With T-Wolves fans forced to accept "progress" as a form of positivity and Wild faithful enjoying a stellar home record but likely to enter the Olympic break as playoff outsiders, the oft-lamented Gopher hoops bunch still may offer the T.C.'s best crack at some major sport, second-season love.
But to feel that warmth, I'm of the opinion that the needed push will come via a cool, Canadian hand.
Yes, yes, she has a fancy schmancy condo in Vail, Colorado, but Lindsey Vonn is ours. When she hurtles down Canadian mountainsides in pursuit of gold medals and Olympic glory next week in Vancouver, you can bet every kid who ever ran gates at Buck Hill, as she did, will be cheering her on. And when she's interviewed by The New York Times, she makes Minnesota nice -- polite answer on the outside, thoroughly bugged on the inside:
Having spent much of her childhood in Apple Valley, Minn., Vonn is "Minnesota nice." But privately, she'll reveal that having to constantly talk about Miller's Olympian misadventure irks her. I found that out at lunch with her in New York last year, when I brought it up. She put down her sandwich and nearly snorted. "I know what I'm not," Vonn said, "and I am definitely not him." The conversation drifted away, but a minute later, she steered it back. "He was partying nights before Olympic races," she said, her voice rising. "What was he thinking? I can tell you, I'm not going to be the one that says it doesn't matter if I win an Olympic medal. I know what that means to me and to the country. The Olympics are huge."
Vonn's due in the starting gate of the ladies' super combined downhill on Valentines Day, Feb. 14.
Friends, its been a little bit easier than normal to be a Wolves fan this week. The team is currently enthralled in their longest winning streak of the year. On Friday in Dallas, they scored 117 points on the Mavericks, one of the best defensive teams in the league. And on Saturday they beat Memphis by shooting 55.6% from the field, committing only seven turnovers and allowing the Grizzlies to shoot only eight free-throws. Even better: the Wolves dished out 26 assists in each of these two games and have hit 19 of their last 36 threes. What the hell is going on here?
We all know that super awesome -- and hot -- U.S. ski racer Lindsey Vonn cut her teeth on the suburban slopes of Buck Hill. And if the Germans hate on her again with cracks about he weight, we'll reserve a special table in hell for them -- even if she calls Colorado home and she's not listed as a Minnesotan by U.S. Olympic team. But even without her, the land of 10,000 lakes, hockey rinks and ski trails will be well represented in Vancouver:
Hat tip to Bob Collins at the MPR Newscut blog for pointing out that a new artist's rendering of LA's soon-to-be built football stadium has a distinctly Vikings-like purple hue. Talk about a tease.
If you've been toying with the idea of running this year's Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon, your window of opportunity is officially starting to close. This year race officials bumped up online registration two months earlier than usual--it starts today. Organizers said the reason is to allow runners around the world more time to make travel plans and include the Twin Cities on their schedule.
The marathon will take place October 3, with 11,000 runners expected. The event usually reaches that cap within a month after registration opens. You can find out more information about the race here.
WCCO ran with a great story yesterday when it reported that St. Paul's own Joe Mauer was going to ink a 10-year-deal deal to stay with the Twins.
But as we said, almost as soon as veteran sports guy Mark Rosen updated his Twitter account with a link back to the story, other baseball journos, both here and farther afield, were questioning the scoop.
WCCO was willing to publish the doubters' comments in its own story:
ESPN's Buster Olney reported on a Twitter account that "Multiple sources now saying that the (WCCO) report on a preliminary agreement for Mauer is not accurate."
And the Minneapolis Star Tribune's national baseball beat writer, Joe Christensen, cited two sources who claimed that an agreement had not been reached.
If WCCO is right, it sounds like the Twins may have made Joe Mauer an offer he couldn't refuse, in the form of a 10-year contract extension.
Or not. ESPN's Buster Olney took to Twitter to say, "Multiple sources now saying that the report on a preliminary agreement for Mauer is not accurate."
WCCO's Mark Rosen says tune in on the 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. newscasts to find out the details.
That's one hell of a tease, Mark.
The 26-year-old American League MVP Mauer was born in St. Paul. He hauled down a cool $12.5 million this season. He's slated for free agency at the end of 2010.
Those of you who didn't show up at the Target Center Sunday night for the Wolves' 112-95 drubbing of the New York Knicks didn't just miss a rare Wolves winning streak--they also took the Clippers by double-digits on Friday evening; if you think its hard to be a Wolves fan, just try theseClips on for size--you also missed a glimpse of an even rarer bird: the Wolves playing out the final perfunctory minutes of a blowout in a mood other than morbid depression. This time it was our Wolves, and not their opponents, who got to goof off on the bench, sing along to the music during time outs and cheer the scrubs on.
It's been a gloomy few weeks here in old MN. There's the cold; there's the variously frozen precipitation; there's the creeping gray. And did you notice that until Tuesday, the sun basically didn't rise for like two weeks, just kind of revealed different shades of dim? Well, the Wolves seem to be mired in this same winter malaise. After a serious teaser on Friday in which, for the second straight time, they lost to the Hornets on an easy, buzzer-beating layup (yes, layup) the Wolves are now back to scuffling to stay out of third-quarter garbage time.
