matt weighs in

Thanks to ticket-hookups from friends, I was able to check out the Minnesota Wild and the Minnesota Timberwolves in person over the last week. We had really good seats for the Wild (club level), even though there isn’t a bad seat in the place, and decent seats for the Wolves (center court, 1st row of upper level). As much as I love basketball, catching a hockey game at the X is a great sporting experience.

Growing up in small-town southern Minnesota, I followed in my dad’s and brothers’ footsteps and loved basketball – played it in our driveway, even in the snow, played it by myself in the high school gym at 10pm and played it in Ween’s hayloft when it was snowing at 10pm. I prefer to watch college and pro b-ball, rather than hockey, on TV, but it’s the exact opposite in person, and really, it’s not even close.

The Wild had a rematch from their playoff loss in 2007 against Anaheim, so I knew it would be a good game. I don’t follow hockey closely, but I hate Anaheim after the playoff series last year (yes, I think it’s ok to hate sports teams, players and their fans, but it’s not personal, just fun). The playoffs were physical, borderline dirty, throughout, but Anaheim crossed the line for many fans in game 4, when a third guy entered a 2-man fight and helped take the Wild player down to the ice face-first and by throwing knockout punches to a Wild player who avoids fights, for the most part, due to his size.

Sadly, in the game I saw this week, the Wild only mustered about 14 seconds worth of offense and lost 2-4. There was still bad-blood, as Boogie-man had more than his share of stare downs and shoving matches.

Watching from the Club level was great. Easy to follow the puck, see who is who and possibly the best part, only had a very short distance to walk for more beer, nachos, brats and bathrooms. And, the Wild still have an actual organ player for much of the background music. I loved the experience, even if it was a loss.

The Wolves, on the other hand, played the Suns, which I was really excited about, because I’m a big Steve Nash fan. I’ll admit that I was more into it than I thought I would be – the Wolves are horrible, Target Center is ok as an arena, but not great, and it was the Suns, who should have ran up and down the court against the young Wolves.

However, as it was earlier in the season, the Wolves pulled out a win by feeding the ball to “Big Al” Jefferson all game, and he couldn’t be stopped. Amazingly, too, is that the Wolves actually made some outside shots, which has been a huge plague this year for the whole team. As I said, I was excited about our seats, because usually we’re in the rafters (why pay a lot of money to see half-*ss basketball?). I believe the closer you are to the court for a pro-game, the better the experience and more into it you can get. Pro players just don’t bring out that much excitement in the game, unless your team has a superstar (we miss you KG!) or they go on a huge run to take a big lead or they win a game they really have no business winning.

Maybe the Wolves have made a turn for the better in the last week – wins at Golden State and against the Suns and a narrow loss in Boston to KG’s Celtics Friday night, in a game they should have won. We could not have said this about the Wolves at the turn of the New Year. The young guys appear to be mixing together well, finally, and even though they’ll still end up with a top-5 pick in the 2008 NBA draft, maybe they’ll give us something fun to watch the last couple months of the year, even if we have to watch from the nosebleed seats.