Ache #20: Thaddeus Young

In 2014, the Timberwolves were ready to move on from All Star Kevin Love. They worked out a three-team trade with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Philadelphia 76ers.

In the deal, Cleveland got Kevin Love from Minnesota. Philadelphia got a future first-round pick from Cleveland and Luc Mbah a Moute and Alexey Shved from Minnesota.

The Wolves acquired Andrew Wiggins and Anthony Bennett from Cleveland and Thaddeus Young from Philadelphia.

The Wolves also drafted Zach LaVine with the 13th overall

pick in the 2014 NBA Draft

(LaVine, Wiggins, Bennett, Young)

With Bennett, LaVine, Wiggins all under 20 years old, adding the veteran leadership of Thaddeus Young (a seven-year NBA vet at age 26). Add in other young pieces like Gorgui Dieng, Shabazz Muhammad, a couple vets like Kevin Martin, Corey Brewer, Ricky Rubio and Mo Williams and the return of Flip Saunders to the Wolves bench as Head Coach and you have a foundation for the future.

If the Wolves were going to win out of the gate, they would have to rely heavily on Thad Young.  The 12th overall pick in the 2007 NBA Draft had a career year in Philadelphia in 2013-14, averaging nearly 18 points per game while setting career highs in points, steals, assists, three-pointers and games started. He could score from both inside the arc and from beyond the perimeter. 

Young's biggest strength was his athletic ability. He was excellent in transition. He was a solid defender too. He averaged a career-high two steals per game (third in the NBA) in 2013-14. Without any proven scorers on the team, Flip Saunders hoped that Young and Rubio would click on the court.

The Wolves started the season 2-2, with their two loses coming by a total of five points. It looked like the Wolves rebuild with their young talent was going to come faster than expected. But the Wolves would lose 26 of their next 29 games.

Young was very streaky over his first 48 games, he could poor in upwards of 25 points per game, or he would leave the stat sheet blank. Flip saw what he needed to over the first 48 games. While Flip wanted to keep Young and the core together, he had the opportunity to bring one of his proven leaders, one of Minnesota's basketball legends back home.

On February 19th, less than six months after being traded to Minnesota, Young was traded to the Brooklyn Nets for Kevin Garnett.

"This is the perfect situation...the talent here is endless"
-Kevin Garnett

Young averaged 14 points and five rebounds a game for the Wolves while starting all 48 games he appeared in.

With Brooklyn, Young eventually cracked the staring lineup, starting 20 of 28 games with the Nets. Brooklyn was 21-31 without Young, but finished the season 17-13 without him. At 38-44 and in the weak Eastern Conference, the Nets snuck into the playoffs as the 8 seed and took top-seeded Atlanta to six games in the opening round.

Young was traded to the Indiana Pacers in July 2016, where he has re-established himself as a starter in the NBA and helped lead Indiana to back-to-back playoff appearances in 2016-17 and 2017-18.

Ache #19: Gretzky, Kurri and the 1984 Conference Finals

In 1984, Wayne Gretzky was on his way to becoming "the great one". In his first four seasons in the NHL, the Hall of Fame center had scored 269 goals and tallied 709 points in 319 career games. He had won four consecutive Hart Memorial Trophies (given to the league's most valuable player), three consecutive Art Ross trophies (given to the league's top scorer) and two consecutive Lester Pearson awards (given to the most outstanding player voted on by the NHL)

The one thing he hadn't been able to do was hoist the cup.

Edmonton was swept by Philadelphia in the first round Gretzky's rookie year in 1979-80. In 1980-81, they swept Vancouver in the first round before losing in six games to the New York Islanders, who were in the middle of their run of four straight championships. In 1981-82, they were upset by a 24-win LA Kings team in five games. In 1982-83, they finally reached the Stanley Cup Finals before being swept by the Islanders for their fourth straight Stanley Cup.

But this isn't a blog about Edmonton. This is a blog about Minnesota.

In the 1983-84 season, the North Stars won their second Norris Division championship in three years.
At 39-31-10 (88 points), the North Stars were the only division winner not to win at last 49 games and have fewer than 100 points.

In fact, eight other franchises (Edmonton, Boston, Buffalo, Quebec, NY Islanders, Washington, Philadelphia, NY Rangers) had more points than the North Stars.

If Brian Bellows and the 1983-84 North Stars

had played in the Patrick Division, they would have 

finished in fifth place.

During their Stanley Cup Finals run in 1981, the North Stars were an underdog in almost every series as well. Brian Bellows, Neal Broten and Dino Cicerelli were up for the challenge.

In the first round of the playoffs, the North Stars drew rival Chicago. After losing to the New York Islanders in the 1980-81 Stanley Cup Finals, the Black Hawks had eliminated Minnesota the past two seasons.

The 68-point Black Hawks won Game One in Bloomington 3-1. In Game Two, the North Stars needed some late-game heroics. Tied 3-3 after the second period, Al MacAdam and Willi Plett each scored to give Minnesota a 5-3 lead. A Denis Savard goal trimmed the lead to 5-4 before Neal Brotten scored to make it 6-4. A late Darryl Sutter goal made it a one goal game before Minnesota's defense locked down to give the North Stars a 6-5 Game Two win.

