I don’t normally write about sports, but sometimes a game represents something much more…
With the Timberwolves facing Denver tonight, something unusual might be brewing in the world of Minnesota pro sports.
Though a smaller market, its history demonstrates more than any other the role of that which is unseen—the energy, the culture, some may even say the curse—in determining the outcome of a game.
Minnesota has an exemplary history of cultivating great teams with the best players in the league and yet falling short when it matters most. Just to make the point even clearer, several of these players (Kevin Garnett from the T-wolves, David Ortiz from the Twins) have then moved on to other teams to win championships with them.
And yet beyond basketball and baseball, it's in football where this unseen hand of culture or curse is seen the strongest.
Time after time, stretching for decades, the Vikings have put out the better team and yet found themselves on the losing end. Missed field goals are the most famous method for an uncanny loss. But it was the ‘09 Favre-led team that demonstrated this phenomenon the clearest in other ways. That season’s second playoff round saw the Vikings handle the Dallas Cowboys 34 - 3. The following week, for the NFC championship game, the Vikings played the New Orleans Saints. Here, too, the Vikings were clearly better. So much so, this unseen factor had to work overtime.
The Vikings committed an almost unheard of five turnovers (to the Saints one).
Meanwhile, there was an actual conspiracy underway to incentivize physical attacks against our quarterback, Brett Favre, for which the Saints head coach would later be suspended from the league.
Yet it took that fifth turnover at the end of regulation to interrupt the Vikings and send the game into overtime. You could almost see the hand of fate out there doling out all it had to do to ensure the outcome. “Four turnovers wasn’t enough yet?! Jeez, okay. Well, here's another.” And yet this still wasn't enough, as the Saints own game-winning drive required the intervention of a series of inexplicable calls from the referees granting automatic first downs on their way to a game-winning field goal.
Now, this whole topic raises all sorts of challenges about free will and God and defeatism and all that. But without delineating every detail, the big picture is clear: Something besides the product on the field works against Minnesota teams. (I credit a state-wide culture, personally.) This is what makes this Denver series so interesting.
It's one thing to have the greatest players in football and baseball. No matter how great Randy Moss & Adrian Peterson or Joe Mauer & Johann Santana were, they're just one of many players on the field. It's another when you're one of five on the basketball court. And while Kevin Garnett being the best player in the NBA didn't propel the T-wolves to a 2004 championship, can the greatness of Anthony Edwards and this loaded basketball squad break through in this series? It's one thing to win Game 6 by 45. Just like it’s one thing to win the NFL Division playoff by 31. It's something else entirely to win a Game 7 against the defending champs.
If the Timberwolves win tonight, we might be seeing a corner being turned, a breakthrough in Minnesota sports and culture we haven't seen since Kirby Puckett and Jack Morris's heroics for the Twins almost 33 years ago—a championship drought longer than any other major sports market in the country.
