MANKATO --The Timberwolves discovered what they sought – a loud, energetic start to their new life without Kevin Love – with Monday's late-night welcome to another season. Borrowing from college basketball's midnight-madness tradition, the Wolves opened up training camp with their "Dunks After Dark" production as the clock struck 12 o'clock that attracted NBA TV and a capacity crowd of 4,500 fans to Minnesota State-Mankato's Bresnan Arena, home to six days of Wolves' workouts starting Tuesday afternoon. The crowd of mostly college students stormed into the arena when the doors opened at 11 p.m. and it spilled onto the floor when the Wolves took the floor an hour later.
"I didn't know it would be that crazy," said Wolves basketball boss and new head coach Flip Saunders, who proposed the late-night idea that brought NBA TV analysts Greg Anthony and Isiah Thomas to town for a 90-minute television show. "When they (fans) first came running in, it was quite a sight to see them. It was good. Our guys got into it."
Fans stayed to watch three 12-minute scrimmages – two of them decided by a point, the other a tie – and a freestyle dunking period afterward that introduced rookies Andrew Wiggins and Zach LaVine as well as other newcomers Thaddeus Young, Anthony Bennett and Mo Williams.
The scrimmage portion of the night started with point guard Ricky Rubio lobbing an alley-oop pass to Wiggins for a dunk and ended with Rubio hitting a clutch three-pointer to tie the night's final scrimmage.
"Once they play more and more together, they'll be able to connect on a lot of things," Saunders said. "But you could see the athleticism in the limited time they played together."
Wiggins impressed the audience with his seemingly effortless leaping and LaVine did the same with his sheer bounce while veteran guard Kevin Martin ultimately stole the show with a three-point shooting exhibition he finished with a sly grin at Wiggins after he scored against the rookie one last time.
"That was a lot of fun," said LaVine, just months removed from his lone collegiate season at UCLA. "That's back in my environment. This is my first Midnight Madness. We had a little scrimmage last year at UCLA but it wasn't at midnight. It was fun to get out here and enjoy the fans, but now it's go time."