That blurry image comes courtesy of the camera on our phone. That’s just before tip-off at last night’s Wolves v. Jazz game. It’s hard to get a feel for just how empty the place was, but know this: where you see blue, that’s not a person. And there were some sections of the upper deck in which a quick hand-count inventory of butts in seats could be taken. At one point before the game started, the lucky holder of the second ticket — MC Creme Fraiche — asked, “Should we start booing now?” After a first quarter that saw the Wolves take an early lead, only to give up a heap of points and trail 32-24 while looking just as disinterested as they did during much of the Wittman era, getting a head start on the catcalls might have put such an early adopter ahead of the curve.

But then a funny thing happened. Not talking funny ha-ha, as in the “Wow, it’s great that Wally Szczerbiak is back with the Wolves” joke that comes up every time the in-game promotions guy is shown on the big screen (the resemblance is uncanny, and the joke never gets old). We’re talking about the start of 2.75 quarters of aggressive, inspired and intelligent basketball. We’re talking about substitutions that made sense and had a positive impact (Rodney Carney needs 15 minutes a night). We’re talking about players coming over to talk to the coach and instead of tuning out immediately actually listening. We’re talking about reasons to be engaged in a game. Stunning, really.

Halftime: Lured by a vague promise of free tickets for filling out an All-Star ballot, we headed down to the lower level and found two things: 1) The food choices are exponentially better down there. Grilled options, delicacies, exotic brews, etc. Much better than choosing between a hot dog, the nachos, or a nacho dog. 2) The offer for free tickets indeed exists. However, one must fill out FIFTY ballots to get the tickets. They have them neatly arranged in stacks of 50, and even though voting for the NBA All-Star game is much easier than MLB (probably takes about a minute, if that, to fill one out) we were not amused by the ruse nor the obvious attempt to stuff things in favor of Big Al, K-Love or Mike Miller (the three Wolves on the ballot). Who’s behind this racket, the governor of Illinois?

The second half was completely watchable, if not downright entertaining. Laugh if you want. The final three minutes were tough, and there were a couple of garbage possessions that certainly didn’t help. Maybe some strategies were debatable (MC: Why didn’t they keep pressing and trapping with the game on the line? RB: Well, late in games when you have the lead such a tactic can lead to either quick baskets or cheap fouls, neither of which are desired. MC: Yeah, but neither of those things were happening with the press being applied earlier in the second half. RB: True. That might have cost them some of their energy]. But we didn’t even feel the sense of dread as the lead was slipping. We replied with confidence to MC that they would still pull it out, and when Foye made two freebies to put the Wolves back up by 1 with less than 8 seconds left, we thought we might be right. Quite simply, though, they were beaten by a better team on a tough shot. The only real disappointment was they didn’t get a shot off at the end.

Other mistakes, though, were correctable if not fluky (they shot 43 free throws after averaging 23.4 per game through the first 19. They will typically make more than 27 in that scenario, and if Kevin Love — who otherwise was a beast — doesn’t go an atypical 2-for-9 from the line, including four biggies in the closing stages [he was 82 percent, 55-for-67 this season, coming in], the outcome is different). The Wolves would have beaten a lot of teams last night playing the way they did. Moral victories, of course, do not count in the standings — though we could create a special statistical category if it would please Brandon. That said, this more closely resembled the team we envisioned when we committed $3 a ticket for two tickets to 14 games. Take that for what it’s worth (carry the one … $84!), but do not confuse the outcome with the same old thing.

Final note: We heard a “We want Mad Dog” chant last night, but fortunately no fisticuffs ensued. Maybe Brandon is part of the problem, not part of the solution?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 11:50 am and is filed under Section 203. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.