The Target Center is a nice building, wedged right in downtown Minneapolis. It was built in 1990, and the box office looks like a futuristic terminal. On this night, the lowly T-Wolves took on the Golden State Warriors in a clash of bottom-feeding, clown ball (granted this wasn’t a marquee game to attend). There were so few people walking around the upper part of the stadium that as I walked to my seat about five minutes before tip-off, I didn’t see anyone in the hallway for a good minute and a half. It was so quiet in the arena—aside from the promotion crew’s constant cajoling and launching of T-shirts—that it was as if the T-Wolves fans had their life force sucked out of them by years of bad basketball, leaving unsmiling husks in their place.
Earlier in the night I had grabbed some food at an Irish bar near the stadium, and the bartender had commented to me that if the T-Wolves don’t soon pick up another player like Kevin Garnett (traded to Boston in 2007) that he didn’t think the team would be around for much longer. Later, I overheard some depressed fans bemoaning the departure as well. Sad pining for a player that left three years prior is never something you want to hear from the fan base; nor do you want to witness a mildly enthusiastic ovation for marginal players like Darko Milicic. Both happened at the game, and if that’s not a testimony that Minnesota fans have given up all hope, then the fact that the Timberwolves dancers got a bigger round of applause than any of the players should be.
-I can’t say I blame him, I wouldn’t want my team to be like the Wolves either. Wait, my team IS the Wolves. Doh! Everything he had to say about his experience of going to the Target Center to see a Wolves game is so sad yet so true.
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These are hot sellers, hurry and place your order before they’re all gone! What I really mean is, WHO WOULD BUY THIS!? I guess it could make a good gift for those Timberwolves fans who still think it’s 2002. I know what you’re thinking, and no, that fan does not exist.