I started to write a comment on Butcher’s Strange But True: The Trade post because it happened to land on the 25 year anniversary of the game that led to one of the biggest hockey trades in the history of the sport. It ended up being so long-winded that it had nothing to do with anything so I figured it was worthy of a post on which we could all discuss great teams and/or shitty trades BTL:
Speaking of trades, it is the 25th anniversary of the game that resulted in the Patrick Roy trade from Montreal to Colorado which was a very interesting trade for so many reasons. The main thing everyone remembers is that Roy and head coach Mario Tremblay didn’t get along so when Tremblay didn’t remove Roy from the game in which he got lit up until 9 goals were scored on him, Roy cut along the bench, past Tremblay, to inform the team president that it would be his last game playing for the Habs:
The Habs had no choice but to trade him. The trade was to Colorado who, up until that year, were the Hab’s provincial rival Quebec Nordiques. Had they still been the Quebec Nordiques, it’s unlikely Roy would have been traded to that franchise. Roy, arguably the best goalie at the time, was just what Colorado needed to win the Stanley Cup that year.
Those, to me, aren’t even really the interesting parts. The team that lit up the Habs that night was the Detroit Red Wings with their Russian Five. The Red Wings were also the team that Colorado beat to advance to the Stanley Cup finals.
It was the Red Wings’ year. The year they were so good they even beat themselves in ways they didn’t know or have a way of knowing. If not for that spanking of the Habs, we’d be talking about the best team ever. There would be no question. No mentioning of the ’87 Oilers or the Islanders of the early 80’s or some of the Habs teams in decades past. We’d be talking about the 1995/96 Detroit Red Wings with no other team coming close to the conversation.
The Detroit Red Wings sucked. They were the Detroit Lions of hockey. Little Ceaser’s Pizza owner Mike Ilitch bought the team in 1982 and hired Jim Devellano as GM to build the team through the draft the way he did – as a scout and eventual assistant GM/Scout Director – for what led to four consecutive Stanley Cups for the early 80’s Islanders. They sucked so badly they were awarded the first pick in the ’83 draft. That pick was a born leader who captained the Peterborough Petes (the oldest junior team in Canada known for sending more players to the NHL than any other) at the time, played for the Red Wings for 22 seasons (most of which as captain), and who eventually built the team, as GM, that just won the Stanley Cup (Tampa Bay Lightning) in Steve Yzerman.
Devellano didn’t want to suck long enough to keep building through the draft so he came up with an idea that was almost unthinkable at the time…then he slowly began to implement his idea into action by actually doing the unthinkable. He started to “waste” draft picks on players from the Soviet Union with hopes that they might be convinced to defect. Some even with the hopes that they might defect a few years later. The first player to defect was young Sergie Federov who was treated like an outcast by not only the league but even the Red Wings team…until Captain Stevie made sure he felt welcome and that everyone welcomed him as a member of the team. Eventually Vladimir Konstantinov, Slava Kozlov, and Russian Legend Slava Fetisov joined Sergie and the Red Wings in Detroit. Everyone was mad; too many Russians ruining the game, too soft, not tough enough to win in the playoffs, and a shit-ton of Don Cherry hate – crying about it every Saturday night – when the Red Wings didn’t even play on Hockey Night in Canada. Insert eventual winningest coach in history, Scotty Bowman, who was smart enough to think “we need 5 Russians all playing together in order for them to play Russian hockey” which led to a trade for old man Igor Larionov who had been in the league for a while. The Russian Five line was complete. Their defense was offense. Their offense was defense. They’d be on the ice for a minute at a time and be the only five players to touch the puck. They learned to hit and grind the “Canadian way” for the times they didn’t have the puck. And they scored…a lot. They scored so much in one game that it led to the biggest trade in a generation. A trade that cost them the Stanley Cup. A trade that cost them their rightful place in history as the best hockey team ever assembled.
A team with the best coach in Scotty Bowman at the helm. The best two-way centre and captain, possibly of all time, in Stevie Y. The best defenseman (including Bobby Orr – fight me) ever in Nick Lidstrom with Paul Coffey (the closest thing possible to Bobby Orr, offensively, as a defenseman) at his side. The Russian Five that were so good together they changed the way hockey was played in North America. And the fucking Bruise Brothers in Bob Probert (the undisputed heavyweight champion) and Joey Kocur who would tear the head off of anyone who dared mess with any of the other players.
