Winning is fun, everyone loves to win. But in the NBA, you’re not expecting to win every season unless you’re a fan of the Los Angeles Lakers or Boston Celtics, which makes an unexpected championship all the sweeter.
The Denver Nuggets won the franchise’s first championship last week after 47 seasons. The good people of Denver celebrated accordingly with a parade through the streets and a party in the park attended by an estimated 750,000 people, the equivalent of the city’s population. Aside from a few corporate stooges trying to get their BMWs out of their downtown parking spaces, the whole city took the day off for the joyous celebration with the team. Lifelong Nuggets sickos, families, and casuals just looking to drink and have fun joined together to show out out for their team. One that had come up short so often in its last five decades of existence.
Minnesota Timberwolves fans know all too well what it’s like to root for a team that seemingly never loves them back the same way. In the 34 seasons since the NBA returned to Minnesota, the Wolves have made only 11 trips to the postseason and progressed past the first round once in 2004 when they lost to the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals.
With countless resets, regime changes, draft busts, and any other bad things that can happen to an NBA franchise plaguing Wolves fans’ entire lives, the hopes of ever bringing the Larry O’Brien Trophy to the Twin Cities seem more hopeless by the day. Looking through the classic Minnesota sports glass-half-empty point of view, this team is one of the more talented in franchise history. However, it’s stuck in neutral after mortgaging the future for Rudy Gobert, sick of the Karl-Anthony Towns schtick, and in salary cap hell next offseason if the front office doesn’t make major changes.
But there are signs that all is not lost and a parade could be in Minnesota’s future. Anthony Edwards is two months away from becoming the new Captain America. Jaden McDaniels is a Defensive Player of the Year in the making. Chris Finch is the second-most successful coach in franchise history, and the Timberwolves are coming off back-to-back play-in championships. The franchise is moving in the right direction after 15 years of pain, and the Wolves are in a position to compete in the playoffs as long as they have Edwards leading the charge.
Now that we’ve established that a championship parade is definitely in the cards, we have to figure out the logistics. The Nuggets parade organizers had the advantage of being able to copy and paste the Colorado Avalanche’s Stanley Cup parade from 2022. The city officials trying to figure out how to pull off a Timberwolves parade will have no such plan to pull from. They could take a page from the Lynx Championship parade from 2017. However, it ended in an event at Williams Arena, which holds less than 15,000 people. That’s not nearly big enough for the most-anticipated parade in modern American history.
No other local teams are particularly close to planning their own parade routes. The Vikings haven’t even been to a Super Bowl since the 1970s, the Wild can’t get out of the first round, and the Twins are currently leading their division while under .500.
The parade through Denver was simple and effective, a model the Wolves should try to emulate. The Nuggets parade was downtown, started at 10:00 am, was about 1.5 miles long, and lasted about 90 minutes before a 30-ish minute program at a large park to cap the festivities. Easy in, easy out, nothing to worry about except a police officer getting run over by Jokic’s firetruck, Jokic’s wife getting blasted in the face with a beer can, and an unrelated shooting that happened about an hour after the crowd dispersed. Not too bad for an entire city getting drunk together on their day off.
The biggest obstacle for Minnesota in the parade planning (other than winning a championship) would be where to end it where everyone gathers together one last time to watch the team make a few drunken speeches and promise to win another title next year. The Twin Cities are known for their parks and green spaces. However, there’s not much open space within walking distance of Downtown Minneapolis that can handle half a million people or more. Gold Medal Park and Loring Park are really the only offerings downtown, and neither is probably big enough for the overwhelming crowd. Boom Island Park is getting to be a little far away for people to follow the parade, too, and nobody wants drunk idiots roaming anywhere near the river.
A few wild card options could be Como Park and or the State Fairgrounds, places that are used to handling big crowds every year and not so far out of town that it would discourage anyone from attending. Downtown St. Paul has the area around the State Capitol and Harriet Island. Things might not be set up as perfectly as the parade in Denver, but the logistics of where and when are irrelevant compared to the real reason to have a parade in the first place.
Timberwolves fans have been in pain far too long. They need a massive celebration through their home streets to finally unclench and appreciate each other for sticking with it as long as they have. Wolves fans need a celebration on this scale the way Zion Williamson needs the tornado trick.
It’s probably a long way off and will never come. But if and when it does, Wolves fans need to embrace the parade and give themselves over to it. Call in sick from work, go out early, grab your friends, get some beers, and let loose for the first time and know that being a sports fan is supposed to be fun.
