Dan Barreiro asked his producer how much longer he had to
hype the Minnesota-Michigan basketball game before it was scheduled to begin.
Justin Gaard answered that he had about 14 minutes and change. At that moment, I pulled into
the driveway of the house I share with Tony D and two other guys. One of those
two is a tall blonde fellow named Tom. The following is a depressing and
somewhat inaccurate narrative describing last night's major sporting events
from Tom's and my perspective.
"Duuuuuuuuuude, are you ready for this game???"
the excitable Thomas asked as I clomped down the stairs and into our downstairs
bar and living room area that housed the big-screen that would provide us with
the evening's entertainment. I was indeed ready. Dickie V was in the house for
the ESPN feed of the Gophers-Wolverines match-up and the fantastic Kevin Harlan
was over at the Target Center
for the TNT broadcast of the less exciting contest between the badly slumping
Timberwolves and scorching-hot L.A. Clippers.
I settled into the video rocker while Tom stretched his
6-foot-5 frame over our long green leather couch, and we watched the first half
unfold with pants full of ants, rising and falling as Austin Hollins and Tim
Hardaway, Jr. traded big buckets in the game's first minutes. Tubby went to his
shift-change substitution style about seven minutes into the game. I lamented
to Tom that the five guys on the floor had produced more turnovers than points since the start of the Big Ten season and readied him for the
coming string of obscenities.
Once again, the second unit looked diseased on offense and a
step slow on defense, and their time on the court produced such gems--as
documented in the ESPN Play-by-Play of the game-- as "Maverick Ahanmisi
turnover," "Maverick Ahanmisi turnover," "Oto Osenieks
turnover," and "Foul on Oto Osenieks, Oto Osenieks turnover." Michigan
pumped the lead to 10 as the starters re-emerged, at which point Tom and I both
owed about five bucks apiece to the Blue Moon Swear Jar. Crisp, Clean, with
Just a Hint of That Sour Orangey Watching-Minnesota-Sports Aftertaste: Blue
Moon.
But then, a strange thing happened as Andre Hollins was
forced to the bench with two fouls. Julian Welch started contributing. Welch, who had been struggling mightily to regain his2011-12 three-pointer form, scored eight of 10 Gophers points
in one stretch and knocked down back-to-back threes. Elliot "Dork
Nowitzki" Eliason even stuck a lay-up at one point. The Gophers trailed by
two at the 4-minute TV timeout when Tom retreated upstairs to cut and prepare
his frozen pizza. He re-emerged just as Austin Hollins was missing a 28-foot
three-point attempt at the halftime buzzer. "Hey, check out the T'Wolves
game, yeah?" Tom said through a mouth full of high-quality pepperoni
product.
The first of our four 90-second breakaways to the Wolves
game on the evening featured J.J. Barea hoisting a wild 30-foot three-pointer
at the end of a shot clock and Greg Stiemsma discovering other ways to pick up
new types of fouls by being called for the technical on a defensive
three-seconds. "I think I would rather watch Gophers halftime stuff than
this right now," Tom said. "Or whatever's on Oprah's network."
We were still about an hour from the start of her interview with disgraced cyclist
Lance Armstrong.
Eventually, the second half of the Gophers game commenced, but
not before we caught this blooper-reel item on our second pass-through of the
Wolves game, courtesy of Minnesota's
little brother, Ricky Rubio.
SIDE NOTE: There was an undercurrent of trepidation to Tom's
and my viewing of the Gophers game, as we had tried the same thing five days
prior during Minnesota's trip to Indiana.
We gave up at halftime with the Gophers down 23, but then kept hearing that
they were mounting a comeback. However, when we would cut back to the Gophers
game, all we would see were Gophers turnovers followed by Cody Zeller drawing
ticky-tack fouls on the other end. All told, our plus-minus during the Hoosiers
game was a -28, while the Gophers were a +21 when we weren't watching.
Within eight minutes of the start of the second half, Michigan
had pumped their lead against the Gophers up to 19; and Tom and I lost our tops
after Glenn Robinson III's first dunk but just shared a dejected silence after
his impressive 360-degree dunk that seemed to bury us for good. At the same
time, I was trying to play a game of FIFA Soccer '13 on the Xbox, but a glitch
had somehow caused the soccer ball for my match to never appear. All the
players on the pitch were pantomiming kicks, and occasionally, a little ripple
would appear in the back of my team's net, which I guess meant the other team
scored. For a couple minutes, the Gophers looked like my players in the soccer
game: not exactly sure where the ball was or what they were supposed to do,
guessing at what they thought a correct play would be while the
Wolverines/computer-controlled team acted with absolute certainty.
"It's happening again. We're losing because we're
watching," Tom flatly stated. "It's happening again and I don't like
it."
