Insane Stat: Minnesota Has The Four Worst Head To Head Losing Streaks In NBA History But There's A Path For Revenge In The Playoffs
Animalist. Getty Images."Your vengeance may sometimes be slow in coming, but I think that then it is all the more complete". - Count of Monte Cristo
The Minnesota Timberwolves are a sad franchise. They've won zero championships since they were little pups fresh from the litter back in their first 1989-90 season. They've screwed up plenty on their own in the Kevin Garnett era, but as we'll soon get to they've also been absolutely owned by certain teams on a level I've never seen in any sport. But if you like rooting for an underdog, you'll love rooting for these underwolves this NBA postseason (if they make it). I'm all for a good revenge story, even if I'm the only one that knows about it, so I put a future on the T-Wolves winning the NBA Finals this year for a smooth +25000 on the Barstool Sportsbook. I'm ready to mush these good boys to get their sweet revenge.
This all started the other night when the Clippers beat the Lakers for the 11th straight time. That got my mind wondering, so I took to the stat machine to see what the longest head to head losing streak in NBA history was. I struck gold. Not out in California. But in the fresh lakes of Minnesota:
In some evil act from the basketball gods, Minnesota owns the four worst "getting owned" stretches in the history of the National Basketball Association. Go on. Read that sentence again, just to make sure you got that right. Four. Not just the worst. Not just the two worst. NOT EVEN JUST THE THREE WORST! This poor city of Minneapolis owns the top-four head-to-head losing streaks in NBA history while sharing the fourth with the Buffalo Braves (pretty sure this is a made up team) at 22. Let me remind you that the Timberwolves weren't even a team until the 1989-90 season.
This is beyond absurd. Let's quickly retrace history here for professional Minnesota basketball. They won five championships in their first six years as the Minneapolis Lakers but flamed out towards the end of the '50s. That's when the Bill Russell Celtics whooped them 22 games in a row from 1957-1959. After the 1959-60 season they made one of the best sports franchise career moves of all time and took their five championships out to LA where they would go on to win 12 more. Oh yeah, almost forgot. The Lakers would also go on to be one of the teams in the graph above to own Minneapolis for 22 games, the very team that left their city in the dust.
That's tough.
Let's make it tougher. Since Minnesota was dumped with no prenup by the Lakers for a sexy beach named Los Angeles, the timid city in the lakes took a solid 30 years before dipping their toes back in the NBA franchise game. That's when the Timberwolves were born in 1989-90. Finally. After 30 years Minneapolis was ready to get back out there and forget all about that 22-game owned streak to the Celtics and the fact that all their championships were taken from them to LA.
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It wouldn't take long. In less than two years the Timberwolves would start their 26-straight game losing streak to the Seattle Super Sonics from March of 1991 to December of 1997. Over six-and-a-half years and the all-time NBA record. Not to mention that to this day they've never won a championship. That's certainly sad, but par for the Minnesota course as the Twins are the only team in the state to win a title in the big-four of sports (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL) since the Timberwolves franchise began. Here's how Minnesota ranks across all four sports since then.
Side note - Fuck yeah Chicago!
Path For Revenge
Let's talk revenge. With the Super Sonics gone and dead, the Minnesota Timberwolves have a chance to exact revenge on the three other teams that made them their bitch so long ago and in such an obscure manner that no one (including the Timberwolves) likely has any clue there is even revenge to be had. But I won't let that little detail stop me from blogging about it. Or betting on it. Anyway, theses good boys will need things to go there way, but let's just play it out step by step as things stand now:
Step 1: Beat OKC (with all this build up and potential, this will be the game the Timberwolves lose and thrust themselves right back into their familiar misery)
Step 2: Play the Lakers after they lose to NOP. This is your chance to strike the Lakers in what can be deduced as LeBron's most important game of his entire career. Beating the Lakers here can heal the 22-game losing streak from way back to when most players were roughly seven years old.
Step 3: While this didn't make the graph, Denver did hold a 12-game win streak over the Timberwolves from March 6th, 1994 - April 14th, 1996 (this might actually be more embarrassing for the Nuggets that it's so low).
Step 4: With the Sonics already long dead, the Suns are the biggest foe left. But it's the T-Wolves that look to rise from the ashes of the dead for getting torched 25 straight games by the Suns in a six-year stretch.
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Step 5: While the Bucks hold the #1 seed in the East, it's no stretch to think the Celtics can return to the NBA Finals in back to back seasons. This offers the Timberwolves a chance to get revenge for the Celtics 22-game win streak on their former team in the late '50s.
This is Minnesota's big chance. The time has come to chase down every foe from decades ago to get revenge on an obscure stat no one has any idea is even a thing. Fair to say they won't see it coming!
Who's with me here at +25,000? Let's ride on this sled. Everyone loves an underwolf and sweet revenge is right around the corner (or again, an anticlimactic loss to OKC).
- Jeffro