Reusse: Jumping to conclusions has often left me falling on my face

Leaping to conclusions is part of what makes sports popular. There are sports personalities on TV and internet outlets making millions while doing that as their shtick. The internet has also allowed the sporting public to espouse their firm opinions on, say, young quarterbacks, instantly and emphatically.

We grizzled media veterans are allowed to be amused by this, even with some notable leaping of our own through the years.

There was the exhibition game in October 2008 when Kevin Love was making his Target Center debut. As a basketball follower, the outside marksmen have always been my heroes — since my older brother’s pal Dicky Overlees was throwing in jumpers for the Fulda Raiders in 1959.

The home team was outstanding that season, eliminated mighty Luverne in the District 8 quarterfinals, and we couldn’t believe our eyes when a scraggy, sophomore-heavy outfit from Edgerton knocked off our lads in the semifinals. (Edgerton won the state one-class title in 1960, providing an early case of conclusion-jumping by me one year earlier.)

My problem with Love is that I had been at the 2008 Final Four in San Antonio and watched Love and UCLA get blown out 78-63 by Memphis in the semifinals. Love was served his lunch by Derrick Rose and a Memphis juggernaut that somehow lost to Kansas in the title game.

Love, after that freshman season, entered the NBA draft and was taken fifth by Memphis. The Timberwolves had the third choice and took O.J. Mayo, already a legendary shooter.

And then basketball boss Kevin McHale traded Mayo and other bodies for Love and other bodies.

Love was not impressive that night. First exhibition game and I went on a column tirade about the lousy trade.

Turned out, it was quite a conclusion leap.

Love was an outstanding Timberwolf, a five-time All-Star through his career, and now is filling the Joe Ingles/wily-veteran role for the Utah Jazz in his 18th NBA season.

Mayo has been out of the league since 2016, played internationally from 2018 to 2023, and is now an assistant coach for the Liaoning Flying Leopards in the CBA (Chinese Basketball Association).

As Mayo was leaving the NBA in 2016, there was another massive disturbance in the conclusion-jumping department. The Twins were in spring training in Fort Myers, Fla. They had come back from four comatose seasons to finish 83-79 in 2015.

The Reusses were staying in a small condo in the Paseo complex in the Fort. Former Twins closer Glen Perkins had a house there. We watched the Super Bowl in the bar attached to the swimming pool; he came over to watch a basketball game, bringing a few beers for himself.

Perky was downright optimistic about what he was seeing from the ballclub that spring. I went with it, signing off an end-of-spring column, “What’s not to like?”

Answer: Everything.

The Twins went 59-103, the most losses in franchise history. How was I supposed to know Perky was honing his optimism skills for a future as part of Twins telecasts and broadcasts?

He’s good at it, by the way … even as the Twins are reaching new lows in public approval.

Eighty candidates?

The brainwork with which the Twins appear to be operating since the salary purge at the trading deadline makes you wonder if Bobby Cox was on the list of 80, until one of the Falveyians did some research and found out Coxie wasn’t moving well enough to go out and change pitchers at age 84.

What has me bemused over conclusion-jumping now are the two factions in the J.J. McCarthy argument. My opinion is that the excuse-making pro-McCarthy lobby has been more outrageous than the critics.

And certainly, the critics were given much more recent ammunition — starting with the revelation of McCarthy’s “Nine,” the aggressive alter ego he was claiming to bring with him into Vikings games.

Ill-timed, to say the least, because the character that showed up at U.S. Bank Stadium last Sunday was more “4½,” handing a home loss to the Vikings as Baltimore played so-so, at best.

He was out of action for five games — anointed again after a win in Detroit when passing for 143 yards, inept in many ways when Nine failed to show up last Sunday.

Home again this week. Don’t announce a verdict on McCarthy either way. Watch, digest and wait.