As the playoffs return to Target Center, so will a familiar face

On the eve of the first playoff game in Minnesota in 14 years, one of the most recognizable faces in Timberwolves lore is sporting a black Gustavus Adolphus pullover, jeans and a scruffy beard.

The tailored suit, the painted Timberwolves rock he held in his hand during games, the rolled up program that he pounded on the court while crouched in front of his seat are all absent as Bill Beise takes a seat at a conference table on the seventh floor of a downtown office building. It doesn’t take long to see that the intensity, passion and love for the game haven’t gone anywhere.

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When the Timberwolves host the Houston Rockets in Game 3 of their first-round series on Saturday night, Beise will be back at Target Center for one of the rare times since he gave up his courtside seats in 2008. As he ponders 30 years of fandom, his hand starts tapping excitedly on the table while he recounts what those playoff games were like so long ago.

“It was just so frickin’ exciting and I was so into it,” Beise said. “Coming in, I hoped we could win against what seemed like staggering odds, which they were in the early days. It was just so much fun. So much fun.”

The gracious, gregarious Beise took on a different persona when he walked into the arena. Equity sales trader by day. “The Coach” by night. Impeccably dressed with hair slicked back and that program in his hand, Beise rarely used one of the most expensive seats in the house. He crouched right in front of them, shouting encouragement, calling out screens and letting a Timberwolves defender know when he had help behind him.

The Bill Beise bobblehead — agreed upon only after the Wolves told Beise all the proceeds would be donated to charity — remains one of the most popular trinkets in Wolves history. Chris Mullin once walked up to Beise in the Beverly Hills Nike Store and said, “Hey, aren’t you that guy in Minnesota?”

A variety of factors played into Beise walking away almost 10 years ago. The stock market crashed, the Wolves traded his beloved Kevin Garnett and Beise started focusing on the youth basketball career of his daughter Olivia.

He has only been back a few times since, and only for the biggest games. He was there when Garnett returned to the Timberwolves after a trade with Brooklyn in 2015. He was there for the first home game after Flip Saunders passed away at the start of the next season. And he will be there when the playoffs return to Minnesota, ending a long, cold winter of 2018 and a longer, colder basketball winter for the Wolves franchise.

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Beise was invited back by Timberwolves CEO Ethan Casson and chief revenue officer Ryan Tanke, who bonded with Beise in their early days with the franchise.

“It was certainly a void when he wasn’t around,” Tanke said. “It’s fun to have him back involved from time to time. The guy just lives and breathes Timberwolves basketball. He is the epitome of what a fan has always been.”

Beise’s return harkens back to a different era of Wolves basketball. He befriended KG, the two bonding over their shared intensity, was with them at home and on the road for eight straight playoff appearances, including that run to the Western Conference finals in 2004 that remains difficult for him to talk about to this day.

“If Sam Cassell hadn’t gotten hurt,” Beise says, the words somehow sneaking out through gritted teeth like Indiana Jones sneaking through a closing gate. “I’m tellin’ ya. I’m tellin’ ya.”

Even though the Wolves are down 0-2 to the top-seeded Rockets, Saturday will mark something of a celebration for a basketball community that has been in the dark for so long. Thirteen straight seasons of the lottery drove fans away. Ill-fated trades and draft picks prolonged the misery. Fans almost had to apologize for being interested in the NBA in this town.

The arrival of Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins started to breathe some life into the franchise, and Tanke noticed a difference in the final game of last season, when the Target Center was sold out in anticipation of the unveiling of the team’s new logo.

The momentum has continued this season with Tom Thibodeau's trade for Jimmy Butler, 47 wins in the regular season, climbing television ratings and 16 sellouts, the most since 1991-92. For players like Towns, who had grown used to playing in front of 10,000 fans his first two seasons, the awakening has been a welcome change.

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“This organization, all of our fans, they deserve this moment,” Towns said. “This is bigger than just us. This is about our fans, this is about Minnesota not being able to be recognized the way that it should be for our basketball talent. The Lynx have done a great job of holding it down for us for the last 14 years and it's our turn now to pick up the slack.”

In doing so, the Wolves have made Target Center a hot spot during the winter for the first time in a long time. It hasn't always been easy this season with fits and starts, injuries and frustration, but the wins and relevance have slowly returned and the Warehouse District is starting to reap the benefits.

“Even some of the people that have been coming here for years have commented that it’s nice to see The Loon completely busy on a Tuesday night for a Timberwolves game,” said Tim Mahoney, owner of The Loon on First Avenue. “There’s been times on a Tuesday night or a Wednesday night where I’ve got a wait. Not a long wait, but a wait.

“Two years ago, you could’ve came in here with 15 people and sat down and I would’ve said, ‘No problem.’”

