It’s the early morning hours of October 13, 2017. Amanda is walking with me, back to my car, after the Washington Nationals’ most recent Game 5 collapse. My voice is hoarse from yelling. My hands hurt from clapping. And my head is full of the frustration that comes with emotionally investing yourself in sports teams.

And in this moment, for reasons I still don’t understand, Amanda decided that she wanted to become a sports fan.

“I want to follow an NBA team this season. Like, really follow them,” the conversation starts. I’m puzzled. “Like, you want to watch games?” “Yes,” she says. “Who should I root for?”

I give her a few options: The 76ers (eliminated early on because Eastern Time Zone makes it difficult, with work and dinner and all of that stuff, to tune in to the start of games), the Jazz, the Bucks, the Nuggets, and the Timberwolves.

“Okay, I’m going to do some research,” she says and I fully expect her to forget this whole conversation by the time we get back to the Fiat.

A few days later, Amanda declares that she’s narrowed her list down to the Bucks and the Timberwolves. She’s leaning Minnesota because she really likes what she’s read about Jimmy Butler, and she really dislikes what she’s read about the Bucks’ (then) coach Jason Kidd (see: domestic abuse). I endorse the Timberwolves decision and we make a plan to watch a game.

And we do. And then we watch another. And another. And on and on.

Last night, we watched our last Timberwolves game of the 2017-18 season. What I assumed would be a two-week hobby turned into a season-long devotion for Amanda. I’d estimate that we watched about 65 regular season games and each of these fairly predictable playoff ones with Houston. I have so many takeaways from my season spent with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Here they are in no particular order:

-Tom Thibodeau is a terrible in-game coach. His rotations make very little sense. I watched on a handful of occasions in the middle of the season as he played Karl-Anthony Towns, Taj Gibson, and Jimmy Butler in the 4th quarter of 20 point games. Each time he did it, it felt like watching someone drive an antique car blindfolded. You have this beautiful thing and you’re just going to use it wrong? It’s going to get ruined! And the fatigue was real down the stretch. Towns looked tired. And Jimmy’s only real saving grace, if you will, was a knee injury that forced him out of 17 games.

-Jimmy Butler is a treasure. If all he was was a great on-ball defender and a decent scorer, he’d be worth his salary tenfold. But he brings so much more. He can slash. He can shoot. He can defend four positions. He can handle the ball. And he can be the face of a franchise. Minnesota gave up a lot to get Jimmy. Zach LaVine has an enormously high ceiling in the NBA, Kris Dunn will be an above average point guard, and Lauri Markkanen (whom Chicago took with Minnesota’s traded first round draft pick) has the potential to be a transcendent player, in the mold of a Dirk Nowitzki. But Minnesota bet on “right now” with Jimmy and they won the pot. Watching him all season only made me more envious that he wasn’t a Boston Celtic.

-Andrew Wiggins is not a treasure. He signed a max contract extension prior to the start of this season, which will go into effect next season, paying him an AAV of about $28 million for the next 5 seasons. Minnesota will come to rue this signing when they have to choose between paying Jimmy or Karl-Anthony. And all of this for a guy who is often reluctant, and at times invisible, on the court. Wiggins’ 3-year similarity scores on basketball-reference.com are only funny if you’re not a Wolves fan. Matt Bonner. Loy Vaught. Junior Bridgeman. Nick Collison. And yes, I get that he’s 22 years old and there’s room for improvement and blah blah blah. At 22, I firmly believe he is who he is. He’s a subpar outside shooter and subpar one-on-one defender who operates in about 2nd gear all of the time. If watching Jimmy is a pleasure, watching Andrew is a chore.

-“Jeff Teague is garbage. He is awful.” were sentences I uttered nearly every single night. Bad passes, contested shots, sloppy runners in the lane, lackadaisical defense. Thib’s reliance on Teague over the steadier Tyus Jones was perhaps the most perplexing thing to me of this entire season. Well, second most. The most perplexing was…

-Marcus Georges-Hunt. When you spend a lot of time watching a team play, you find yourself becoming enamored with players who maybe aren’t quite as good as you think they are. And maybe MGH is one of those guys. Sure, he averaged less than 1.5 ppg this season and couldn’t knock down three point shots to save his life. But he can defend. And he’s a good shooter inside of the 3 point line (eFG% of 48% in limited time this season). And yet, Thibs refused to play a 24 year old with, at the very least, potential to be a useful defensive tool off the bench. And I think that did a soon-to-be cash strapped team a big disservice. MGH missed out on opportunities to play moderately meaningful minutes and learn the pro game because Tom Thibodeau has trust issues. That’s not good.

– Keita Bates-Diop. Recognizing that Thibs will, unfortunately, be back to coach this team next season and he’s never one to give playing time to young players (see: Georges-Hunt, Marcus and Jones, Tyus), I still would like to see Minnesota use their first round pick (which is Oklahoma City’s original pick) to draft Bates-Diop, someone I think will be instant offense off the bench for any number of playoff teams next season.

Those are just a few of my thoughts on this season. There are games I’ll remember. Like Minnesota losing late in the season to Memphis or early in the season to Phoenix. Or the barn-burner they played against the Cavs when LeBron put them away late in OT. I also have some thoughts on Karl-Anthony Towns that can largely be boiled down to “I honestly don’t think he’s nearly as good as his reputation and even with his youth, I’d rather build a team around Jimmy Butler than KAT, if I had to choose.”

All in all, though, I loved this experience. Sure, I didn’t get to watch nearly as many Celtics games this season as I may have liked. But I really enjoyed getting to teach Amanda some things about basketball. I enjoyed seeing Minnesota in person when they came to DC. And I especially enjoyed watching her experience fandom, the wins and the losses. And I enjoyed developing an attachment to the Wolves.

This morning, despite knowing the end result, Amanda watched the second half of last night’s elimination game, via DVR (we fell asleep in the 3rd quarter when Houston made a run that rendered the result more inevitable than it already was). I asked her why she was doing it and, if I’m going to boil down her response, it was “because I’m a fan.”

And now, I turn MAB over to Amanda for her thoughts on being a Wolves fan, in her words:

Last weekend, I played basketball for the first time in my life. I now fancy myself the Jimmy Butler of 5-foot tall, 33 year old Portuguese ladies who live in DC. I think that narrows it down enough to actually be accurate.

Becoming a sports fan again was fun and frustrating and all of the things it means to be a sports fan. I say again having grown up a Red Sox fan but, most of my adult life has been spent watching sports without a lot of investment in the outcome. Feeling the highs and lows of fandom during this NBA season were worth it, particularly for the way in which I chose the team.

Here are my takes on the Timberwolves that are not reflected in Jason’s thoughts above.

– Jamal Crawford will literally take a shot from anywhere just for the opportunity to take the shot. I guess something is better than nothing. But actually, I don’t think that makes you successful at basketball.
– Cole Aldridge is the best cheerleader the Timberwolves could ever ask for.
– I called Tyus “Ratface” for a most of the first half of the season. I now regret my criticism of his physical appearance, I don’t think he looks like a rat, I think he’s a valuable player who knows how to move well and is way better than Garbage Man Teague. And he seems like a nice young man.
– My attachment to reality television has made me want to know everything about these players’ lives to the point where I have basically created narratives. I think Gorgui has got a real wild streak in him for no reason at all.

Like I said, it’s nice to be a fan again and I’m looking forward to the continued failures of Thibs in the years to come.