A team that broke the record for most wins (62) in a single season. They just don’t get the credit they deserve because they didn’t win the cup. They didn’t win the cup because they were too good.
You could take any team from any generation from the late 1800’s to 2020 and none of them could hold a candle to the 1995/96 Detroit Red Wings.
They won the following two Stanley Cups both by four game sweeps.
What great teams or shitty trades stick out to you?
That was heartbreaking. The positive is that it produced some great playoff series over the next decade. Also the best part of the brawl the following year was Shanahan’s tackle of Roy at 5 minute mark in video.
https://youtu.be/6P4wg21mLf8
As an aside, The ’07-’08 team won the cup with eight Swedes on the team.
Europeans do it better.
I still have an overwhelming urge to punch Claude Lemieux in the face. F that guy forever.
What pisses me off is the interviews him and McCarty give together. Dino had it right.
Nicely written, @myopicprophet. I faintly remember the Roy trade as being a pretty unusual thing, but did not know about the details.
As much as I loathe Danny Ainge, he got it right when he said about trades that four quarters don’t equal a dollar.
Recently you think of Bill O’Brien trading DeAndre Hopkins for bits and pieces. When you only have a limited number of guys you can play at any one time, it makes no sense to replace a top level player with a bunch of below average talent.
No one knew Erik Bedard was going to fall off the face of the planet, but the way things turned out Adam Jones straight up for Bedard would have been a fleecing. Never mind that the Orioles also got Chris Tillman and George Sherrill, who they made the closer and eventually flipped for two more guys.
Although I have been forewarned that Myo is going to own me for this, I think that the 1991-1992 Penguins were a superior team.
Chicago, a team that you and I and three other DS commenters could’ve beaten at the time, beat the Oilers in the semi finals. The Oilers, without Gretzky or Messier, made it to the semi finals. Had the Oilers still had Gretzky OR Messier, no one would even remember that Penguins team…other than Pierre McGuire who somehow gets away with pretending he coached their way to glory when all he did was pass out towels so Jagr could wipe the sweat from his mullet…so it isn’t a matter of how good that Penguins team was but how shitty all the other teams were at the time.
I mean…saying that Penguins team was the best team is like saying the 1994 Houston Rockets was the best team when clearly the Bulls were. We only remember the Rockets because Jordan retired.
One of my sisters lived around the corner from Tom Barrasso when he was with the Penguins. The morning after they won the Stanley Cup in ’91 she was driving to work and saw Barrasso and several other team members passed out on the lawn with the Stanley Cup lying beside them in the yard. Several people called in to a local sports radio show to say a guy who looked a lot like Phil Borque was seen hitchhiking on the interstate that morning as well. Borque later called in to confirm it was him and complain that nobody would pick him up.
None of that happens without the Eric Lindros trade in 1991-1992.
Flyers get Lindros, and get swept by said Red Wings.
Colorado wins cups in 96 and 01 with players from the trade.
The New York suckmydick Rangers also won in 94 with players involved with the trade.
Flyers still cupless in 45 years.
What great teams or shitty trades stick out to you?”
😆😆😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😧😧😧😨😨😨😨😨😨😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱
Dude, I LIVE IN MINNESOTA!!!
Great Teams, Shitty Trades, WE OWN THAT!!!😫😫😫😫😫💀💀💀💀☠☠☠☠
There have been SO MANY…soooooooooo goddamn MANY!!!
But I’ll just write *two* letters…
KG.
it can DEFINITELY be argued, later on,once his career is done,that King James might be better.
But until that point, Timmy Duncan, and Dirk fans bedamned, KG is The.Best.Power.Forward who has played in the NBA.
And I WILL argue that.
Because KG put up THESE numbers, and this kind of career stat line, IN MINNESOTA;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Garnett
Go in there, and LOOK at the records he put up.
Mostly IN MINNESOTA.
He fucking CARRIED the ‘Wolvies on his back, from the late 1990’s, until 2007 when he got traded… love him, or think he’s a giant asshole, dude is NOT overrated–he’s SEVERELY underrated.
Because he put up THOSE numbers, mostly unassisted. YES, in his early seasons, we DID have a few good journeymen players–but never *enough* solid talent to actually break through in a league that still had players like The Admiral, Duncan, & Kerr; Jordan,Pippin, Worm & the rest of the Bulls; Barkley; Mullin & Malone, etc…
And THEN there was the Marbury trade, and the Joe Smith…. fiasco… Cro-Magnon Wally and all the goddamn “we’re getting *great* players and some DRAFT PICKS!!! from the Celts!”(🙄🙄🙄) trades ‘ol Kevy McFail did with his old friends–damning us into failures & mediocrity until KG finally DID win a title, with the minimum-needed *two* other good players to help carry the load…
AS A CELTIC.
