Wild and Children First, or, Maybe Gonna Give You Up, or, I’m Gettin’ Too Old for This: The Ethics and Adjudication of Taking a Break from One Team to Get Closer to Another

Courtesy of Forbes.

I’ve been hung up on this piece for the last six weeks, mostly because I couldn’t settle on a title. That’s why there’s three of them.

And then the always entertaining Michael Rand kicked me into high gear by posting an article at the Star Tribune Tuesday investigating whether Minnesota sports fans can believe that this year’s Wild won’t let folks down by going on one of their long winter skids that have derailed each of their last 3 seasons. The article’s headline: “Is it safe to go ‘all in’ on the Wild? Yes and no.” Don’t be wishy-washy, Michael—they’re a Minnesota sports team. The answer is no.

A Legend in Limbo: The Curious Case of Kevin Garnett and His 22nd Season

Courtesy of USA TODAY Sports.

Dr. J continues his look at the changing attitudes and the changing of the guard at 600 North 1st Avenue by reflecting on roller-coaster relationship between Kevin Garnett and the Minnesota Timberwolves, and ruminating on the future for "The Franchise" within the franchise.
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On May 20, Tom Thibodeau made his first moves as the new President of Basketball Operations of the Minnesota Timberwolves. He fired nine people. Among the departed were former general manager Milt Newton and assistant coach Sidney Lowe.

The news of a mass exodus from the organization may seem like a harsh way to start business but it is exactly what Thibodeau was hired to do: clean out the country club atmosphere that has stifled the organization’s progress and bring in a more respectable, higher functioning front office staff.

And while many employees’ jobs are still up in the air, no fate is more intriguing than that of franchise icon Kevin Garnett.

Crazy Like a Wolf: The Recent Competency of Glen Taylor

Courtesy of TCBMag.com

Ed.: This article's author, Dr. J, is an esteemed and respected member of several online Minnesota sports communities. The Timberwolves' recent front-office moves inspired this friend and colleague to jolt this hibernating community back to life. Welcome to the 2 1/2th renaissance of MSE, and thanks, Dr. J, for this thought-provoking piece.

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Glen Taylor is not a “basketball guy”. He likely wouldn’t be able to dissect his players’ pick-and-roll defense or tell you the intricacies of a motion offense. Hell, I don’t even know if he has ever played an organized sport. But one thing the current Timberwolves owner has always been is a businessman. And the recent moves made to his basketball operations staff this offseason only add to his business savvy. Pairing a young, talented roster with an equally talented coach and front office has the potential to make Glen Taylor richer. How much richer? How about hundreds of millions of dollars richer?

Don't Buy a House: Catching Up with Minnesota Sports in 2,100 Words or Less

First rule of buying a house: Don't buy this tiny of a house.

On May 30th, my girlfriend and I closed on a house just east of the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. This was the culmination of a whirlwind month-long search to find a place we could afford in a nice neighborhood relatively close to where we worked. A couple dozen showings and open houses into our search, we found what would become our new house on the last day before we would have to switch our focus to rentals. It's a charming 3-bedroom with room for renovation in the finished upstairs and enough work done in the "unfinished" basement to host Vikings games and (heaven forbid) the occasional Minnesota playoff contest.

You Down With PSP?: Firing Up the Postseason Success Predictor 8680

It’s now been about a year since the launch of Minnesota Sports Emporium. We will have a full Fiscal Year Recap in the next, oh I dunno, month or so (Who are you, our investors?? Hold your horses.) for as our winter extends into probably mid-April, so too does our collective writing hibernation instinct. If we posted articles at a more glacial pace than we already do, we’d probably have broken off the Arctic Ice Sheet, drifted southward and melted already (TERRIBLE GLOBAL WARMING PUN: PRE-EMPTIVE APOLOGY)!

This Was Supposed To Be The Winter of Sports!: or, Fun With Limericks

The world's first book o' limericks, penned by Edward Lear

(The following is a combination of truths and fictions relating to the origin of the limerick—a rhythmic, five-line poem structure—and the current states of affair for our local sports teams. Please consider all of the following limerick-related information in the same manner as you would any recent victory from any of our local squads: with a grain of salt and a swift retaliatory kick in the nether regions.)

Regression to the Lean: Reviewing a 96-Hour Pu Pu Platter

Tuesday, January 22
Nashville 3, Wild 1

Wednesday, January 23
Northwestern 55, Golden Gophers 48
Brooklyn 91, Timberwolves 83

Thursday, January 24
A Brief Respite

Friday, January 25
Detroit 5, Wild 3
Washington 114, Timberwolves 101

Saturday, January 26
Wisconsin 46, Golden Gophers 45
Charlotte 102, Timberwolves 101

As much as it sometimes seems like I revel in our sporting misery, I really don't like writing articles like this very much. They're much more cathartic than enjoyable, and there's no sense of a weight being lifted when the last keystroke has been hit and the last picture placed. But this was one remarkably awful week of sports for all of our most nationally relevant hometown teams, and a website that cites taking mediocrity to task as one of its stated motives for existence must give some kind of comment about the line of turds the Timberwolves, Wild, and Gophers guys basketball team have laid in one particularly trying 96-hour span.

