"Long-suffering" in a sporting context is largely nonsense, for the very simple reason that the people who complain about it are doing no suffering whatsoever. They're choosing to watch an unaccomplished team, and that's all. We don't need to run down the list of people who are actually suffering, given that the list is growing hourly, but it surely isn't sports fans. In other words, please take time out of your busy and productive days to shut the hell up.
Besides, suffering even in this milieu is entirely an eye-of-the-beholder deal. New York Knicks fans suffer far less than, say, Charlotte Hornets/ Bobcats/Hornets Again fans, who since losing their original team in 2002, have gotten a new one, missed the playoffs 18 of 21 years, and lost the only three series they have ever played in. Next to this, the prototypical Knicks fan suffers only because of their own idiotic expectations. The notion that because they haven't won a title in 52 years means they're due is exactly the way gamblers go broke.
But there is this stat, fresh from Vegas's first-round series over the Minnesota Wild. You didn't give it this much thought until this tweet from OptaSTATS:
The Wild are the first team in MLB/NBA/NFL/NHL history to make the playoffs 8+ times in a 10-year span but lose in the opening round every time.
Is that long-suffering? Still no. But it is persistent, raising the existential twin questions, "When does the illusion of suffering become the reality of resignation?" and its corollary, "When do you stop getting your hopes up and start planning your vacation with non-refundable reservations?" If you are a Wild fan, either you have arrived at that point or you still think the Easter Bunny spends its offseasons stockpiling chocolate. In the 3,659 days since their last playoff series victory in 2015, the Wild have lost nine consecutive playoff series and 41 of 55 playoff games. Whatever level of suffering that is, it has at least reached a level of normalcy to become fatalism.
Then again, that is the way of the Minnesota sports fan in general. Even allowing for the ascendancy of Anthony Edwards after he and the Timberwolves defeated the inflated (and swiftly deflatable) Los Angeles Lakers in the first round of the NBA playoffs, Minnesota is not where fan hopes go to die, but to sigh. The Twins are the zenith of the nadir, having made 12 playoff series since their last championship in 1991 and won only two. The Vikings have reached three conference championship games in this century and lost by an aggregate score of 110-35. Even the Wolves, currently on their second successful run in franchise history, have been to two conference finals. Only the WNBA’s Lynx have provided validation, with three titles and two more visits to the league final, the last being 2024.
That's a prairie of disappointment, sure, but suffering? Nahhh, and it is to Minnesota sports fans’ credit that they keep their whining about suffering on the down-low. They suffer in the dead of winter, but only if they go outside to cold-start the car or the upstairs heater craps out. Otherwise, they're just like everybody else, everywhere else.