Fucking McHale.🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
And ANOTHER THING.
Garnett SHOULD by all right, stand ENTIRELY ALONE with another record.
He SHOULD be the only NBA player to have ever achieved *seven* consecutive 20-10-5 seasons…
For the NON-hoops-junkies out there, that means he scored an average 20 points, had 10 rebounds, and 5 assists in every game he played that season…
The only other two players to have 6 20-10-5 seasons were Wilt Chamberlain & Larry Bird…
McHale’s former teammate.
McFail was our GM that year… he fired coach Casey in January, then brought in
DimRandy Whittman–Bird’s former Head Coach, out in Indiana (Pacers), who’d run the Pacers into the ground under Bird’s GM-ship🙄🤨🤬KG ended up getting benched in April, for the rest of the season, with his numbers sitting at an average of…
22.4-12.8-4.1…
Just low enough, without those last six games of the season, to keep him from surpassing Bird & Wilt and ending with 6 seasons in a row–in a 3-way 20-10-5 avg.–rather than making him the ONLY player to average 20-10-5 *seven* years in a row🤨🤨🤨
I’ll never know for certain, that KG was benched on purpose, to hold Bird’s record sacred…. buuuuut with McFail being a good buddy, AND Dim Whit(man) being a close, personal, friend…. let’s just say I’m NOT the only Wolves fan who wondered about the call to have Garnett suit up & warm up, but NOT play😒😒😒.
The trades MN made, during McHale’s run as GM were…
They were TERRIBLE, for the most part…
Wally wanted to be the star of the team, so did Marbury (there’s a REASON the dude was known as Starbury!)…. thing is, by playing with everything he HAD, every night, no matter the opponent, and STAYING in MN for all those years, laying down the numbers he did?
NO ONE was ever gonna play superstar in MN fans’ hearts & minds, when Ticket had been that loyal to US… anyone coming in, was gonna be a SECOND beloved player, they weren’t *ever* gonna come in, to take that number ONE spot….
And THEN there was McFail’s sheer basketball STUPIDITY🙄😡🤬🤬🤬
Micheal.fucking.Owlowakandi was going to help “save” our struggling team😒🙄🤨
The man who loved TENNIS, but joined his college’s basketball team on scholarship, because the coach, iirc saw him around campus, and was willing to give him a full ride/nearly full ride….
Kandi man didn’t actually WANT to play hoops, he just wanted a paycheck…. for ax little effort as possible–honestly like MANY folks….
But that shit doesn’t CUT IT, when you’re talking elite-level athletics.🤨
Then there’s THIS little nugget…
Do you KNOW how many of these goofballs McHale brought to Minneapolis, AFTER they played terribly where they’d been?!?😫😱🤯
We freed Darko AGAIN… by trading away Bryan Cardinal (who’d played for Perdue… in Indiana, before joining the NBA, and having a decent-to mediocre career before McHale brought him to MN🙄)…
We had SO many washed-up players, and “the player of the future!!!” rookies…. Rubio, K Love, on, and on, and ON, and on over the years…
But as GOOD as Flip was, McHale was a goddamned nincompoop…
And it SHOWED.
Brought in Sammy & Spree, at the end of their careers, we make ONE Western Conference Finals series…. then, when Spree & Sam wanted to be paid like they DESERVED–to coach & mentor, and fucking BUILD UP THAT NEXT LINE, to play along with Ticket….
McFail cut them both, then the next year, traded KG, for CRAP…
The ONLY thing that’s good about the McHale situation, is that Houston FINALLY got smart, and canned his stupid ass, too.
As a Celtics fan I quite enjoyed the KG trade 🙂
The best part of this thread is that the Celtics (with that KG trade included) were the first “super team” which were created for one purpose…to find a way to beat Tim Duncan’s Spurs.
So when the Spurs came back after the soul-crushing loss in the finals to LeBron’s super team Miami Heat, who were, iirc, going to win 8 championships, and spanked them so badly in the 2013/14 finals with ACTUAL TEAM PLAY to make LeBron pull a whiny Eric Cartman and say “screw you guys, I’m going home” it was the BEST!
The best actual team shitkicking the “best” “super team” was my favourite basketball moment of all time (even including the admiral winning in ’99).
