NBA: Portland 104, Minnesota 84

How much can you really take away from a game like this? I could talk about how good Greg Oden looked when Al Jefferson wasn’t sneaking around him for buckets. But it’s the Timberwolves. I could talk about how that two point guard lineup was pretty nifty again. But it’s the Timberwolves. Portland is working toward becoming a very good team, but Minnesota is a mess. That pretty much sums it up.

Since moving to last summer I’ve talked with a fair amount of Timberwolves fans when I could find them. They are hurting. They still talk about the Brandon Roy trade. Most of them condemn the Mayo-for-Love deal. (One of the lone Love supporters I found turned out to be Travis Diener's cousin. This has nothing to do with this entry but is so random I had to include it).

They don't seem hopeful, they seem like a group that has had such bad management of their team for years that they expect it to continue into infinity. Like I said, they are hurting.

There are so many ways to describe how lost this franchise is. They don’t have a true home court advantage because so many fans of the visiting team always show up (true tonight as well, I’ll get there in a bit). The team gave up 146 points to the Warriors . The franchise is in a legal battle over the right to hang signs in their building . My personal Wolves-are-in-trouble-anecdote is from the first game I attended, where I saw exactly as many OJ Mayo-Timberwolves-protest-custom jerseys as Kevin Love jerseys (1).

The awfulness of this franchise extends beyond a losing team and some depressed fans. Just going to the games feels like more of a pseudo-NBA experience than the real deal, like you’re watching a TV show where the characters go to a basketball game and everything looks sort of forced and contrived. (I'm still not convinced that Oleksiy Pecherov is a real NBA player and not some tall guy they hired as an extra to portray an NBA player. Also, he reminds me of Stewie Griffin ).

It isn’t all bad, the Timberwolves marketing department, bless those poor souls, run a ton of promotions to get people in the building. Some of them are unbelievable. Tonight I got a lower-level ticket for, get this, five dollars . It was part of deal they run for middle of the week games that don’t have any huge stars coming into town. If you were able to show a college ID, even an expired, out-of-state one, you got yourself a lower level ticket for what I used to think was an amazing price for a foot-long sandwich.

Sitting in a lower level section filled with college students created a micro-climate of enthusiasm that was unique in the building. I also found myself seated by several other Blazer fans, including Mrs. Fernandez and some guys with a flask disguised as a cell phone (Also spotted: Darius Miles jersey !). After an undisclosed amount of cheap beer that came in plastic bottles I was having a great time. The buzz was just enough to make me think I was at a real NBA game. Then reality hit. Twice.

You know those contests held between quarters where there is some ridiculous relay competition on the court and the participants represent certain sections of the stadium? The winning section usually gets some sort of freebie related to the sponsor. Tonight it was announced that the winning section would be awarded coupons for free sandwiches. The competition had contestants eating sandwiches and riding giant tricycles (of course).

Blazer fans, Wolves fans, and people who didn’t really seem to care for either team were united in our section cheering on our representatives. Thanks to an older man who was startlingly good at riding the oversized tricycle, we won. It may just be sandwich coupons, but to a section full of buzzed college students this was like winning a trip to the Moon. People were chanting, high-fiving, I even saw a chest bump.

Then they ran out of coupons about a third of the way up the section and disappeared. After fifteen minutes of impressive booing, team officials returned to the area handing out a piece of paper for everyone to put their name and address on. You know, so they could mail you a sandwich coupon. There was only one problem.

“Hey, do any of you have a pen?”

Only in Minnesota.

The same type of event happened later when our section won free Klondike Bars. (I'm sure the T’Wolves folks were thrilled to see the $5 student section prevail once again.) Team representatives came out with what looked like one medium-sized box of the delicious treat. They had enough for about a fifth of the section this time. That was it. No names and addresses for that one. I guess because its hard to mail ice cream.

This isn’t just me whining about not getting free stuff, although that did suck. It says something about the quality of an organization that does this type of thing on a regular basis. Does this happen with any other NBA team? I remember my section winning out at the Rose Garden once, the prize being free pizza. It wasn’t even a coupon, it was a hot and delicious personal pizza delivered straight to your lap. And they somehow managed to have a hot and delicious pizza for every person in the section. Where Amazing Happens indeed.

After the incident even the Timberwolves fans around me were shouting out comparisons to the Flint Tropics. These are just more stories that show how poorly this organization is doing. If new T'Wolves Executive David Kahn wants to change the franchise around he’ll have to do a lot more than draft point-guards.

EVEN MORE IRRELEVANT:

- The Timberwolves don’t have t-shirt cannons. I’m not one to go crazy for free tee shirts, I even get a little annoyed at the people who do. But this struck me as sad. Every real NBA team should at least have bazookas for launching tee shirts into the stands, right? In Minny they are still only using the sling-shot, and I’m pretty sure it was made with a stick and some vines.

- The troughs . They are freaking everywhere in the and this is no exception. Outside of this one, the last trough I remember was also my first: the Coos County Fair when I was in the second grade. Here I’m coming to expect rubbing elbows with strangers while I relieve myself.

- I heard that I did not make the Portland broadcast, although my fiancée allegedly was shown walking down some stairs. This was not for lack of trying on my part. I was obnoxious. I was wearing an awesome BlazerMania t-shirt and waving a red Oden shirt around my head like a Terrible Towel. And yes, there was robot-inspired dancing. I really should think about growing up.

- Before the game I was at the Starbucks across the street from the arena getting some coffee. I noticed a big bus out front and realized the Blazers were staying in the hotel that the Starbucks was attached to. One by one the players came out and got into the bus, which then drove them about twenty feet to the arena. Check the picture here : bus on the left, the arena on the right. Something about that scene made me laugh. My fiancée hypothesized that they must not want to dirty themselves by walking amongst the plebeians. Not wanting to rush to judgment, I just figured they hate the environment.