Game Three at Chicago Stadium went to Minnesota 4-1 to give the North Stars a 2-1 series lead. Game Four saw Minnesota lose a 3-2 midway through the third period to lose 4-3.

The North Stars never trailed in the decisive Game Five at the Met Center, winning 4-1 to take the series.

The semi-final round matched the North Stars up against the St. Louis Blues, who had defeated the Detroit Red Wings in four games. The two teams split the first four games of the series. In Game 5, the North Stars shut the Blues out 6-0. St. Louis responded in Game Six by shutting Minnesota out 4-0. A decisive Game Seven was played at the Met Center, and was tied at the end of regulation. A Steve Payne goal gave Minnesota the series win in overtime and a date with the Edmonton Oilers in the Conference Finals.

Embed from Getty Images

Steve Payne

After going 2-0 in elimination games, the North Stars were pretty confident into their tough match up against Edmonton. They'd need more than confidence against a team that featured eight 20+ goal scorers (Gretzky had 87 by himself) and six future Hall of Famers (Anderson, Fuhr, Gretzky, Kurri, Messier, Coffey).

The series wasn't even close. Edmonton outscored Minnesota 22-10 in the four game sweep. Five of Minnesota's goals came in an 8-5 Game Three loss with Andy Moog in net.

Embed from Getty Images
Jari Kurri (above) scored as many goals (5) as
G Grant Fuhr allowed (5) against Minnesota

The Oilers would dethrone the New York Islanders in the Stanley Cup finals, winning their first of five Stanley Cups in the 1980s.

And, just like in 1980-81, the North Stars were once again a footnote of one of the greatest dynasties in NHL history.

Ache #1: The Ed Thorpe Memorial Trophy

In the last two decades, sports fans have seen two of professional sports most prevalent curses broken by the Boston Red Sox in 2004 and the Chicago Cubs in 2016. One that remains unbroken with no end in sight is the curse that haunts the Minnesota Vikings: The Curse of the Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy.

Ed Thorpe was an early football referee, rules expert and a friend to some of the early NFL owners. When he died in 1934, the owners decided to create a trophy to honor him. In today's NFL, when a team wins the Lombardi Trophy, they get a brand new trophy. There was only one Ed Thorp trophy and it was passed on from champion to champion much like the NHL's Stanley Cup.

A news clipping from the June 23rd edition of the Berkeley Daily Gazette announcing that Thorp had passed away.

The Ed Thorp Memorial trophy was the NFL's championship trophy from 1934-1969.

In 1966, the NFL agreed to merge with the AFL to create one National Football League. However, the league decided to continue to award the to the winner of the NFL Conference. The last team that won the award was the Minnesota Vikings.

The Vikings only won a single Ed Thorp trophy in the franchise history. After all, Minnesota had only been in the league for eight years, but had the building blocks in place to be one of the great franchises of the 1970s. Hall of Fame head coach Bud Grant was now in his third season as head coach and had taken the Vikings from a 3-8 team to 12-2 and the top of the NFL. With Pro Bowl quarterback Joe Kapp at the helm, future Hall of Famers Ron Yary and Mick Tingelhoff protecting him, and Alan Page, Carl Eller, Gary Larson and Jim Marshall on the defensive line, Minnesota was poised to win multiple championships.

They defeated the Baltimore Colts, who had knocked them out of the 1968 NFL Playoffs, by 38 points en route to a 12 game winning streak in 1969. In fact, they led the league in both PPG (27.1) and PA (9.1). The Vikings literally dominated every aspect of the game. On January 4th, 1970, they shellacked the Cleveland Browns in the NFL Championship game at a freezing Metropolitan Stadium 27-7 to advance to their first Super Bowl. The team was awarded the final Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy as the 1969 NFL Champions.

And they lost it.

Straight up lost it. The trophy just disappeared.

Fans didn't know it at the time, but losing the Ed Thorp trophy would kick off a decades-long curse for the Minnesota Vikings. They entered Super Bowl IV as 12 point favorites against Len Dawson and the Kansas City Chiefs.

Yeah, about that...

The Vikings lost 23-7.

But that's not all folks. Despite re-acquiring Hall of Fame quarterback Fran Tarkenton from the New York Giants in 1972 and featuring the daunting Purple People Eater defense, the Vikings would lose three Super Bowls in four years from 1974 to 1977. The year they didn't make the Super Bowl was the famed "Hail Mary" play from Roger Staubach to Drew Pearson that knocked the Vikings out of the playoffs in 1975.

And it doesn't end there. From the Herschel Walker trade in 1989 to Gary Anderson in 1998 to the Brett Favre interception in 2010 to Blair Walsh in 2016, the Vikings have seen promising seasons end in tears and frustration. In fact, the Vikings have the most playoff losses (28) in league history.

The kicker with the Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy is that, to this day, nobody knows where that trophy is.

It was discovered in 2015, however, that there the original traveling trophy was only awarded from 1934 to 1939, when the Green Bay Packers stashed it, and a new trophy was awarded to the rival Chicago Bears in 1940. What's even more intriguing is that somebody continued to etch the names of the winners of the trophy on the original until 1951, when it ran out of room.