Ha!🤣
My roommie** and I joke ALL the time, that Boston’s really just a part of “East Minnesota,” since EVENTUALLY, all our best players go on to play out there, and do truly great feats in their sport…
Big Papi in Baseball, Randy in Football, and, OF COURSE, Ticket😉
(**She’s been a MASSIVE Twinkies fan, since childhood😉)
Take back what you said about Tim Duncan! I replied four times and deleted because they all seemed too…idk…biased? lol
I will give MN one thing…some would have my head for saying this…it is the most sports oriented state. They are knowledgeable sports fans even though their opinions are usually wrong (like your blasphemous TD/KG comparison), but that is what happens when you have an entire state of people obsessed with sports and the only thing they’ve ever won was one WS in 1991 so they think they know everything since.
Joking aside (if that was a joke?)…take Boston for example…sure there are Red Sox fans, Patriots fans, Bruins fans, and Celtics fans. There are fans who are fans of all of those teams, but most fans are fans of one or two or three of those teams…not all four. When I lived in central mass, I couldn’t even go to the bank without being exposed to Red Sox or Pats memorabilia…but I had season tickets to the Bruins I couldn’t even give away to clients or their factory workers FOR FREE.
Go to MN and everyone is a fan of every sport and every team including all of the colleges and universities. Some might prefer one sport over another but they all like and follow every sport.
I spent New Years 2014/15 in MN visiting friends and went to a Leafs/Wild game and a T-Wolves game (the T-Wolves had Andrew Wiggens and Anthony Bennett and the Wild had Parise and Suter and a bunch of other Americans) and I had so much fun the entire time joking that their problem was that they had too many Canadians on their basketball team and too many Americans (not enough Canadians) on their hockey team.
Also, minor quibble on this:
“Go to MN and everyone is a fan of every sport and every team including all of the colleges and universities.”
Not *quite* accurate there…
You’re forgetting MORTAL ENEMIES HERE, The Tommies and the Johnnies…
Everyone ELSE hates folks *outside* the state, and roots for “our team,” but the CATHOLICS, naaaaah… we can’t do the Lutheran Nicey-Nice thing!😉
😆😂🤣🤣🤣
Rooting for *both* of them would be like ‘SU students not randomly starting a “Sioux Suck!!!” Chant, at EVERY.SINGLE. SPORTING.EVENT ever held at NDSU…. whether we’re playing UND or Not…
The Universe might *implode,* if a Tammie were to root for the Johnnies, or vice-versa! 🤫😉
Honestly, though, on the TD/KG thing…
Both of them ARE great players. Two of the literal BEST to have ever played the game.
But I REALLY don’t think that if you straight-up swapped them out, Duncan COULD have done any better here than KG did.
Admiral, Kerr, Manu-manu… and POPS were all a HUGE factor, in what allowed Duncan to become the elite-level player he became.
Not that DUNCAN HIMSELF wasn’t the one who put in all the work–he ABSOLUTELY DID…
but he HAD that quality of casting around him, to *allow* him the opportunity to do what he did.
he wasn’t having to help run the goddamned front office as he played…
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED the Spurs, too. And I was THRILLED to see Mr. Robinson FINALLY get championships!!!
But Duncan DID have that competent front office, and not the curse which was McFail…
I DO believe that if you put Ticket on the Spurs, yep, they’d still have won all those titles. Tbh, I DON’T know, if you’dve seen KG get all the career milestones he did, had he had competent support–i think we might not have, in all honesty.
I think he might’ve settled right down into a #2 spot, and really dug in, as the dependable player supporting “the star” like he did in Boston…
Ticket, I don’t think, ever WANTED to really be “the superstar” he had to be… but there was no one else to carry that load, so he stepped the fuck up… like you do, when you don’t wanna fail.
In all honesty, I don’t think Duncan would have been as… loyal–some would say STUPID–as KG was, in staying here, had the roles been reversed, either.
Kevin stayed for us.
We LOVED him for it, and still do (I ALWAYS will, since he’s my age, and I GET that sort of loyalty–i’ve been incredibly stupid in my OWN career a few times, because we were X’ers taught to be loyal, in a world where that just ISN’T valued anymore!)…
but that loyalty came at HUGE costs, for his basketball legacy.
Had he asked to go to the Lakers, like Kobe was rumored to have wanted, there WOULD be no debating… He’dve been a definite “Great!,” because he’dve had more rings.
