Wolves finally a spectacle

Jeff Wheeler, Star Tribune

Timberwolves forwards Brian Cardinal, left, and Kevin Love doffed fashion-forward eyewear made popular by coach Kurt Rambis. The first 5,000 fans at Friday’s game against Phoenix also get their own pairs of the old-school glasses.

ESPN bumped tonight's game from its broadcast plans, but the Wolves will carry on with their plans to give away Kurt Rambis-replica glasses.

By JERRY ZGODA, Star Tribune

Last update: November 27, 2009 - 12:46 AM

The Timberwolves play a rare 8:30 p.m. home game Friday that had been specifically scheduled for a national television audience.

Instead, the only ones who will see 5,000 fans sporting replicas of those ugly athletic glasses Kurt Rambis once wore are the relative few who attend tonight's game against the 12-3 Phoenix Suns.

ESPN bumped the game from its Friday night doubleheader schedule and substituted the Milwaukee-Oklahoma City game that features Bucks rookie sensation Brandon Jennings and Thunder budding superstar Kevin Durant instead.

Apparently, the network didn't think a nationwide audience was ready for a team that has lost 14 consecutive games and whose 1-14 record is the franchise's worst season start.

The Wolves will go forth at 8:30 p.m. as scheduled because to change it now (ESPN changed its schedule on Sunday) presumably would create more problems than it'd solve.

The first 5,000 fans will get those replica glasses, a pair of which Wolves forward Kevin Love sported while boarding a team flight to Portland last week.

"I think they make me look pretty good," Love said with a straight face earlier this week. "I'm thinking about wearing them on the bench Friday."

Rambis claims he "hated" those black-rimmed athletic glasses that his father found for him after he broke pair after pair in his youth. He hasn't worn any pair of nontinted spectacles -- either fashionable or otherwise -- since he underwent laser eye surgery a decade ago.

"I wore them in L.A.," Wolves veteran forward Brian Cardinal said, referring to the team's most recent road trip. "And everybody was loving 'em."

Rambis approved the promotion because fans who bring a pair of new or used eyeglasses to the game will receive a pair of tickets to next month's game against the Los Angeles Clippers. The glasses collected will be given to the Disabled American Veterans, who will distribute them to Minnesota veterans-home residents who cannot afford new glasses.

"I listen to my wife," Rambis said about the promotion. "It's a very good, worthy cause."

Rambis hasn't worn the originals since his playing days -- he has a few old pairs tucked away at home in Manhattan Beach, Calif., as mementos -- but in many ways remains identified by them.

"Nobody would have known him without those glasses," Love said, "except for those seven championships."

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