With the ongoing lockout in the NHL, many arenas in North America are experiencing more open dates and dark nights than they’d like to have. So the people who run the MTS Centre in Winnipeg must have been happy to get as many as 12,163 (the announced attendance) to see the Minnesota Timberwolves play the Detroit Pistons during the NBA preseason.
The game managed to attract a house that was 80 percent full; the exhibition was, in the words of one fan, “better than nothing.” But it’s only one game, it means nothing in the standings and, well, it’s basketball. The heart of the typical Canadian sports fan has hockey at its core, particularly the National Hockey League. This is especially true in Winnipeg, where they just welcomed back a pro hockey team again last season after 15 years of going without.
The lockout has to be painful for Winnipeggers, and especially for Jets season-ticket fans, as they were compelled to pre-buy packages of a minimum of three years. At the moment they’re getting nothing, while the owners have locked out the players and refuse to talk to them despite the NHLPA’s request to restart negotiations.
For now, let’s get back to the league which is actually playing: on Wednesday night, the Wolves spanked the Pistons 95-76. Ironically, the leading scorer in the game for Minnesota with 21 points was Chase Budinger, whom Detroit selected in the second round (44th overall) in the 2009 entry draft in the but never played a minute for the Pistons.
This was the second of two preseason games scheduled for Canada; last Friday, Oct. 19, the Toronto Raptors similarly had no problems handling the New York Knicks 107-88 at a sold-out Bell Centre in Montreal.
Significantly, but not surprisingly, apparently no games were contemplated for Vancouver, Canada’s third-largest sports market. The West Coast is still licking its wounds over the Grizzlies debacle, along with the more recent transformation of the Seattle Sonics into the Oklahoma City Thunder. Even if a NBA exhibition game was held in Rogers Arena, it would likely be considered in the same regard as the actual games which took place in Winnipeg and Montreal: “That’s nice. Where’s hockey, dammit?!”
With the NBA regular season slated to start next Tuesday, Oct. 30, they appear to have their house in order; meanwhile, any semblance of an NHL regular season seems very distant at this point. For many fans north of the border, pro hoops is simply no replacement for what they’re missing now.
