Bob Collins
As the NBA draft nears, there is an overwhelming sense of doom among fans of the Minnesota Timberwolves. Judging draft talent is not the team’s forte, as Patrick Reusse artfully pointed out yesterday.
Update 6:45 p.m. Minnesota’s on the clock. Prayer beads getting a workout.
6:46 p.m. – Presuming the choice will be O.J. Mayo. I fear gleeful anchors announcing, “it was the Mayo Clinic at Target Center tonight,” thinking it was the best lede ever written. MinnPost’s David Brauer says if they take him and then don’t trade him, we’ll wake up to “Timberwolves hold the Mayo.” It’s a no-win situation here.
6:48 p.m. – Timberwolves select O.J. Mayo. Experts say he’s the most NBA-ready player. He better be. “I’m going to bring some leadership, and determination,” he tells ESPN. Plans to play point guard. Move over Randy Foye.
Update Friday 7:04 a.m. – Ugh. The Timberwolves did it again. They’ve traded Mayo to Memphis along with Marko Jaric and Antoine Walker and received Kevin Love (whom they considered drafting) in return. It appears to be another trade to get rid of high-priced players.)
With any luck at all, the team’s new logo and uniforms won’t be the highlight Timberwolves story of the day, but you never know.
The Minneapolis Business Journal analyzes the fashion:
The team’s primary logo received a relatively modest facelift, including a splash of white on the wolf’s face and sleeker trees. The word Timberwolves also gets a different font and converts from blue to white.
The Wolves first introduced that logo for the 1996-97 season.
The Timberwolves also unveiled a completely redesigned secondary logo that celebrates the team’s 20th anniversary. The new logo features a wolf howling at the moon. The moon, however, is depicted as a basketball, paying homage to the team’s original logo that featured a wolf’s head in front of a ball.
“The secondary logo really throws us back to the logo we used initially and celebrates the history of the Timberwolves in this market,” (TWolves marketing boss Chris ) Wright said.
The team is still selling merchandise with the old logo on its Web site. It’s gear that screams Ndudi Ebi
(H/T: doodledee)
