{"id":762487,"date":"2026-06-16T12:51:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T12:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/762487\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T12:51:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T12:51:16","slug":"nba-column-its-okay-to-root-for-good-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/762487\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Column: It\u2019s Okay to Root for Good People"},"content":{"rendered":"

This isn\u2019t just another puff piece by a Minnesota Timberwolves<\/a> fan celebrating Karl-Anthony Towns.<\/p>\n

As much as I would love to flood the internet with more positivity and reveling in Towns\u2019 most recent accomplishment, I\u2019ve actually been thinking about why I\u2019ve been rooting for Towns to win the championship this postseason.<\/p>\n

When watching an NBA game, my flowchart of \u201cWho am I rooting for?\u201d has usually gone something like this:<\/p>\n

Are they the Timberwolves?If they aren\u2019t, which team\u2019s victory\/loss would benefit the Timberwolves more?Which team\u2019s victory\/loss would lead to the Timberwolves catching fewer straws?<\/p>\n

*Just as important, everything would be inverse if you replace Timberwolves with Lakers<\/p>\n

During the 2026 NBA Finals, all indications should\u2019ve pointed towards me rooting for the San Antonio Spurs<\/a>. If the Spurs won it all, it would likely mean they would keep the team together. A team that the injury-riddled Wolves took to six games (astronomical point differential aside). A San Antonio loss would likely prompt them to add more firepower in the offseason, rebalancing their roster along the way. Additionally, Minnesota losing to the eventual champs sounds a lot better than losing to the eventual runner-up.<\/p>\n

Additionally, a New York Knicks<\/a> victory should be to the Wolves\u2019 demise. Fans and talking heads would be champing at the bit to ridicule Minnesota for giftwrapping banner number two to New York in the form of Towns. In fact, Towns would be just the latest top-10 draft pick that the Wolves failed to build around, then traded, and then won the Larry O\u2019Brien Trophy in just two seasons with their new team. Meanwhile, the bulk of the Timberwolves\u2019 offseason content is about how they can try to trade one of the players they received in that very same trade.<\/p>\n

By this logic, rooting against the Knicks should have been a no-brainer.<\/p>\n

However, I still found myself pulling for New York. I was willing to ignore my aforementioned flowchart even if it came at the expense of my favorite team. Why was watching Towns claw his way towards a title with the Knicks so much different than, say, Andrew Wiggins with the Golden State Warriors four years ago? I\u2019ve met both players face-to-face multiple times, and they were always nothing but pleasant to me. They both tried, to the best of their own respective abilities, to win in Minnesota without ever the peep of a trade request.<\/p>\n

It was because of how I personally viewed these individuals as humans.<\/p>\n

My admiration for Towns has already been detailed here on Canis Hoopus<\/a>. He\u2019s someone who, by multiple accounts<\/a>, is a grade A person off the court. Whether it\u2019s been within the local Minnesota community or as someone who regularly uses his platform to uplift the disenfranchised, Towns is someone that I\u2019ve always been proud to root for. It\u2019s always been about more than basketball with him.<\/p>\n

Conversely, I wrote a whole piece about players I love rooting against<\/a> four years ago. So much angst, Leo! So, have I just become soft now? Has the birth of my first child turned me into a \u201csnowflake\u201d who just wants everyone to get along? I doubt that very much.<\/p>\n

\"Leo<\/a><\/p>\n

BlueSky<\/p>\n

What I\u2019ve grown to realize over the years is that everything shouldn\u2019t have to be in binaries. Just because I was rooting for Towns didn\u2019t mean I was rooting against the Wolves. That didn\u2019t even mean I was rooting against Victor Wembanyama, who was openly critical of ICE activity in Minnesota, nor the Spurs franchise, who are one of the NBA organizations most openly critical of our current government.<\/p>\n

On the flip side, rooting for Towns didn\u2019t mean I was rooting for former Wolves assistant coach Eric Daniel \u201cRick\u201d Brunson, given the previous sexual assault allegation raised against him. It didn\u2019t mean I was rooting for James Dolan and his laundry list of transgressions (including an eerily similar SA allegation<\/a>). There are often both good and bad people on both sides. And there are usually more than just two sides.<\/p>\n

Can I root for an athlete even if they play on a team with a rotten owner, or have rotten teammates?<\/p>\n

Can I root for a musical artist even if they\u2019re signed to a rotten label?<\/p>\n

Can I root for my favorite sibling even though they share a rotten parent with me?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s perhaps a different discussion for another day, but in this particular case, I find it easier to cheer for and follow athletes who are simply good people and not overanalyze the rest.<\/p>\n

People like Ricky Rubio, who has had huge success the last couple of years playing with his first professional team, Joventut Badalona (sadly, they just got eliminated in the semi-finals of the Spanish Liga ACB playoffs), while continuing to do great work in the cancer research arena with his foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

People like Gorgui Dieng, who has continued to pour into his home country of Senegal, uplifting the youth and sports communities along the way. This is why Canis Hoopus writes stories about these former players, all three of whom were recipients of NBA Cares Community Assist awards.<\/p>\n

There will always be people who root for players for different reasons. Some may root for players that have an aesthetically pleasing style of hooping (Curry, Kyrie). Some may root for players of the high school jock ilk (Kobe, or the ringless Jimmy Butler). Some may not even care about the players themselves, as long as they help bring a championship to your favorite team.<\/p>\n

People will try to change you or ridicule you for your choice.<\/p>\n

But this is a reminder that it is always okay to root for good people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This isn\u2019t just another puff piece by a Minnesota Timberwolves fan celebrating Karl-Anthony Towns. As much as I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":762488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3782],"tags":[7,5842,307,152,3954,6,308],"class_list":["post-762487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-minnesota-timberwolves","tag-basketball","tag-general","tag-minnesota","tag-minnesota-timberwolves","tag-minnesotatimberwolves","tag-nba","tag-timberwolves"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116759880486878924","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}