Wolvescast Digest: It Is What It Is

Welcome to Wolvescast Digest, a weekly roundup of NBA odds and ends related to your favorite hometown team. With so much fun NBA content on the web, it can be easy to miss things. We’re here to draw attention to the things that may have sifted through the cracks in your overtaxed attention spans. Feel free to leave a comment with anything that you feel deserves inclusion.

Know Your Meme: PUBG

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is a free-to-play video game that was released last year. It’s having a cultural moment right now. It may be the most popular video game in the country at the moment. NBA players love it — Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins sometimes play it until 6:00 AM. Late Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning, Ben Simmons insisted KAT didn’t need to go to bed because the Wolves were going to play the Hawks.

After KAT scored a career-high (and franchise-high) 56 points against Atlanta, Simmons couldn’t help himself from gloating.

We live in strange times.

I Don’t Get It

Do we play down to the level of our competition? Does Thibs not prepare the players the same way for losing teams?

This is stupid.

DON’T PLAY VIDEO GAMES WITH KG

The Athletic should pay me for how often I advertise their terrific content in these digests. This week’s selection? An illuminating interview with FORMER WOLF™ and current Chicago Bulls head coach Fred Hoiberg unearthed anecdotes that hint at the multitudes contained within Kevin Garnett.

DM: Best teammate you ever had and why?

Hoiberg: ... the other guy was Kevin Garnett. Just to see the work ethic. He’d play back-to-back games of 40-plus minutes and he’d be the first guy in the gym the next day. Just the fire and the passion that he played with, there’s not a lot of guys like that. One, it’s almost physically impossible to be what he was. But to see him doing it, I mean, it was in practice. He’d be foaming at the mouth if guys weren’t playing the right way and they weren’t playing hard. If somebody was on their phone at halftime, he’d come and throw it against a wall. He had that passion that I’ve never seen before. And to be a part of that team the year that he was the MVP was really, really special to be a part of.

DM: Did he ever come at you, or did you know better than to try him?

Hoiberg: He was good with me. I had a really good relationship with Kevin. After I had my first heart surgery he came over to my house and played video games with my kids. I’ll never forget that. I mean, that was such a cool thing. My son was in kindergarten and Kevin was kind of his idol. I’m laid up, could hardly move after my chest was recently cracked open. And here’s Kevin Garnett playing a baseball video game with my son and beating the hell out of him. Gave him no chance to win. It was cool.

A highlight video of Amile Jefferson scoring 27 points and pulling down 18 rebounds for the Iowa Wolves.

This video from the official NBA D League YouTube account has 312 views.

I don’t have a framed photo of myself with Kobe, but my Facebook profile picture IS a 2011 photo of me with Ricky.

Andrew shared a chill night in with Cassie watching The Secret Life of Pets. I noticed this photo on his shelf.

Ricky and Kickstradomis collaborated on this #FightCancer shoe that honors Flip Saunders.

TFW you realize you don’t need to end your recovery early.

Find your moment of zen in this week’s Jam Session.

This is my favorite installment of Jam Session. The music is perfect, the highlights are lengthy, and the tone is the perfect antidote for any gloomy feelings. I would never say this to his face, but Neil is getting really good at making these videos.

What did we miss this week? Let us know in the comments.