sports

Minnesota

Sports in Minnesota include professional teams in all major sports, Olympic contenders and medalists, colligate teams in major and small-school conferences and associations, and active amateur teams and individual sports. The State of Minnesota all together has six professional sports teams with one in Major league baseball (MLB), the National Football league (NFL), National Basketball Association (NBA), Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), National Hockey League (NHL), and Major League Soccer (MLS). Minnesota also is a part of one of the oldest major college conferences still running (the Big Ten).

The Minnesota Twins is Minnesota’s Major League Baseball team. The team was originally from Washington D.C. where they were known as the Washington Senators, but later moved to Minnesota and became the twins. The Twins first arrived in Minnesota in 1961, where they brought a nucleus of talented players such as Harmon Killebrew, Bob Allison, Camilo Pascual, Jim kaat, Earl Battey, and Lenny Green. By 1962 the twins had won 91 games which was the most by the franchise since 1933. The twins won 102 games and the American League Pennant in 1965, but was also defeated in the world series that same year by the Los Angeles Dodgers in seven games behind the world series most valuable player Sandy Koufax, with a 2-1 record, including winning the seventh game. The Twins would play their home games at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington from 1961-1981 and the Metro dome in Minneapolis from 1982–2009, they would then be moved to Target Field in 2010.

The Vikings are a well-known NFL team in Minnesota. The Vikings were granted an NFL franchise at the league owners’ meetings in Miami on Jan. 28, 1960. The team began to play in 1961. The founding group consisted of Max Winter, E. William Boyer, H.P Skoglund, Ole Haugsrud and Bernard H. Ridder, Jr. In the late summer of 1960 a man named Bert Rose who was the former Los Angeles Rams Public Relations Director became the team’s first General Manager. Recommending the nickname “Vikings”  was one of Bert Roses’ first move with the team. The name was selected because it represented both an aggressive person with the will to win and the Nordic tradition in the northern Midwest. Norm Van Brocklin was the first selected head coach for the Vikings. On December 27, 1980, Running Back Tommy Mason of Tulane was taken with the 1st overall choice and the first-ever draft pick utilized by the Vikings.

Also that year Quarter Back Fran Tarkenton was selected in the third round and Defensive Back  Ed Sharockman in the fifth. Following the 1960 season , the Vikings were given the option to select 3 players from the roster of each team after each team was allowed to protect 30 of their 38 players. Although Dallas was exempt from this process the got players from Detroit and San Francisco. In the April of 1961 the Vikings were finally assigned to conference. They were assigned to the western conference where they would join Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Green Bay, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Several months later the Vikings would finally have their game in franchise history. They would play the Dallas Cowboys in a preseason game in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on August 5, 1965. The Vikings were defeated by the Cowboys 38-13.

Minnesota also has a NBA team called the Timberwolves. They play in the western conference. The Timberwolves began play in 1989 as an expansion team alongside the Eastern Conference’s Orlando Magic. As a new team, the “T-Wolves” unsurprisingly struggled in their initial years in the league, winning no more than 29 games in any of their first seven seasons. In 1995 the Timberwolves’ vice president of basketball operations, former Boston Celtic star Kevin McHale, a Minnesota native, drafted teenage forward Kevin Garnett straight out of high school. Garnett soon led the team to the first playoff berth (1996–97) and winning season (1997–98) in franchise history. While Garnett turned the team’s fortunes around, he was unable to lead it past the first round of postseason play in any of Minnesota’s first seven playoff berths, through the 2002–03 season. Before the 2003–04 season the Timberwolves added veteran guards Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell. That season the team won its first division title and its first playoff series, advancing to the Western Conference finals before ultimately being eliminated by the Los Angeles Lakers. In 2004–05 the Timberwolves failed to qualify for the postseason for the first time in eight years. They traded Garnett in 2007 in an effort to spur the rebuilding of the franchise. McHale left the franchise soon thereafter, and new management built a team centred on All-Star forward Kevin Love that steadily improved and in 2013–14 had the 10th best scoring differential in the NBA but missed the playoffs with a 40–42 record in a historically strong Western Conference, which nevertheless was the team’s best finish in nine seasons.

Love, a pending free agent, was traded during the following off-season, and a rebuilding Timberwolves team finished the 2014–15 season with the worst record in the NBA (16–66). During the 2017–18 season the Timberwolves rebuilt around a promising young core featuring centre Karl-Anthony Towns that was complemented by veteran All-Star wing Jimmy Butler, and the team returned to the postseason after a 14-year playoff drought. However, Butler clashed with his coach and teammates and was traded away during the 2018–19 season, which ended with Minnesota finishing in last place in its division and missing the playoffs. The Minnesota Timberwolves are no longer the young team they’re often heralded as being. In truth, the roster consists of a number of players in different stages of their NBA careers, and a fair share of recent Wolves draft picks are now on different teams, with some of them flourishing in a different environment. The Wolves have undergone a number of personnel changes as well in this time, from coaches and assistants at the forefront to scouts and coordinators behind the scenes. One issue that seems to plague the team, at least from my perspective, is talent development. Whether or not this stems from bad drafting, poor player management or perhaps issues with player motivation I’m not quite sure. But to boil it down to one fairly comprehensive statistic, just one of the Wolves’ draft picks since the 2014 draft hold a positive Box Plus/Minus score over their career: Karl-Anthony Towns. For context, Box Plus/Minus is essentially an estimate of points a player contributes compared to league average per 100 possessions, factoring in both offense and defense

Works cited

Augustyn, Adam. “Minnesota Timberwolves.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 16 Apr. 2019, http://www.britannica.com/topic/Minnesota-Timberwolves.

“History of Sports in Minneapolis.” Meet Minneapolis, http://www.minneapolis.org/sports-minneapolis/about-us/history-of-sports-in-minneapolis/.

Sports Team History. “Minnesota Twins Team History.” Sports Team History, Team Name Minnesota Twins, 5 Apr. 2019, sportsteamhistory.com/minnesota-twins.

“The Official Site of the Minnesota Vikings.” Minnesota Vikings, http://www.vikings.com/team/legends/timeline. ���(