Timberwolves Thoughts: Origins of fandom

aThe dog days of August are amongst us as NBA fans. It seems like a good time to ponder why we as followers of sports are so attached to specific teams.

Sports fandom is a strange thing. In an athletic world where players and coaches are continuously recycled through different organizations, being a part of multiple teams throughout their careers, why do we become so attached to a certain franchise?

The answer is probably more complicated and diverse than anyone realizes. There can be many different factors that lead fans to the teams they adore. Fan’s geographical location in proximity to the team’s home is usually the easiest factor to understand, but even that influence isn’t an exact science. There can be many Warrior fans found throughout the Midwest, just as there can be an overwhelming number of Green Bay Packers fans found in Minnesota.

But lets analyze even deeper than the simple answer. Why do Timberwolves fans love the Timberwolves? Heck, why do any fans love the team they love?

The beginning

Most fans cannot point to an exact moment that they decided to devote themselves to a specific organization. Many times, it seems as though it is an assortment of factors or collection of memories that create a bond with a team. Over the course of time, these bonds grow stronger and increase in passion, leading to die-hard fandom that is very difficult to be broken.

These factors come in a wide variety. Maybe it is a memory like watching games with a parent in the living room. Maybe it is the recollection of a team’s radio announcer breaking down a game in detail. Or maybe it’s just a team’s consistent success that draws people in and attracts attention.

For the Timberwolves, these moments have been few and far between over the last decade-plus. There have only been a few brief glimpses of excitement that have had the magnetism to entice new people to become fans.

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Ricky Rubio’s arrival was one of these moments. The mysterious floppy-haired Spaniard coming over with his boyish charm and dazzling passing ability captivated fans across the league. Kevin Love and his gaudy statistical output was another. The ability to post 30-point, 20-rebound games with regularity was something that hadn’t been seen since the days of Moses Malone.

More recently, the growth of former number-one-overall draft picks Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns has excited a growing fanbase.

The point is, each individual fan has their specific reason as to why they formed a connection with their team. It’s these connections that grow and force us to passionately latch on and cheer for our chosen organizations.

Applying to the Timberwolves

Perhaps this is why shipping out homegrown players like Zach LaVine and Ricky Rubio has been so bittersweet. Many fans in the Minnesota sports community latched on to these players and formed a sort of connection with what they brought to the organization: Ricky with his easy-to-like and unselfish personality, and Zach with his overflowing confidence and devotion to improving his game. There is something about the desire for organic growth of a team’s drafted stars and achieving success with those stars that fans are drawn to.

But that is rarely the way things work. However likable these players were within the Timberwolves community, the truth is, they didn’t lead to much winning. Sending them out and replacing them with players like Jimmy Butler and Jeff Teague, who fit Tom Thibodeau’s puzzle much more exact, is objectively a very good move.

As fans, we are like Tom Hanks’ character in the movie Cast Away, during the scene when Wilson is floating away. That’s to say we’ve become so attached to something throughout this difficult journey that letting go is a difficult thing to do, even though our time together wasn’t under ideal circumstances. However, after letting go we are about to be rescued, like Hanks’ character after letting go of Wilson, and have a better future because of it.

Moving forward

Timberwolves fans, on a lesser scale, can look at fans of organizations like the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox as to how gratifying achieving success is after a long stretch of ineptitude. Both of these franchises went over 80 years (in the Cubs case, over a century) without winning a championship or even sustaining extended periods of winning. Being relevant after so many years of suffering will be tremendously refreshing.

It’s like eating only raw broccoli for 14 years, but finally being close to tasting the sweet flavor of chocolate. Chocolate always tastes good, but after eating something bland for so long, it will drastically enhance the enjoyment we get out of it.

If the Timberwolves begin to win, many new supporters will jump on board. Their memories of becoming a fan might include Jimmy Butler game-winners, brand new jerseys, or the sound of the great Jim Peterson breaking down Andrew Wiggins’ growth into a superstar during a Fox Sports North telecast.

Next: Wolves Film Festival: Butler-Towns Pick-and-Roll

As fans, the common theme should be ‘the more the merrier’. Climb aboard and join this growing community. Because what fun is enjoying success if you don’t have an excited group of people to share it with.