It’ll Be a Sad Day When Timberwolves Go Home

I feel like I’ve bonded with the yahoos stuck in Minnesota rooting for a woebegone basketball team. It’s almost as if we’ve become hinterland home companions.

The other day after the Timberwolves had lucked out and won Game 2 because our regular-season slackers didn’t feel like playing hard, Sam S e-mailed from Minnesota to say: “Looking forward to your LA Times article tomorrow.”

That seemed to be the general reaction from folks in Minnesota, with Emily Sanders sounding excited: “I can’t wait now to see what you’ve got to say.”

Funny thing, I can’t remember the last time anyone in the Los Angeles area e-mailed to say they were looking forward to something I might have to say.

In fact Sports Editor Bill Dwyre has me writing three columns a week this summer instead of four, he said, because the readers need a break. And I don’t think he was talking about the readers in Minnesota.

It’s a shame we’ll be going our different ways so soon -- especially with so many folks in Minnesota wanting to read what I have to say about their downtrodden team. I feel like I haven’t gotten the chance to see the best that Fred Hoiberg has to offer, and now I wonder if I’ll ever get the chance. (I’ve seen enough of Michael Olowokandi).

I’m happy to hear, though, that even though Minnesota won’t have a championship team to follow this year, the quality of life in the hinterlands appears to be looking up and there won’t be any need for all those brooms that I mentioned the other day.

Associated Press reported Tuesday, “The annual march of the army worms through northern Minnesota will be much smaller ... that’s good news to nearly everyone who does anything outside because there will be millions fewer worms eating aspen trees, covering driveways, houses and pooping everywhere else.”

What a relief -- no reason to sweep anything now, which has to be good news for the Timberwolves, who will be beginning their summer vacation in a few days.

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WHEN IT came time to introduce the Lakers, they flashed the words, “Heart, Passion and Emotion,” on the scoreboard, a reminder, I guess, to the guys of what they were missing in Game 2.

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IT APPEARS that Minnesota doesn’t have a chance now with Shaq telling TNT’s Craig Sager, when it comes to free throws, “I’m not going to miss them all.”

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WHEN I received the book, “Why You Crying?” I thought it was from somebody in Minnesota wanting to remind me I had predicted a Laker sweep. Instead I got the life story of G. Lo -- big-butt comedian George Lopez -- in a new book written with talented HBO/CBS correspondent Armen Keteyian. Keteyian had to call on all his talent to make the chapter about Lopez’s golf expertise both readable and believable.

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HERE’S WHAT KCBS-TV’s Paul Magers apparently thinks of Laker fans, telling the St. Paul Pioneer Press, “If I went on the air and talked about supporting the Wolves, they would storm the Bastille. I could just see burning torches and pitch forks.... I don’t want to walk out into the parking lot and find my car burning.”

Magers, a former Minnesota broadcaster before moving here in December, said he has tried to keep his Wolves’ allegiance quiet. The low ratings that KCBS has drawn since his arrival sure help.

“I can wear full Wolves garb out here and no one will know who I am,” he said, and that must make the executives at KCBS feel a lot better about those low ratings.

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NFL COMMISSIONER Paul Tagliabue -- you remember him -- the tall, dull guy standing outside the Coliseum a few years back announcing the return of football to Los Angeles was imminent. Well, he’s back.

Now he says he’d like to see football here in 2008, and to do that, he said, the NFL would like to pick a stadium site by next year -- pitting Carson, the Rose Bowl and the Coliseum against one another again in trying to win NFL favor.

By chance, I ran into Staples Center owner Philip Anschutz, who, along with Ed Roski, was the first to try to bring the NFL back to town almost a decade ago.

“That’s interesting to hear,” said Anschutz when I told him what Tagliabue had to say, and he seemed about as excited as you are right now.

If this all sounds familiar, it is. The NFL wants to tap into the marketing treasure that is L.A., as long as it can get someone in L.A. to pay for its return.

This announcement also allows owners in Indianapolis, San Diego, Minnesota and New Orleans to increase the pressure on their own fans in demands for new stadiums, while using the threat of moving to L.A. to extort public contributions.

I’d be willing to support the use of public funds for NFL use -- to build roadblocks and keep the Spanos Goofs in San Diego.

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I THOUGHT at first the invite to speak at the 38th annual St. Nicholas Cathedral Sports Night Banquet was really nice until I found myself sitting between Hall of Fame hockey announcer Bob Miller and the Kings’ Trent Klatt, who grew up in Minnesota. The people at St. Nicholas Cathedral sure are mean.

The tribute, dedicated to the memory of Mike Jaidar, who contributed so much to this event in the past, included dinner and dessert -- cupcakes decorated with miniature basketballs, soccer balls and footballs. Would you eat a cupcake with a hockey puck on top?

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WONDER WHAT those Fox TV ratings were for the Dodger game -- played opposite the Laker TNT telecast Tuesday night. I’d hate to think that Vin Scully got the same amount of attention that Max Kellerman is getting these days on Fox.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.