Offseason Report: Timbas Edition

KLove has gone on record saying the Timbas need to improve significantly. Lets see if Kahn and Co. were listening.

I’ve wanted to do one of these for a while now, but the timing was never right (as we found out before). So, I waited. I waited for free agency to start. I waited for the Nicolas Batum saga to come to a close. I was ready to do a write up, but the signings kept coming in. It wasn’t until these last 24 hours when I felt comfortable enough to declare the Timbas’ offseason complete and, more importantly, a resounding success.

The End of Clippergeddon

Rather than lead with a picture of Marko Jaric's beady eyes, or of Sam Cassell's alien head, I decided to go with a pic of Marko Jaric's better half, aka Adriana Lima. Helloooo pageviews :)

One summer day in August, 2005, the Minnesota Timberwolves traded Sam Cassell and a conditional first round draft pick to the LA Clippers for Marko Jaric and Lionel Chalmers. For seven years Timbas fans have dreaded Clippergeddon, the year we would finally have to give up that pick. This year was the year. The conditional draft pick has turned into the 10th pick of the 2012 NBA Draft, and belongs to the New Orleans Hornets following the Chris Paul trade. With that pick, the Hornets selected Austin Rivers, son of Boston Celtics head coach Doc Rivers. Doc Rivers and the Celtics won the NBA Championship in 2008. And who should be on that roster in 2008 for one last championship run before retirement? None other than Sam Cassell.

There's some good storytellers out there in the world. Who among them could make up something like that?

NBA Draft: Timing is Everything...

David Kahn can't Kahntain his smile anymore after pulling a fast one on SilkyJ

KAAAAAAHHHHHHHNNNNN!!!!!! Ok, I just needed to get that out of my system. Not even 12 hours after writing and posting a draft preview article, David Kahn goes and trades the 18th pick to the Rockets for Chase Budinger and Lior Eliyahu (more like Eliya-who, amirite?). And if I know anything, it’s that this whole pre-draft trade situation is going to get even more Kahnvoluted. Stay tuned below the fold where I take a look at Budinger and try, futilely, to predict what Kahn will do next.

NBA Draft 2012: The Wrath of Kahn

POBO David Kahn stifles a smile as he thinks of those about to suffer his wrath

With the NBA Finals finally finished, it’s time to move on to every Minnesota fan’s favorite part of the season: the offseason. Our beloved Timbas come into this offseason seemingly one piece away from being a playoff team.  Below the jump, we take a look at where this piece will fit it, why the position is such a glaring need, and who (if any) in the draft will be able to come in and address the issue.

Just How Right Are the Prices: The Week in Review

Much like the yodeler from Cliff Hangers who makes his way up the mountain, hoping not to crash at the apex of his ascent, it's been a week of high hopes and dramatic tumbles for your local squads.

Mr. Positivity: Wolves Optimism on "Playoff Elimination Day" *UPDATED 4/23*

Feeling down about the Timberwolves recent elimination from playoff contention? Maybe 2-4 isn’t the start you were hoping for from the Twins? Perhaps a 3-13 Vikings season is still adversely affecting your mood. Look no further than MNSportsEmporium.com, as I plan to bring bi-weekly optimism to Minnesota sports fans.

MelAnChoLy in Minnesota: A Stroll Through the Ligament Graveyard

O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,

O I say now these are the soul!

--Walt Whitman, "I Sing the Body Electric"

The drive to Virginia, Minnesota, takes about three and a half hours from my home in the southwest suburbs of Minneapolis. Tony, Silky, and I made the trip Wednesday afternoon with solemn business on our minds. We are three of the youngest members of the Ligament Induction Panel, and the news had just come through the wire that Twins pitcher Scott Baker would miss the 2012 season to fix and rehab the flexor pronator tendon in his pitching elbow.

