Todd Swank: Witnessing the End of the 2026 Timberwolves

May 17, 2026

Witnessing the End of the 2026 Timberwolves

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for May 17, 2026

We headed downtown Friday night fired up to cheer on our beloved Timberwolves in Game 6, fully expecting the kind of playoff fight that would force a Game 7 and keep the dream alive. Avery and Abby joined us, with the original plan being Avery sitting with me in our usual seats while Miss Sheri and Abby prepared for the upper-deck fan survival experience. Ant was gonna go off. The crowd was gonna be nuts. Wemby was gonna have a long night. Hope was alive. Which, for Minnesota sports fans, is usually the first sign of trouble.

Jade has been our Timberwolves rep for a few years now, and right as the game was starting, she tracked down Miss Sheri with the kind of news that never happens to us. She surprised us with 4th-row floor seats behind the basket. Just like that, Abby got promoted to sit with Avery, and Sheri and I got a brief glimpse into how the rich people experience playoff basketball.

I was pretty fired up. I’d never had playoff seats this good. Sure, we once got courtside seats for a random summer Wolves exhibition where the rookies played some team from another country, which was cool... but let’s be honest, that’s basically basketball recess. This was a Friday night, Round 2, Game 6, win-or-go-home playoff basketball. This was the big time.

And now we were sitting close enough to watch our favorite player, Anthony Edwards, go toe-to-toe with Wemby, the most fascinating phenomenon in basketball, from just a few feet away. Every dunk, block, stare-down, and possible playoff meltdown was suddenly happening right in front of us. What kind of absolute chaos were we about to witness?

It didn’t take long to realize this might not be the magical playoff memory we’d imagined on the drive downtown. The Spurs came out looking calm, confident, and annoyingly competent, while the Wolves looked like a team trying to assemble IKEA furniture without the instructions. Stephon Castle was cooking, San Antonio couldn’t seem to miss, and the energy in our fancy new seats started shifting from THIS IS AMAZING to uhhhh… is anyone else concerned?

There were still a few flashes that made you sit forward and think, okay... here we go. But if we’re being honest, San Antonio just looked like the better team most of this series. More confident. More composed. More answers. The Wolves never quite felt like the same team that punched Denver in the mouth in round one. That version of them apparently took a different exit.

And the supporting cast that helped take down Denver just never looked the same. Jaden wasn’t giving us those momentum-swinging moments, Rudy felt far less disruptive, and Julius Randle’s offense seemed to take an unexpected vacation. Against Denver, these guys felt like weapons. Against San Antonio, way too often they just felt... present.

Some of this is understandable when the other team has a guy who looks like AI was asked to build the perfect basketball player and ignored all normal human limitations. Wembanyama is 7-foot-4, handles like a guard, blocks everything, and somehow doesn’t move like a folding ladder. It’s absurd. Unfortunately, our magical VIP playoff experience ended the same way the Timberwolves season did... with a 139-109 punch to the face. And now comes the annual Minnesota tradition: pretending this roster is either one tweak away or in desperate need of demolition. Because right now, San Antonio and Oklahoma City look like they’re playing a different sport.

But hey, at least we got to rub shoulders with celebrities. Well... at least Minnesota famous. I got to bump into Mark Rosen, who has basically been narrating our local sports heartbreak for the last 50 years. If you grew up anywhere near the Twin Cities, you know exactly who Mark is.

And yet... despite the fact that Minnesota’s four major men’s pro sports teams haven’t won a championship since the Twins in 1991, Miss Sheri and I will absolutely keep showing up, wearing the gear, losing our voices, and convincing ourselves the Vikings or Timberwolves are finally about to reward our emotional instability. Because that’s what fans do. Hope is basically our regional personality trait at this point. And who knows... maybe 2027 is finally our year. Yes, I know. I’ve said that before.

@toddswank This kid might be really really good!. He’s by himself doing wind sprints an hour before Round 2 Game 6 against the Wolves. #wemby #spurs #wolves #nbaplayoff ♬ original sound - thu nguyen