Cool as ice

It was a trip back to the 90s tonight at Target Center. During halftime one hit wonder and sometimes Mutant Ninja Turtle sidekick Vanilla Ice continued his quest to remove hipsters from the contents of their wallets, and during the 48 minutes of action Kevin Garnett treated Wolves fans to visions of what once roamed the hardwood at 600 First Avenue.

Ahhhh...nostalgia.

Unlike the colorful dayglo pants, bedazzled jackets, and criss-cross fades of Vanilla Ice's music career, watching The Ticket put up 24 and 10 in downtown Minneapolis wasn't enough to trigger a way-back smirk of "holy crap, we actually went through that"; rather...well, pop goes the weasel, I guess. Some people actually mean what they do.

I suppose all of this is only fitting. On a night that finished up a week of talking about where Kevin Love stands in the pantheon of the two best Timberwolves of all time, and on a day where a one-hit-wonder trotted out to half court in a #42 jersey to schmaltz up the yokels, the ironic entertainment of the not-quite-ready-for-prime-time set was shown for what it was: a one trick pony trying to make it in a world of honest-to-god talents.

Thankfully for Wolves fans, the analogy doesn't hold all the way through, as Kevin Love is far more Pete Nice than Vanilla Ice, and he seems to have the chops to stick around for the long haul...without irony. Hopefully, somewhere down the road the crew at Target Center can give #42 some better beats and backup dancers so that the next time we throw a nostalgia party, it will be more evolution and revolution than karaoke. There are still a few bits of the past that this franchise needs to cut itself away from.

Word to your mother.