The excitement could be just getting started for Minnesota's hockey followers. A merciful end has come to the 2014-15 season for Minnesota's basketball fans.

There have been few times in the past quarter-century that the combination of the Timberwolves and Gophers men has produced such disgusting results.

The bottom rung of the NBA has become more than a joke. It has become a fraud. You have a league where 20 percent of the teams spend the last couple of months being creative as to how to lose games, and all you get from club officials, coaches and national analysts are snickers and winks.

And now those 132 remaining hard-core Timberwolves' fans are being urged to celebrate the craftiness of Flip Saunders in guiding his miserable misfits to a 16-66 record and thus a 25 percent chance to win the NBA's lottery.

On Wednesday, as Oklahoma City completed putting up 138 points in the season finale, TV play-by-play announcer Dave Benz said, "The Timberwolves may have only won 16 games, but there's a bright future."

Nonsense. They have Andrew Wiggins, and hopefully Kentucky's Karl-Anthony Towns, and everyone else next fall will be either a very flawed veteran or merely a suspect as a player.

This winter's failure at Williams Arena was more amazing than the Timberwolves' tank job. Richard Pitino's Gophers had much experience with two post players and capable guards. Somehow, he coached 'em up to 6-12 in the Big Ten and to being absent from the 100 teams playing in the NCAA or the NIT.

What we might have seen in Pitino's second season was the worst coaching job the Gophers have had since George Hanson went one-and-done in 1970-71.

You want a fraud to rival the Wolves' tank-a-thon? That would be the idea Alabama considered Pitino to be a "leading candidate" to replace the fired Anthony Grant.

After this season, Pitino the younger had the same chance to be Alabama's new basketball coach as Tim Brewster did to replace Charlie Weis at Notre Dame after Coach Brew whipped South Dakota State 16-13 to become bowl-eligible with the Gophers in 2009.

PLUS THREE FROM PATRICK

Three things that have looked good in the Twins' first home series:

Joe Mauer's swing: The No. 1 goal of Mauer this spring was to hit more line drives to right field. The early results are full of promise.

Casey Fien's cutter: It is no longer a debate: He's the eighth-inning guy, as long as he doesn't get pitched into the ground (as was the case in 2014).

Aaron Thompson's hair: OK, there are also pitches to like with this lefty, but he has the hair to make Brian Dozier jealous. Magnificent.