Game of Groans: The Week in Review

Tough week for sports fans in Minnesota (or as I call it, Wester-gross). Here’s a brief summary:

A Premature Postseason Roster Review: The Michael Beasley Dilemma

Aptly referred to as “The Illustrated Man” by MSE website creator, Spencer Broughten, Michael Beasley has a colorful personality, a sculptor’s touch with the basketball, and enough tattoos to presumably warrant “random” screenings from the TSA before team flights. He is known as an underperforming high draft pick who can score in bunches, but doesn’t have the mind for greatness. He is also known for incurring several drug charges, including a possession of marijuana ticket he received in Minnetonka last summer. Beasley is set to be a restricted free agent following this season and would be due $8.3 million should the team choose to offer him one more year. Herein lies the dilemma: Based on his statistics, he is not worth $8.3 million to the Timberwolves. However, there is a side to Beas that many people are not familiar with, and it is one of several reasons the Timberwolves should resign him this offseason.

Game of the Week Breakdown: A Timbas-Celtics ‘Recap’

Bruff, TWick and I watched the first half of the Timbas-Celtics game last night,hoping to see our beloved Pups come out with some fire and energy after KG’s absurd comments about the Timberwolves franchise. We were hoping to see a youngteam on the rise (everybody’s talking about them, including…Pegasus?) takedown the aging superpower, a shell of its former championship-caliber squad.

We didn’t see any of that.

The Fiscal Year of Our Discontent: Article 1

Combined Win-Loss Records, March 31, 2011-March 29, 2012

Minnesota Gophers (BKB) 23-14 (.590)

Minnesota Gophers (FB) 3-9 (.250)

Minnesota Timberwolves 25-35 (.417)

Minnesota Twins 63-99 (.389)

Minnesota Vikings 3-13 (.188)

Minnesota Wild 34-38-10 (.415)

Combined: 151-218 (.409)

FY 2012 has largely been an unkind one for Minnesota sports fans. Losses mounted quickly as quarterbacks were battered, shootouts were squandered in embarrassing fashion, and all kinds of collateral ligaments were torn asunder. Our most successful team percentage-wise--Gophers' basketball--possessed zero players who wanted to even attempt a shot in a late-game, high-pressure situation against Michigan State one month ago. The past year has been so bad for our big-time sports teams that you could make a compelling argument that the best Minnesota athlete of the past year was actually the guy who finished 2011 as the top-ranked American tennis player in the world: Mardy Fish. And he's only a Minnesotan inasmuch as he learned to burp and crawl and use a potty here before his family moved to Florida when he was four years old.

Whether it's warranted or not, Minnesota fans have a reputation for loudly applauding our occasional flashes of brilliance and largely condoning the long periods of subsequent mediocrity. We break audience decibel-level records when we make the World Series, but mostly, we hope that our general managers know what they're doing when they bring in the Mike Lambs and Kim Johnssons of the sports world to fix our teams' glaring holes. And as the win-loss records show, the past 12 to 18 months in particular have been a special kind of emotional beat-down for the followers of the most prominent local squads.

Now, there have been signs of life with certain squads lately. The Wolves have again become a hot ticket with their exciting brand of play this season, and both big-money Gophers squads (with the promising late-season look of Jerry Kill's squad and a dangerous Hollins-Mbakwe duo on the 2012-13 horizon) look as though they might finally be heading in an upward trajectory. But it seems for every Kevin Love 40-point outing we've celebrated, there has been, say, a Zack Bowman signing that makes Vikings fans wonder if our front office remembers what a competent football player looks like and threatens to drag the whole fan base a little deeper into the dredges.

What I (and several of my friends, who will occasionally contribute as writers and editors) hope to do through this site is analyze, criticize, yell and scream, stomp and cheer, and generally translate Minnesota fandom into the written word. You can expect to check us out a couple times a week for new content here in our infancy. I'm especially excited to try out a few original types of blog posts, including installments of the "21 Years..." series, in which we count down various lists of the top 21 athletes, events, and...I don't know, local beers that have helped define and shape life as a Minnesota sports fan in the time since our last major professional or collegiate title. You can also expect to find Game of the Week breakdowns; commentaries and columns; occasional tangents into topics like local music, un-American football, and video games; and a live blog or two, once I figure out how to work this here Internet device.

We're Minnesota. We're the fan base that knows more about the symptoms and ramifications of bilateral leg weakness than any other in the country. We're the state whose catered food is apparently so bad, it can serve as the catalyst for the messy departure of a beloved Hall of Fame-caliber athlete. We're the people who ask to be circled by a Dutchman who loves his flatulence, and we hold up signs at our one championship-caliber team's playoff games that say "At Least We Got Da Lynx."

Sometimes fatalistic, often irrational, occasionally analytical, always entertaining. The qualities of the fans I have met while rooting for the teams of this state are the ones that I hope come through most evidently on this website. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go celebrate a nail-biter of a Timberwolves victory over the cellar-dwelling Bobcats by muttering complaints about Anthony Tolliver into a Soco Seven.

**Special thanks right off the bat goes out to Tim Lien for putting all the balls on a rack, just how I wanted them, in the header design.