Beware the (almost) Ides of March

On October 9th, 2010, the Minnesota Twins lost Game 3 of the American League Division Series to the New York Yankees 6-1. That game put the final touches on another quick playoff exit at the hand of the Bombers, and had frustrated Twins fans wondering if they were ever going to see the day their club would get over the postseason hump. As it turns out, they should have been reveling in simply seeing the playoffs in the first place.

It is now March 2012, five hundred and twenty days have passed since that last playoff contest involving one of this state’s four major professional sports teams. If you’d like, we can throw in major college football and basketball as well, because the only things “major” about those two programs during that same time span has been the level of disappointment they’ve created. Among the 12 cities in this country with teams in each pro sport, this run of futility is currently unmatched. Most not only have recent championships, but also teams with buzz and upside; if not already contenders, they soon will be, Miami, Phoenix and DC are the only three cities approaching the futility of Minnesota in more than one sport, and even each of them has at least one current playoff team. Not to mention, the weather in Miami and Phoenix.

The one bright spot on the horizon for the fans in this accursed burgh was the ascension of the Timberwolves over the past couple months from laughingstock to playoff contenders. They were the punch in the turdbowl that is our local sports scene. Now, sadly, that hope has been snuffed out, snapped in an instant like the ligament it hinged on. I’m not going to tell you that the Wolves are my favorite team, or the NBA my favorite league. To be honest, if ranking title priorities, they’d be a distant fourth. But with that said, I love compelling sporting events, love going to, or just heading out to the bar to watch, big games, love feeling the buzz in the city when something crosses over from “everyday event” to “big effing deal”. There hasn’t been much of that lately, and over the past 520, there’s been exactly zero. When Ricky Rubio fell to the floor on Friday, clutching the torn ACL in his knee, our best shot at that changing any time soon went down with him. Had a nice angry screed prepared in response, but after 48 hours of marinating, there’s no fire left, I’m just pretty bummed.

Because it wasn’t just the chance to break our current drought that went out the window on Friday, but all of the momentum of a franchise trying to put its dreadful history behind it as well. The lottery balls have never fallen right, the players signed never quite fit, and now that things had begun to look promising, fate has once again dealt a cruel blow. One can turn to the Los Angeles Clippers for a glimmer of hope, having witnessed the excellent comeback of Blake Griffin following his devastating injury. The problem is, despite successful precedents that can be cited, no one knows how this is going to play out. Even if everything goes perfectly, a player never seems quite right after an ACL until a full year has elapsed. Some need even more time. That means the Wolves have not only lost a chance to polish their stretch run and postseason chops this season, but perhaps next as well, if several months of less-than-100% Rubio leave them behind the 8-ball in the standings.

Everything not going perfectly is not a scenario that I will permit myself to consider at the moment, because the thought of losing another star in the making is too troubling. While basketball may not be my favorite sport, it’s still one that I enjoy immensely, and none of its charms are above great point guard play, the kind Rubio was delivering in spades. I know all about the deficiencies in his game, but he was immensely fun to watch, and had been a huge part in making Wolves basketball fun to watch once again. The idea that he may not come back the same, just when we were settling into the possibility of seeing him grow over the next decade, is beyond the pale.

I know the difference between sports tragedy and the genuine article, honestly. Nobody died here, there’s no terrible injustice, it doesn’t approach the level of a hundred truly horrible stories that you can find in any given week, I’ve got that. But that still doesn’t change the fact that a big steaming turd has been dumped in our laps here, and it didn’t have to happen. If you’re keeping score out there, we’ve now seen two former AL MVPs, the NFL’s best running back, the best Gopher hoops player, half the NHL team and a charismatic, up-and-coming point guard fall victim to catastrophic, lingering and/or career-threatening injuries during the past year. It’s sports, injuries happen, but at some point you start to wonder, is this run of bad luck ever going to end?

Looking toward the future, it’s hard to envision a scenario in which that end comes anytime soon. The NHL team is six feet under, the NBA team just got one of its legs taken out from under it (literally), the NFL team is in full rebuilding mode and the ballclub is chock full of holes. The run of futility looked to be in jeopardy just a few shorts days ago, but now? Going another 520 seems likelier than not.

On a weekend of positivity, that was not the way things needed to start. But as always, time to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and continue plugging away here in Loserville.

The Real Redeem Team

When the 2008 men's basketball team traveled to wherever it was they had the last Summer Olympics, they adopted the moniker "Redeem Team" to reflect their view that they had performed poorly in their last go-around.  The rest, as they say, is history: The team won gold, demons were exorcised, and the Minnesota Timberwolves were indirectly doomed to waste a Top 5 draft pick on an overrated Spanish point guard, largely due to the effusive and hyperbolic praise lobbed in his direction by many members of Team USA.  It's become clear in the interim that these tactics were all part of a diabolical plan laid out by American players to con some inept GM into picking said point guard at an insanely elevated draft position, thus poisioning the common wisdom against European players and stemming their influx into the league.

But that's a topic for another time (likely 2-3 years from now) and I only bring all of this up to suggest that for me personally, the Redeem Team did not play two years ago in Beijing, in fact they don't even play basketball.  For my money, the true Redeem Team played hockey in Vancouver last night, upsetting Team Canada 5-3 and throwing a nation of puckheads into turmoil.  This was less about atoning for failures and more about giving me a reason to care that the Olympics in the first place.  I'm just not an Olympics guy, never really have been, most of the sports are boring nonsense that I would never think twice about following.  The fact that they change the venue and air it on NBC does not magically transform these uninteresting activities into interesting ones, at least in my mind, judging by the level of interest among the general public, most of you feel differently.

So I say like what you like, and will avoid an anti-Olympic screed here.  But I will say that I had begun to chafe at the constant coverage slamming me over the head, an the incredulous questions from friends and co-workers when I admitted my dislike for the Games.  That all changed last night, as I witnessed a hockey game that was so historic and well-played, it caused me to completely withdraw all of my prior objections to relentless beat of Olympic activities over the past 10 days.  I'm not saying that I'm ready to start breaking down figure skating and the two-man luge here, but for someone who loves the game of hockey, it is difficult to deny that this is as good as the game gets, and that all the nonsense leading up to it was rendered moot. 

The idea of All-Star games has always fascinated us, even though many of the participants phone in their effort so transparently, things can border on the ridiculous.  This was an All-Star game with playoff intensity, a very rare opportunity to watch the best players in the world play to win at all costs.  The World Cup might be the only parallel here, Olympic basketball could be argued, but the competitiveness of the teams is far too limited to match up with the 6-7 hockey teams having a legitimate shot to win gold. 

At any rate, the unique opportunity to watch the best the world has to offer in one of my favorite sports and trumped my Olympic hate fully, at least for this biennium.  I'm not sure what the Summer Olympics has to offer that could make me detest it less, but I pledge to remember the excellence of the hockey, and tolerate the smarmy nonsense that accompanies it.  Unless of course, they pull NHL players from competing, as has been mentioned as a possibility 4 years from now, but we'll jump off that bridge when we come to it.