You talked after Game 3 about how you wouldn’t be in the NBA, sitting at the postgame podium, if you didn’t hold yourself to that standard. Is this a destination that, when the trade happened last summer, you saw yourself fitting in because of that symmetry? Alex Caruso: Yeah, for sure. I knew the stars aligned on that level just because of the people I knew in the organization still that were here, and just interacting with Sam. I’ve told a story about him multiple times where he came on a trip with the G League team to Sioux Falls, S.D. We had two games in four days in Sioux Falls, and he came down for the first game and then stayed the night and just did a Q&A; with all the guys on the G League team, an open forum to ask him whatever you wanted. Knowing what I know now, that’s very uncommon. So I knew the type of people running the organization were still here from when I was here the first time. I just knew what they stood for. And then obviously, watching the team play, seeing how hard they play and how much success they had the year before, I knew that it was going to be a great fit for me X’s and O’s-wise on the court, and I would kind of seamlessly fall in line. -via New York Times / April 29, 2025