Someday, down the road, I suspect when more of the younger guys he mentored finally start to settle & retire out, I’m betting KG’ll get the Barkley treatment… acknowledged by the guys who KNOW hoops, that YES, he was *in fact* a great, who put it ALL out there, every fucking night he played, every game, all season.
Even when his team SUCKED, and there WAS no chance at a playoff run, and he COULD have phoned it in–and could have phoned it in more than just *sometimes.*
But like Kirby & Gladden & Herbie grinding it out, for ALL those years, on the Twinkies in the 80’s & 90’s, Garnett stuck it out, too.
He didn’t HAVE to. And YEAH, he was a total dick, in the opinions of LOTS of people.
But the kid has CLASS, and like Prince, he did a HELLUVALOT of charitable things on the DL & semi-DL…there was the 4XL program up on the Northside, at North High, back in the early ’00’s, and now he’s involved in stuff like this;
This one touches on some of the charitable stuff, too…
https://www.nba.com/news/what-is-the-next-act-for-kevin-garnett
For me, the love of KG comes from ALL of who he was, as a player.
The kid, making that GIANT leap, when we were teenagers–from what I’ve always understood, because he KNEW college probably wouldn’t work out… he’s SMART, but if I understand correctly, school was a STRUGGLE, meaning a possibility (frankly, like *I* did–and twice over!🙃) of failing out–which would’ve meant no court time…
And then there was ALSO the chance of injury before he hit the League, and the team’s MD’s taking care of him, too…
Blow out a knee, when you’re ALREADY struggling in college, and you often kiss your scholarship goodbye.😕
The opportunities Garnett HAD, he had because he was a hoops “prodigy.” He wasn’t wealthy… iirc, he went to Farragut on Scholarship, due to his basketball abilities…
If he didn’t make it in basketball, his life was headed to be HARD… and he KNEW that.
He was TALL, and a dark-skinned Black kid, living in the US, and had had an education *mostly* focused on a single sport, and NOT academic success, to get him up & out of that less-than-advantageous childhood…
Not great odds, really, to get to live a long, comfortable life…
He took the chance he was offered, jumped at it, and held on with EVERYTHING he had.
And that kid’s MIND–his basketball HISTORY knowledge, and his understanding of the court, AND his ability to read the court IN the game?
It’s a skill that NOT all players (and, tbh, not even all COACHES!) have.
Then you combine it with the grinding day after day, trying to make himself and his teammates better…. the charitable stuff he did WITHOUT asking for any recognition…
And the fact that he put up the career numbers he did, WITHOUT intentionally *trying* to get them–just as a side-effect of his trying to make the team better, and YEAH, he’s always gonna be my favorite Wolvie…
And YES, I’m 100% biased😉… I’ll FREELY admit that!💖
But I think had their positions been reversed, Duncan WOULDN’T have been honed like KG was, in the firey, frozen, hell that were the best years of a career spent here….
I think Duncan either would have collapsed in some way, under that level of constant, relentless pressure, OR he would’ve done the honest-to-god *smart* thing, and gotten the hell out of here, while he still had the chance to win some championships.
Fuck the Chicago Bears. That should be made clear, first and foremost. Which is why I think that the Bears giving away the store for Mitch Trubisky is simultaneously the worst trade ever and the best trade ever.
I agree. There is nothing worse than Bears fans who talk about 1986 like it was yesterday. That aside, the Trubisky trade was an absolute delight…like…they traded up one spot – to a team that had no intention of drafting Trubisky – in the draft when they could have picked him simply by waiting their goddamn turn so it would be hard for anyone to dispute it as anything but the worst trade ever.
Like…imagine…I mean…that was the most Madden GM Mode deal ever.
You know it is really bad when the fans of your biggest rival are laughing and celebrating:
The worst (best) part is that they could have TRADED DOWN for MORE picks and still picked Trubisky.
The White Sox traded the current best/coolest/most funnest Fernando Tatis Jr. for the absolute garbagest James garbage Fields. Now, on top of things, not that big of a deal, just a basic shit trade. My wife is nice enough to plan games for us to go to every few years or so and we were able to got to a White Sox game in Cleveland. The starting pitcher, after the trade (we bought tickets before the trade) was James Shields…without googling it and refreshing my nightmare, he proceeded to throw 12 out of the first 13 pitches for balls and after our “relievers” stepped in, the white sox were down plus 10 a couple batters into the second inning, killing any interest I had in watching the game we drove 7 hours to check out. Luckily, the stadium has pretty good beer and food and we had a good time regardless. Then flash forward to this year, and Tatis Jr. mania hits and I have to remind my wife that this is the kid we let go of so the Sox could grab James fucking Shields and make a last ditch run for the play offs(that didn’t happen) Sports, fuck.