We turned to the Wolves game for a third time and were
surprised to find the home team keeping the game tight, down four to a Clippers
team missing superstar Chris Paul and noted Wolf Slayer Chauncey Billups. Then
the Eastern European Ox, Mr. Pekovic, came up lame after being called for a
foul on Blake Griffin. He nodded furiously at the bench as the announcers noted
that he looked to be all right. Thirty seconds later, the Stiemer had replaced
him on the court, and Nikola was being helped back to the locker room with what
turned out to be a bruised right quad.
"Un-(bleep)ing-real," I muttered.
"Um, well, the Lance thing is starting now," Tom
said. "That should be a real uplifting human experience!"
Why the hell not, I thought, and turned the channel. Oprah
began with her line of yes-or-no questions regarding Lance's alleged use of
several kinds of banned substances. Lance answered yes to each, finally
admitting that he never won the Tour de France without the help of some illegal
drugs or practices. The rest of the interview should have been largely
immaterial to a couple of non-cycling enthusiasts like Tom and me, but we found
ourselves mesmerized by the lines that Armstrong drew to parse the truths that
his deflated current self were obviously trying to draw out from behind the
decades-old walls of justification that his enormous ego had built and
calcified.
We spent the next half-hour wondering how Lance would
respond to this or that accusation from the past, as re-introduced by Ms.
Winfrey, and guessing by how many points the Gophers would trail when we cut
back to the Barn. Regardless of our guesses, Tom was somehow always usually
within two points--usually because his guesses were more optimistic than mine.
We weren't watching, so of course the Gophers would be clawing their way back
into the game. But every time we'd turn back to the game, we would see, for
instance, Austin Hollins make one of two free throws followed by Hardaway
knocking down ANOTHER DAMN THREE-POINTER. In our frazzled state of mind, Lance
became the least of three evils.
At one point, we turned to the Gophers game with the good
guys down a dozen and about five minutes left. Trevor Mbakwe, a 67% free throw
shooter, was about to go to the line for two. I turned to Tom and said,
"What are the chances he makes both of these? When we need them really
badly? Like eight percent?"
Tom flashed a Cheshire
grin at me and said, "One hundred percent. I have faith, dude."
I exploded. "WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU HAVE ANY FAITH THAT
TREVOR WOULD HIT BOTH OF THESE?? WHAT ACTIONS (swishes the first) OVER THE
COURSE OF THIS GAME WOULD LEAD YOU TO BELIEVE A GOPHER IS CAPABLE OF DOING
THAT??"
Mbakwe then hit the second, and we giggled like
second-graders making up their first fart joke. One second later, Rodney
Williams fouled some dumpy white guy on an inbounds pass, and we decided that
we had reached our viewing limit on that contest. But before Tom retreated
upstairs to throw on an old episode of The West Wing, we switched back to the
Wolves game to see if we could salvage one out of two for the home squads on
the evening.
The Timbas were down 10, the crowd deathly silent and
sensing the impending fifth straight loss. Within 30 seconds, Alexey Shved was
limping back toward our bench with a balky ankle. Shved was diagnosed with a
sprained ankle and is expected to miss seven-to-ten days, becoming the 10th-ish
Timberwolf to miss significant time with an injury before this season has even hit the
halfway point.
Tom and I sat in silence for about a minute. "Well,
that sucked," he finally said after a sigh. "I wonder what that crazy
Rob Lowe is up to." He laughed to himself (I chuckled too) and bounded
up the stairs into the rest of his Thursday night, and I sat in the basement
just slowly shaking my head at another wasted night watching Minnesota sports.
One of the main catalysts that led
to the creation of this website was four-hour stretches that contained the
amount of malady of last night’s 6pm-10pm
block. Thursday evening was a can of classic concentrated crap, thawed and
poured into the same pitcher we’ve been using to drink this stuff for the past
two decades. Our one promising team gets run out of the Barn in the venue’s
biggest (officially recognized) home game in about 30 years, choosing the
brightest stage on which to display all of their dumbest, most aggravating
tendencies. Our previous most promising team has been so decimated and deflated
by about half the WebMD dictionary of known human ailments that they might basically
field the Sioux Falls Skyforce as the actual home team for most of February. A
former paragon of sporting triumph and the picture of perseverance in the face
of insurmountable odds finally shamed his formerly inimitable ego into
confirming the illusion--and furthering the public’s disillusion--regarding his
remarkable run of excellence. And our ability to collectively believe in the
power of the human spirit and expand the boundaries of what is naturally
possible for the species homo sapiens takes a Marquez-on-Pacquiao straight
right to the face.
At one point, with each of these stories, all this potential for jubilation, all dissolving into (inevitable?) tragedy.
On top of all that, as I got up to leave the basement later in the evening, I stubbed three toes on our brick fireplace and let loose a scream of HOLY HELLFIRE HOT POKER STICK THROUGH A PANCREAS THAT HURT. It probably woke Tom up.
BONUS WILD SEASON PREVIEW: Professional hockey returns to the X tomorrow night as the Wild host host another hockey team in their much-delayed season opener. I've heard that we have some new players but also lost some guys from last year’s team. Hopes are high for this year’s squad, but those hopes should be dashed over the next 3-4 weeks.
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