Wolves, Lynx and Twins make for big weekend in Minnesota sports

CATHY WURZER: Today, 28 teams in the NBA are giving interviews to share their plans for the upcoming season. That includes the Minnesota Timberwolves. Team leaders and players began their media day appearance just a few minutes ago at 12:30. And you can imagine the questions about Karl-Anthony Towns. Now, The Athletic reported Friday that the Wolves are trading him to the New York Knicks.

Joining me to talk about what this means and we're going to talk about the Vikings-Packers game and a whole lot more are our sports guys, Wally and Eric. How are you guys doing?

WALLY LANGFELLOW: Good, Cathy. How are you?

ERIC NELSON: Happy Monday, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: Happy Monday, Eric. Well, am I supposed to be surprised by this, Wally? Because I was watching another local sportscast last night, and they kept saying reportedly Karl-Anthony Towns is going to New York. I'm like, OK, reportedly, but not confirmed this yet. So is this on or off? What's going on?

WALLY LANGFELLOW: No, it's a done deal. He's going to New York to play, ironically, and maybe it's not ironic, for Tom Thibodeau, who, of course, was the Wolves coach back in the day. And so he has played for him before, Karl-Anthony Towns has, and he is headed to New York. And in exchange, the Wolves get Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo, Keita Bates-Diop. And then they get a lottery pick-- I should say a lottery-protected first round pick, which originally belonged to Detroit.

But the main reason-- and I think Karl-Anthony Towns, no question was surprised by it. I know I was shocked. I couldn't believe it when I read the headline on Friday night. But he's a four-time all-star. He has been here nine seasons already, Karl-Anthony Towns has. And I think that the Timberwolves were looking clearly to free up some salary cap space.

KAT was going to get paid $43 million for this coming season. And he's got a max contract. So they tried to give themselves some flexibility. What this means in the long term, it's a great question. They gave up-- I think it's easy to say they gave up their second best player behind Anthony Edwards, and they hoped that Julius Randle can fill some of that hole.

They hope that they give themselves more depth. They'll be one of the deepest teams in the NBA. I don't think there's any question about that, but it's a shocker. I mean, to send away a guy that has been the heart and soul of your team through thick and thin and a lot of thin, actually, because there's a lot of losing over these past several years. But I guess it'll mean more playing time for Naz Reid. It's very surprising, but maybe not so much with Tim Connelly as the general manager of this team.

CATHY WURZER: Let me ask Eric, and maybe Wally you can chime in on this, too. Jeff Wald from FOX 9 just tweeted this, saying that Timberwolves Coach Chris Finch, when asked about KAT says, I'm not at liberty to say anything, and you know that. Now, isn't that an odd thing to say? Eric.

ERIC NELSON: Yeah, I would look at that, Cathy, as simply dotting I's and crossing T's and making sure they adhere to NBA protocol, because all the comments coming out of New York City with Julius Randle and the other Knick players are, hey, we're off to Minnesota. So I don't think there's any reason to think this deal doesn't go through.

I mean, you could have a medical issue crop up, like we saw with Carlos Correa a couple of years ago when he tried to sign with San Francisco, then they balked and then later the New York Mets, same thing, they balked and he wound up in Minnesota. But I can't imagine this doesn't happen.

CATHY WURZER: OK Thank you.

WALLY LANGFELLOW: Same, Cathy. Same, Cathy. I think the only reason is maybe just some legal stuff that they have to tie some loose ends on. And maybe they got to send everybody through a physical and make sure that everybody is in good shape and that the trade is finalized. But yeah, it's a done deal. All but the final.

CATHY WURZER: Got it. Thank you. Say, while we're talking about basketball, we might as well talk about the Lynx. I mean, I talked to Lea B. Olsen earlier this morning, who I love, and we talked about the fact that the Lynx lost to Connecticut in the first game of the semis. And she said, well, they're a pretty tough team. It was a close game. But I'm wondering, Eric, where did we get into trouble here?

