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.

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