How's your gut a few days after "The Big Queasy"? Yeah, mine too . . .
But if you found Sunday night stressful, stock up on the Maalox -- this Purple offseason will offer all the comforts of shopping for rare vases with Adrian Peterson. The NFL presents more season-to-season changes than any other sport, and while the Vikings will enter 2010 with a deep cache of talent and back-to-back NFC North titles -- the Libra in me views those positives measured with a frightening degree of both doubt and concern for the team's future.
When the Minnesota Twins begin their new era at Target Field in April, retailers around the new ballpark are likely to experience a massive spike in pedestrian traffic and the downtown area's vitality will get a much-needed shot in the arm, according to a new study.
The prediction by Pedestrian Studies, a national consulting group, is part of a larger study that shows skyway traffic in downtown Minneapolis enjoyed an uptick of about 4 percent in 2009 compared to the previous year.
How do your fingernails look this morning? Personally, I spent some quiet moments after last night's gut-wrenching Viking loss deliberating if I should pen this article, or leap from my sixth floor window with my hair on fire while pounding the remnants of a bottle of absinthe. Obviously, I opted for the former.
While driving home after the game late last night, I stopped at a Holiday station. Ahead of me in line was an older gent draped in Vikings paraphernalia. He turned around to me and we just looked at one another and shook our heads. I paid for my purchase and walked into the night thinking the silent exchange must have played itself out many thousands of times over at gas stations and bars and restaurants from here to Sioux Falls to Fargo to Des Moines. I passed the Purple fella while en route to my car, and before getting into his Jeep he looked about the streets before us and said:
Can we all now agree that it was a dumb idea for Brett Favre to film this ad, with this script, and it's play on the idea of making bad decisions in the clutch?
The guy in charge of the US. Pond Hockey Championships, Fred Haberman, put it best when he posted this on Saturday evening: "Who would've thought we'd be using umbrellas on Lake Nokomis in January?"
Certainly not Haberman, who was forced to call off the competition because the dozens of rinks set up on Lake Nokomis for the event this weekend practically needed lifeguards by the time the rain was through.
It's really too bad. The competition represents hockey the way God intended it: Outside on ice not perfected by Zambonis, playing for the love of the sport. The three-day event in Minneapolis drew 254 teams this year from 37 states, Canada, and the UK.
Vikings rookie wide receiver Percy Harvin missed practice yesterday and today because of migraines. A long-time migraine sufferer, Harvin missed a game earlier this season due to a headache so severe he couldn't get out of bed.
There were two off-the-field concerns about the Harvin as the NFL draft approached last year: 1) He'd suffered chronic migraines since middle school (he missed two games during his sophomore year at Florida because of the ailment), and 2) He was a fairly regular pot smoker.
Sailin' down the Mississippi to a town called New Orleans, They're still talkin' about their card game on that Jackson River Queen. "I've come to win some money," Gamblin' Willie says, When the game finally ended up, the whole damn boat was his. And it's ride, Willie, ride, Roll, Willie, roll, Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
-- "Rambling, Gambling Willie," Bob Dylan
If you can't make it down to Bourbon Street for Sunday's (5:40 Central) NFC Championship -- then just go for the bourbon. Employ whatever spirits are at your disposal. Win or lose: come 9 o'clock Sunday eve Viking faithful will either be grabbing for something to quench the drought of a 34 year Super Bowl absence, or searching the cabinets for an elixir to dull the pain of another postseason exit for our T.C. sporting charges.
But I'm not just hoping for the former -- I'm expecting it. For my dollars: the Vikings will beat the Saints and play in their first Super Bowl since the 1976 season.
The roller coaster ride that is Royce White's tenure with the Gophers' hoops outfit has taken another turn: He's practicing again with the team. The Associated Press confirmed the return of coach Tubby Smith's star recruit out of Hopkins.
White's promising career went off the rails and onto the bench last year when he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor shoplifting charges and fifth-degree assault after an incident at the Mall of America's Macy's department store. He's also the subject of a campus investigation into the theft of a student's laptop computer.
There are a few minor tragedies at play whenever the Wolves face the Oklahoma City Thunder. The first is the simple fact that the young, rejuvenated team we're watching should, in a halfway decent world, be the Seattle SuperSonics, channeling Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp and Dennis Johnson, sporting the league's best nickname (by far), and rocking those majestic futuro-disco unis. But, as we all know, the world isn't even remotely decent. This being so, the team plays in Oklahoma City, is owned by a pair of seriously unscrupulous Dubya supporters, and dresses like the "other team" in a deodorant commercial.
New Orleans and the Twin Cities are connected by more than the Mississippi River alone. While the two (or rather, three) American cities are geographical beneficiaries of the Old Man's bountiful waters, the cities' pro sporting markets are inversely connected as two of the nation's driest destinations for championship hardware.
When the Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series in 2008, our T.C. adopted the ignominious title of being the country's four-sport totting market with the longest championship drought. Of course, it's been since the Twins' World Series win in 1991 that we've been able to celebrate a title.