I just wanna say,
See Also;
The entire post-“Purple People Eaters” history of the Minnesota Vikings NFL franchise….
In particular, the late 1980’s-2020…
I came to the conclusion about 20 years ago, that the Vikes never actually intend to WIN a Superb Owl….
They simply intend to fuck with the feelings of their fans, rally bandwagon jumpers, overpay athletes (in PARTICULAR QB’s!) to come back from retirement, and they’ll also try to hire the reanimated Zombie-corpse of Jeff George or Brett Favre, any & every time there’s a chance😉
EXCUUUUUUUSE ME?!? (😉)
That would be *TWO* World Series wins…
1987, AND 1991…
Kirby keeping us in the series in Game 6, then the win over Atlanta IN Atlanta in Game 7**…
Then there’s also aother moment, which lives in glorious infamy for the generation of us who grew up in that fandamntabulous era between the two Series, and went off to college, the year KG went off to work for our wolvies😉;
And–who knows?…
Maybe THAT’S the reason we all love KG so much, ’round here?
😆😂🤣💖
Because we were primed as kiddos, to ADORE our crotchety, chippy assholes… because they PRODUCED for us, and were incredibly kindhearted & gracious to us kids when we had an opportunity to meet them irl?
Seriously, ask ANY person who was a kid here between ’87 and ’91 who their three favoriteTwins pjayers were–i GUARANTEE you, one Twinkies players will be Kirby, and the other guaranteed player they’ll say is gonna be Dan Gladden…
It just IS for our generation.😉😁🤗
There’s often a third–sometimes that third guy was their FAVORITE-favorite… but Kirby with his friendliness & smile, and Gladden’s assholery WILL be right up there, too😉🤣
We’ve ALWAYS loved the “good cop/bad cop routine, with “the SUPER nice guy” on the team–whether it was Kirby in ’87 & ’91, or Mad-Dog (Madsen), in the middle of the 00’s, who was the sunshine & goofballery to the hard-nosed focused player😉
ALSO, i NEED to remind you–just because mainstream MEN’S sports teams in this state suck absolute donkey-butt in the playoffs DOESN’T MEAN THE WOMEN or the MINOR LEAGUE TEAMSDO🤔🤫🤨…
The Lynx won THEIR championship damn near every other year in the 20-Teens… 2011, 13, 15, and 17.
And then there’s that new team… soccer or something….
They play over in St. Paul… basically on the other side of the
worldRiver, and it’s soccer & I’ve been pretty busy with work the last couple years, so I’m not 100% up on all their ins & outs yet😉Those kids aren’t too shabby either😉🤣🤗💖
And iirc, the Strikers–our OTHER previous-soccer-league team was the ONLY team in their league who had a consistent fan base, and I thiiink they may have won some championships occasionally, too?
(Again, not too sure, because soccer… and i never learned the rules in that until I was an adult….
Where I grew up, soccer was a “big school”/”rich school,” sport back then, because the smaller schools like mine only had enough kids to fill out a Football/Baseball or Volleyball/Softball team, in the spring & fall… winter was a “two sports offered” time for the boys and girls, because you didn’t NEED 15+ people to fill out a team roster, in case folks ended up injured)
And YEAH, if you’re into sprotz ’round here, you “root for the home team” no matter WHICH season it is… because at some point, the weather WILL be terrible–or *Those damn MOSQUITOES* mean you don’t wanna go outside to get eaten AGAIN–and you’ll need a distraction😉
**who STILL have the Racist logo, and were doing the chant that WE UNDERSTOOD AS KIDS WAS RACIST EVEN BACK THEN!😒😒😒
Hmmmmm…. obviously I DON’T pay too much attention, because I thought the Loons had done better than they have… 😅😂🤣🤣🤣
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_United_FC
The way the Leagues Cup appearance & the US Open Cup appearance had been talked about, I thought we’d WON those🤣🤣🤣
But.. like I said, SOCCER…. I LOVE watching the game in-person, but it’s not something I follow-follow… Hoops is my favorite, and I haven’t even been able to keep up with THAT in the last few years, with all the political bullshittery that i DO keep up on.🙃