Spurs and the Thunder did," he said.

Then came Jaylen Brown, whom the Wolves checked in on after Boston's pursuit of Giannis Antetokounmpo collapsed. Krawczynski said the price is "sky high, as it should be" for a former Finals MVP who finished sixth in this year's voting. It would take something like Gobert, Reid, a young piece and a haul of picks. The team that intrigues him most is Denver, which needs more around Nikola Jokic, with Cleveland another possible suitor. When Brockman noted he had called the Nuggets first, Krawczynski did not argue.

Asked the show's signature what's-more-likely question, Krawczynski leaned toward Brown opening next season somewhere other than Boston. "It looks like Jaylen Brown wants to go somewhere else, wants to have his own team," he said, and with Jason Tatum already in place, Brown is the piece Boston would move to retool. A Brown-Jokic duo, he added, sounded "pretty tasty."

Krawczynski closed by pointing at the dominoes still standing: Cleveland's logjam of Evan Mobley, Jarrett Allen, Donovan Mitchell and James Harden, plus LeBron James's future and how it reshapes a Lakers team that just re-signed Austin Reaves. Expect another head-spinning summer around the Fourth of July.