Meet the Hype Team for the Timberwolves

With the Timberwolves set to begin the playoffs on Saturday night (vs. Luka and the Lakers—😬), it’s time to reflect on this team’s regular season contributions to the annals of Minnesota sports PTSD. Quick recap: Coming off last season’s magical playoff run, on the eve of training camp, the team traded its second-best player, Karl-Anthony Towns, and received two New York Knicks in return, Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo. From the jump, it was obvious both former Knicks were bummed to be exiled from New York City. The Wolves took the majority of the season to work out their chemistry, finally getting rolling by March, but this combination of super high pre-season expectations with scuffling mid-season results meant that yes, Target Center was sold out for the entire season for the first time in years, but the fans packing those seats seemed vulnerable to a certain kind of pessimistic ennui. Whenever a game would start falling apart, the team’s anxious fans would tighten up, and frantically console themselves with murmured recitals of the Timberwolves rosary: It’s okay because weusedtosuckweusedtosuckweusedtosuck. Eventually a coach (usually not ours for some reason?) would call a timeout, and the most optimistic man in Target Center would stride onto the floor with a microphone: Jon Berry, the Timberwolves’ longtime in-arena host, ball-cap perpetually reversed atop his head, outfit color coordinated down to his sneakers—basically the living embodiment of a reassuring smile. Berry would turn to the crowd and all-caps interrobang, “WHO WANTS A FREE T-SHIRT?!?!?”

This is Berry’s eleventh season of asking the most popular rhetorical question in Timberwolves history, multiple times each game (the enthusiasm that greets the free T-shirt giveaway was only recently surpassed by the enthusiasm for the actual on-court basketball). When I meet Berry down at Target Center a couple hours before tip of a game in mid-March, he says he’s extremely stoked to be doing what he’s doing. “I’m the ringleader for the fans,” he says. “The guy with the big voice who’s providing some energy and some enthusiasm.”

He’s become the PT Barnum for all the corporate sponsored Wolves in-game bits. Like Kwik-Tac-Toe sponsored by Kwik Trip, or the halftime baby race sponsored by Tonies, or the contest where a fan shoots a three pointer for a flatscreen TV sponsored by TCL, or the contests where a fan matches wits with a pre-taped Wolves player for 60 seconds (“Name as many sports as you can in a minute”). Berry is good at it—nailing the scripts for each bit, improvising when he must, and always keeping it light. Later on, during a second quarter timeout, two twentysomethings named Trevor and Isaiah are facing off in Kwik-Tac-Toe, and when Isaiah fails to block Trevor in the dumbest, most pre-kindergarten way, Berry deadpans, “Isaiah, what are we doing out here, man?” The crowd eats it up.

This season was Berry’s second season in a row getting named as an official in-arena host for the NBA All-Star Game—this year, he hosted All-Star Saturday Night in San Francisco. Berry believes he got to be where he is because he’s specifically connected to Timberwolves fans—and he’s connected to Wolves fans because he understands what we’ve all gone through, and why we’re now so hungry for even more success. Berry understands that for years, the huge roar that greeted potential free T-shirts was the roar, the only one, for no hope Wolves fans in countless fourth quarters, because before he landed the in-arena host gig at an open audition in 2014, Berry was a season ticket holder himself—a bona fide long-suffering Timberwolves fan. “I got my tickets in ’07,” he says. “The Kevin Love/Ryan Gomes era of Wolves basketball.”

Berry grew up in St. Paul, graduating from St. Paul Central before getting a marketing degree at the University of Minnesota before landing his marketing job at Target, doing well enough to afford a seat in section 104. He says being a Wolves season ticket holder was a “weird dream” that he had in eighth grade, but he remembers even bigger little kid dreams.

“I grew up a huge game show fan,” he says. “My heroes, the people I really looked up to, weren’t basketball players—they were Dick Clark, Chuck Woolery, Peter Tomarken, Pat Sajak, and Ray Combs.” He sees my face go blank at the mention of Combs. “You know, 1990s Family Feud?” He shakes it off. “Anyway, they were my idols.”

