What REALLY Happened During the 2019 Joel Embiid-Karl-Anthony Towns Scuffle?

The shortest segment of Tuesday's show was the one Brockman has been waiting six years to ask about.

Rewind to 2019. Karl-Anthony Towns and Joel Embiid traded shoves under the basket in a Wolves-Sixers game. Towns put Embiid in a headlock. Ben Simmons threw Towns into one in return. Most of two NBA rosters got involved.

Jeff Teague was on the floor for Minnesota. He told Rich exactly what he remembers.

"Before the game, we always kind of hype Cat up against Joel Embiid," Teague said. "That's a big-man matchup. Both really talented players. Cat just kept saying, 'I'm not going today. I'm not going today.' I didn't know he meant he was going to fight him that day."

The fight, Teague said, broke out of trash talk that escalated. Philadelphia was beating Minnesota. The Wolves were getting blown out. Towns was venting.

What Teague did when the punches started was the line that made the room.

"I just see Cat, like everybody made a little ruckus or whatever, and Cat had him in a headlock for a second. Then I ran down there, tried to get Joel Embiid," Teague said. "I don't know what I was thinking. He's 300 pounds. I'm 190. I thought I was doing something. I wasn't doing anything."

His takeaway, six years later, was about Towns. Towns gets a lot of grief for being soft. The headlock, in Teague's view, was the night that should have changed that.

"It was good to see," Teague said. "Cat get a lot of slack. People talk about he's not that tough or whatever. For him to protect himself, get a little active a little bit, I liked it."

Towns now plays for the Knicks and just dunked on Embiid in transition Tuesday night. The throughline writes itself.