One of the long-held secrets in the Twin Cities has been the voracious appetite for quality hoops. There was a time when the Gophers men’s basketball team was the toughest ticket in town, and Wolves television ratings routinely topped those of the Wild when Garnett, Cassell and Latrell Sprewell were rolling.

“Being a part of the drought and being here when the teams were making playoff runs, you can see the energy in the city,” said Memphis Grizzlies coach J.B. Bickerstaff, who played for the Gophers in college and served as a Wolves assistant from 2007-11. “You can see the energy in the arena.”

“I go back to the year where I was doing the radio here when they made it to the Western Conference finals. Every night you’d leave the arena and the streets were poppin’. There were bodies everywhere. There was energy in the streets. So I think it means a lot for this city.”

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Beise was there for it all, the seven straight first-round playoff exits, Garnett’s monster performance in Game 7 of the semifinals against Sacramento, the loss to the Lakers when Cassell went down.

During a trip to Key Arena for the quarterfinal matchup with the Seattle SuperSonics in 1998, Beise couldn’t even bring himself to sit in his seat for Game 2. He paced the concourse, unable to watch while the Wolves pulled off a stunning win over Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp and the Sonics.

“I’m always a big fan for the underdog,” he said. “If somebody’s got a disadvantage or they’re an underdog, I’m behind ‘em, man, just in life. That’s how I am. And plus I just love basketball.”

Beise was back courtside at Target Center for Game 3 of the best-of-five series and noticed Payton laughing and joking during pregame warmups. The Wolves responded with a 98-90 victory for a 2-1 lead in the series, but Beise knew it was over before Game 4 started.

“The layup line comes out and Gary Payton looked like if anyone said a word to him, he would’ve killed them,” Beise said. “He was so focused.”

Seattle took the next two games to knock the Wolves out.

When the Wolves lost to the Lakers in 2004, Beise was like so many others in believing this was just the beginning of a long run of Wolves dominance.

“I was just lickin’ my chops saying I can’t wait for this thing to start again,” he said. “And then, of course, things changed.”

Things started to sour for Beise when Cassell was traded during a contract dispute in the summer of 2005. The Timberwolves got Marko Jaric in return but had to give up a top-10 protected first-round draft pick as well, and Beise had a bad feeling about it.

“Damn, that upset me,” he said. “That was kind of the beginning of my ‘I’m agitated’ phase.”

It really was all downhill from there. Saunders had been fired during the previous season, the Wolves rested Garnett at the end of the next two seasons to avoid losing their pick to the Clippers, and he was finally traded in 2007.

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As Beise vacated his seats, the franchise cratered. Four seasons of at least 60 losses, nine coaches and 13 straight trips to the lottery, the longest active playoff drought in the NBA.

“It was difficult,” Tanke said. “We live in this market where people have so many options for their time and resources. We had to find a way to stay connected to the fans while we were searching for relevance. It was fun this year to be able to provide our fans with relevance and see the pride on their faces as they were walking through a beautifully renovated building and a team that has been a lot of fun to cheer for.”

It all came to a head in the final game of the regular season, a win-or-go-home showdown against Denver. The crowd roared like it had not since 2004, standing through the fourth quarter and overtime of a spirited win that finally ended the drought.

“Everybody knows that yeah, it’s a game, but it’s so much more than just a game,” Tanke said. “That’s what Denver meant. Everybody that thinks it was just a basketball game, it was so much more than just a basketball game. I think that’s what you’ll feel in the building on Saturday night.

“You never have to speak about the drought again. Get past tomorrow night and it’s literally a whole new chapter.”

Like so many of the team’s most important chapters before it, Beise will be there. He won’t be courtside this time. Those spendy seats are long gone. But he will be there with his family, including one-year-old grandson Easton, who gets a heavy dose of the Timberwolves at home.

“When he’s in his high chair and I’m feeding him and there’s a Timberwolves game on, I just keep telling him, ‘Timberwolves, Timberwolves, Timberwolves,’” Beise said with a hearty chuckle. “He looks at the TV. I don’t know if he still sees Elmo when he’s looking or sees KAT going down the lane.”

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He’s not sure if he will be able to watch Game 3, either. There is a lot riding on this one. Lose and Game 4 likely becomes a funeral procession. Win, and the underdogs that Beise loves to get behind all of a sudden become a lot more emboldened.

The return to relevance is enough to get Beise thinking about becoming a regular at Target Center again one day. Judging by the growing crowds in the arena this season, he’s not the only one.

“I could see that happening. I would love to sit in the front row, but I don’t think I’d be the same. I don’t think my knees can do it anymore,” he said. “I so love it. To me, it is just so exciting.”

(Top image: Timberwolves superfan Bill Beise will be among those in Target Center for Game 3 of the Western Conference quarterfinals against Houston. Credit: David Sherman/NBAE via Getty)

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