Growing up in St. Paul though, Berry had no idea how to become a game show host. In high school, he says he was “more of a fun guy than a funny guy”—he was voted Most School Spirit—but the path to becoming the next host of The Dating Game or Press Your Luck seemed mysterious. Maybe broadcast journalism could be the path? “But I got a dose of reality at the University of Minnesota,” he says. After his freshman year, his grades weren’t tight enough to get into the journalism school, so he became a marketing major. “It’s fine,” he says. “I’m not mad at it—at all!” After school, he landed that job at Target. And he figured working on what would become the Target Circle app and being able to buy a season ticket in section 104 could really be as good as it gets, but then the Timberwolves held an open audition to fill the in-arena host position.

He says the audition was intimidating. “The whole arena was empty,” he says. “No hoops, no court, just a huge concrete slab.” He told himself he had seen the last in-arena host do this hundreds of times, so he just had to commit. They had him call a tricycle race, and he put his whole chest into the call. And then they had him read a season ticket script. “And I had heard that so many times, I realized I could do it without looking at the script.” He says he had never really performed like that before—had never really performed at all—but while he was auditioning he was having game show flashbacks. “I threw Pat Sajak in there,” he says, “And all the other game show hosts I had watched growing up—and some Ryan Seacrest too.” Three auditions later, he got the gig.

Berry says the only thing he’s sacrificed is his ability to kick back and watch Wolves home games uninterrupted, but he figures he still gets to see 60 percent of the action while juggling his hosting responsibilities. And he loves the position he’s in, to help fans like him have fun. When I ask him if he’s felt a different pressure this season after last season’s magical run, he says he thinks it’s a positive. “Look, we try not to be too serious,” he says. “It’s basketball—we’re all going home and we’ll be just fine. It’s my job to bring the fun.” 

And Berry’s superiors are thrilled—they understand that the team lucked into a performer with an elite skill set. Sheridan West, the VP of live programming and entertainment (like everybody on his team, for both the Timberwolves and Lynx), has been in the role for about a decade now, and he says as host, Berry is the front man for the team’s entire entertainment philosophy: “No dead air,” West says. And although you might intuitively figure that this style is the product of years of less than beautiful basketball, that’s not really it. “It actually comes from a place of not wanting to lose the fans to their cell phones,” West says.  

The Wolves pack every down minute with a contest or a dance performance or a jumbotron singalong, because about a generation ago, the franchise realized the threat the tiny television in everybody’s pocket posed to the circus they were putting on each night. And it is a circus—West says Berry is the front man for a literal circus troupe number of performers. If you take the Wolves dancers, and the Wolves senior dancers, and Crunch the mascot, and the First Ave Action Pack, and the Slam Squad, and the official Wolves DJ Mad Mardigan, and Jeff Victor, their longtime keyboard player, and both their music coordinators (the Wolves have two, Tim Miller and DJ Dudley D, and they alternate throughout the season), and Greta Mitzel, the manager of game presentation, and the crew of cameramen filming Berry on the floor and Crunch throughout the arena, and the PA announcer, and the front of house mixer, and the control room crew directing everything from the Target Center basement, the Wolves have more than 70 people working these games. Seventy people working 41 games in the regular season, and hopefully a dozen more this post-season, all of them showing up to rehearse at least a couple hours before tip-off.

When Berry is working, he’s got an earpiece in connecting him to Mitzel, and although most of the timeouts are planned down to the minute for the entire season, sometimes there’s a technical difficulty, or some other last-second issue, and West says Berry is an expert at improvising, keeping the script running smoothly, brightly, optimistically. West is thrilled Berry’s finally getting the recognition he deserves, and West points out that that recognition only came when the basketball improved. A couple years into this latest Ant/KAT-led renaissance, the Wolves were invited to Abu Dhabi for a couple games in the 2023 pre-season. The team brought along both Berry and Mitzel and Tim Miller, one of their two music coordinators to the Middle East to work the games. Tons of NBA brass were in Abu Dhabi as well, including their game presentation executives, and they were the ones actually calling the shots for the in-game entertainment, with the Wolves talent in front—but the scripts were longer, more like an All-Star Game, with dozens more corporate shoutouts wedged in. According to West, Berry and the Wolves team handled everything beautifully, and now they’ve been invited along to help at the All-Star Weekend two years in a row.