ERIC NELSON: Well, it's what you call a mini upset only in the sense that Connecticut was on the road and they're the 3 seed, the Sun, and the Lynx are the 2 seed with the home court advantage, although they've lost that now temporarily. It's a 73-70 Sun win. It's a best of five series. So you don't have a lot of wiggle room here. First team to three moves on to the WNBA finals.

Well, they could not slow down Marina Mabrey, who had 20 points. And then Alyssa Thomas chipped in with 17 points, 10 rebounds, 9 assists to carry Connecticut. And I think the key thing is Minnesota, a team very good at closing games out could not do it. The Sun outscored the Lynx 16 to 8 in the final 10 minutes. So Minnesota gets cold at the exact wrong time in the game.

Also Napheesa Collier, we expect so much out of her because she really is the gold standard player on the Lynx. She averaged 40 points against Phoenix in round 1, but she was limited to 19 points and 9 rebounds yesterday. For a lot of players, that's good enough, but for Napheesa, I think we expect more and they're probably going to need more in game 2, which is Tuesday night in Minneapolis. That'll tip off at 8:30 PM. The crowd last night was 8,506. So pretty good turnout.

CATHY WURZER: Yeah, no kidding. So I have a friend, a UW River Falls alum, fellow alum. We've had a long time bet whenever the Vikings and the Packers play, a brandy old fashioneds. So I won. I was surprised though, because I was really thinking the Vikings would have trouble with Green Bay at Lambeau Field, Eric. And there was a point where I was a little bit worried, but they won.

ERIC NELSON: They did. And there is nothing like an NFL Sunday in Green Bay, especially when it's 75 degrees and there's no clouds in the sky. It was just a sun-kissed day. 78,335 fans on hand, and a lot of purple. I was there. And so yeah, a tale of halves. The Vikings were up 28-nothing at one point. And Green Bay comes roaring back in the second half.

But the bottom line is Minnesota's 4-0. There are only three perfect teams left in the NFL. Kansas City and Seattle are the other two. Seahawks play tonight in Detroit, so they may go down. Sam Darnold was outstanding in the first half. Three more touchdown passes. Jordan Addison scored twice.

And remember, Darnold now has 11 touchdown passes and just three interceptions. And one of the things people here in the Twin Cities, and now nationally, I saw this on Sports Illustrated this morning, their website, should the Vikings extend his contract? He's playing on a one year, $10 million deal this season. That's chump change in the NFL. If he gets to the open market and he continues to have success this year, he's going to win the NFL lottery, kind of like Kirk Cousins.

So that's a sidebar here for the Minnesota Vikings. Now, they were able to weather the storm from Jordan Love for Green Bay. He threw for 389 yards and 4 touchdowns. Those are career highs for Love, but he also tied his career high with three interceptions, one of them late in the game to Byron Murphy Jr. It was not a good throw by Jordan Love.

So next up for the purple, Cathy get out your passport. You can hop the pond and go see them play the New York Jets in London at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The Jets are 2 and 2. And if you don't go, then you're going to have to get up early to watch it on Sunday, 8:30 AM kickoff from the UK.

CATHY WURZER: Speaking of watching, I watched you guys on a Duluth TV station, 10,000 Takes on TV. It was great to see you both. And while you were bellyaching about the Twins, now there's a lot to complain about, obviously. They played their last game yesterday. Do the Pohlads deserve all the blame on this horrible season?

WALLY LANGFELLOW: Well, I think that they certainly deserve some of it. I mean, Joe Pohlad talking about making business-type decisions where they did not go out and sign any free agents. They did bring in Carlos Santana this year, but they didn't help the pitching staff at all. They didn't do anything at the trade deadline to help supplement what they were trying to do on the field.

And a combination of that with the injuries to Buxton and Correa and Royce Lewis, although all three of those were playing here down the stretch the last couple of weeks. But I think just the combination of all those things, yeah, I think the Pohlads deserve some of the criticism. And it's going to be an interesting winter for sure. We'll see how they tackle it over the winter.

CATHY WURZER: All right, you guys. Thanks. Always appreciate talking to you. Talk to you later.

WALLY LANGFELLOW: See you, Cathy.