Yep, I’m “that guy.” I’m that much-maligned bandwagon sports fan who tunes in when his favorite team is winning and unapologetically tunes out when it is losing. 

In other words, now that my hometown professional basketball team has made the playoffs for the first time in a long time, swept a team that owned them during the regular season, and won the first two games of the second round series on the road against the world champions, I’m here to add my full-throated “WOLVES IN FOUR! and “REFS YOU SUCK” chants.

I admit, I wasn’t there to cheer on the likes of Mark “Mad Dog” Madsen, Michael “Candy Man,” Olowokandi , and Earvin “No Magic” Johnson. I just couldn’t. But I am here for this talented, disciplined, deep, and successful team.

“Real fans,” the ones who in good times and bad dig deep to buy season tickets, TV packages, and closets full of gear, ridicule guys like me. But I maintain that my selective approach is the only sane approach to sports. Life is too short to put too much faith into billionaire Wolves owner Glen Taylor finally figuring it out.

If you see sports as strictly entertainment, as I do, it only makes sense to show up when it is entertaining for you.

If you see it as the path to self-actualization, I guess I could understand the passionate commitment to blind loyalty that I hear on sports talk radio. But that just doesn’t strike me as particularly sane or healthy.

Therefore, I have only recently shelled out something well into the two figures for the Bally Sports add-on to my DirectTV streaming service and my single Wolves t-shirt.

Who knows, if things are going well tonight in the pivotal Game 3 — and by “well” I mean a non-stress-inducing Wolves blow-out — I might even tune in until halftime! Even if that happens, at half-time my wife will serve me my warm milk and tuck me into bed in my nightshirt at the appointed bedtime. As I have so many times before, I will set a recording and watch the second half tomorrow, if, and only if, my morning headlines scan indicates that I will find the second half to my liking.

And if my favorite team brings me joy again on Sunday? Well, then I might even move to the next phase of bandwagon fandom, and purchase that face paint I’ve been eyeing. You know, the water-soluble, easily removed kind? LET’S GO WOLVES!