"Its not [about being] a thief," said Wolves coach Kurt Rambis of his team's exciting overtime victory over the Sixers, "We earned it." True, true, but questions of deservedness might be a bit less pertinent if the Wolves could avoid doing things like shooting 29% and turning the ball over seven times in a quarter (the first), slipping into 20-point first half hole and hanging their heads as if they'd given up the ghost.
Still, they made amends in the third quarter, in which they ran the floor, got to the basket and played defense like they meant it. Although much of that lovely third was a product of simply hitting the same open shots they'd earlier been bricking (Ryan Gomes was a stark example; he was 1-5 in the first half and 6-7 in the second), Jonny Flynn, with his nine assists and 29 points on only 16 shots was a major catalyst. Most importantly, said Rambis, he played intense defense and, for the most part, kept the team organized, keeping the ball moving in the half court and in transition. Their were moments where it seemed like he'd figured some things out.
We just can't get enough of that Vikings victory over the flacid Cowboys yesterday. So we're going to take another opportunity to gloat by posting this video of a jazzed Brett Favre dancing around the Vike's locker room after the win, shouting, "Pants on the ground! Pants on the ground! Pants on the ground!"
Sounds like he's channeling "Pants on the Ground," the rap by Larry Platt, the too-old guy who recently auditioned for "American Idol."
As you can see in the video, Favre follows his chant by slapping Jared Allen on the ass. Really hard.
As the Dallas Cowboys limped off the field on Sunday and the Vikings started thinking about the Saints, the fine editing staff of one at RyanHerrboldtTV was already hard at work. Let's roll tape:
A dugout prankster whose hustle more than compensated for comparative want of talent, "Old Dog" batted .297 during his five years with the Twins. For an in-depth look at Redmond, one of the more interesting personalities in the game, check out this City Pages' feature by David Hansen. It's worth the read.
Looking for reasons to distaste the Dallas Cowboys come the Divisional Playoff vs. the Vikings (12:00 Central) on Sunday? Well, seeing as the two teams have met just once since 2004, any recent fielded rivalry between the Vikings and Cowboys is namely nonexistent. Aside from the likely return of banged-up former Gopher Marion Barber III and the man-love that Burlington, Wis.-raised Tony Romo holds for Brett Favre, the only other piece of recent pub connecting the teams has come via the brash owner of the Cowboys.
Considering the state of the economy, not to mention the state of the Timberwolves, Fox Sports North and KSTC's joint decision not to air certain Wolves games does make some sense. But the fact that it caused most of us to miss what looks to have been the most exciting Wolves game since the Garnett trade--complete with three overtimes; not one but two game-tying, last-second threes, one of them from half-court; and a 26-point, 26-rebound performance from Al Jefferson--well that really sucks. Thanks guys.
Damn was I wrong last week. Wasn't the first time, and unless I go Biff from Back to the Future II -- it surely won't be the last. Such is the business of prognostication.
What requires far less conjecture is that of the Vikings (12-4) three potential Wild Card round opponents for this Sunday's Divisional Playoff at the Metrodome (12:00 Central), the Dallas Cowboys likely offer the greatest degree of resistance to the Purple's first appearance in an NFC Championship game since 2000. With the sizzling Green Bay Packers felled 51-45 by Arizona in what proved the highest scoring game in NFL playoff history, the Cowboys arrive towing the league's hottest sack of pigskin embers.
Not that such heat defined the beginnings of their season.
Earlier today, we discussed a rumor, first reported on Yahoo! Sports, claiming that Timberwolves' GM David Kahn had offered the Indiana Pacers' Al Jefferson in exchange for forward Danny Granger. Well, says Kahn, as reported by ESPN's Marc Stein, it just ain't so:
The Wolves' 116-109 victory over the Indiana Pacers on Friday night was both encouraging and desperately needed. Needed because the team was working on a five game losing streak and earlier this week had scuffled to a 29-point first half deficit against these same moribund Pacers. Encouraging though, because for maybe the first time this season, the Wolves responded to trying times--tough calls from the refs, a late Pacer run--not with hangdog resignation but by bundling their frustrations into a renewed communal intensity.
Unfortunately, the next evening in Chicago, the hangover from that intensity showed. "Both Kevin and Al had a tough night,'' said Kurt Rambis (via NBA.com) of the Wolves 110-96 loss. "It was evident as the game went on that they looked more and
more tired. Their bigs did a good job on them. With our offense not
there we lost our focus as the game went on." The fatigue was in evidence in their sloppy offensive execution and poor shooting and in their inability to close out on the Bulls' shooters.
For those who viewed the "NFC Playoff Handicap" in this space on Tuesday, perhaps you read between the lines of those ranking to gather that I see the Green Bay Packers coming here for the Divisional Playoff next Sunday. For that to scenario to occur, the Pack would obviously have to fell the Arizona Cardinals late Sunday afternoon while the Philadelphia Eagles would need to beat the Dallas Cowboys on Saturday night. Although it's a rarity for both away teams to win on Wild Card weekend, I believe it will occur in what is a wonderfully deep NFC field.
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