And if Jon Berry is the PT Barnum front man of the Timberwolves circus, their secret weapon is DJ Dudley D, one of their two music coordinators. Dudley D, real name Dustin Meyer, didn’t go along on that Abu Dhabi trip, but he did get selected to work All-Star Weekend with Berry this year for the first time. At the game I was invited to, after hanging with Berry and Crunch on the floor, I trudged all the way up to the top of section 130 in the corner of Target Center, where Dudley had reserved a spot for me between his monitors set-up and the keyboardist Jeff Victor. Dudley D is dressed casually in official team gear—a dark blue Wolves hoodie and a tan hat above three days of scruff and his black Buddy Holly-style glasses. He says the All-Star Game was fun, if a lot of work (four days of cue rehearsals, from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., before the All-Star Saturday night that he worked with Berry), but all that hard work and the higher profile didn’t phase Dudley D—because he spent almost two decades DJing for Prince.

“I went on a couple tours,” he says, “recorded some scratches on a couple songs, even played with him on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (you can see me in the back line)—and I played hundreds of parties at Paisley.”

Dudley D says working for Prince was a trip, obviously. “He would have these random parties—it would be like Wednesday night and George Clinton’s playing or Erykah Badu’s in town.” And Dudley D would get called in. “And sometimes it would be open to the public, sometimes it would just be Mos Def and his band showing up.”

Dudley D grew up in Uptown, DJing high school dances when he was still going to Southwest, before he started playing the downtown clubs, and started to hit up Prince’s Paisley after hours parties in ’97. He got the Prince hook up through DJ Brother Jules, a KMOJ DJ he had met at one of his record store honeypots. “Brother Jules asked me to make him a mixtape,” he says. He didn’t hear from Prince’s team for awhile, but after a few months, that mixtape got him the gig covering for Brother Jules, warming up Paisley parties while Brother Jules was still out in the clubs until 1 a.m. “And eventually Brother Jules and Prince had a falling out,” he says. “And I remember getting the call.”

Dudley D says Prince was keenly interested in the latest records Dudley had acquired. “He wanted to know what was hot out there,” he says. “And I didn’t really fall into a category—I was an open format DJ, so everything from hip hop to house.” At Paisley, Dudley would play everything from A Tribe Called Quest to Erykah Badu, to classics by George Clinton and James Brown. “And a lot of times Prince would come to the booth, hand me a blank CD and say, ‘Play track four.’” It would be an unreleased song, and the hardcores knew it was new. “And the most exciting part was at 3:30 in the morning, when the whole band gets on stage, and the next thing you know he gets up there for an hour and a half.”

Dudley says being the music coordinator at Timberwolves games is a totally different beast. “The energy is different up here,” he says. “You’re playing tunes to get people into it—to accentuate the experience that’s already in front of them.”

If Berry is the front man, Dudley D is like a witchy sorcerer—always in the background, providing a meta commentary on everything: the players, the refs, the coaches, the coach’s challenges. With a mixing deck, a laptop, and an iPad in front of him, Dudley D has access to dozens of pre-loaded cues—he’s triggering samples that will either reenergize the crowd or settle them down after a calamity. And he’s playing music from right before the opening tip—Prince’s iconic descending guitar riff from “When Doves Cry,”—and perhaps unique to any other sport, he’s playing music while the game is being played. When the Wolves bring the ball up, he’s playing hip hop instrumentals, when somebody kicks a ball, he’s punching up “kick it” from Prince’s “Gett Off,” when somebody travels, he’s playing “The Walk” by The Time. When an opposing player messes up, he hits, “Ha, ha!” by Nelson from The Simpsons. When the Wolves make a play, he hits, “That’s nice!” from Borat. When the ref makes a bad call, it’s Lil Jon’s famous, “WHAT?!”

“There’s different beats that match the intensity of the game,” he says. And sometimes, during the most intense moments, he gets completely out of the sonic way. “We call that ‘sneakers,’” he says.

Dudley D loves working a local angle when he can—he’s played Prof and he’s played Atmosphere. And he works in as much Prince as he possibly can, of course. (He won an award for the legendary Prince Nights, which he programmed after Prince’s death in 2016—those games were like a 300-level college course in Princeology.)

And he’s tried to canvass the players for their personal preferences for their own musical cues. Julius Randle likes to hear “The Largest” by BigXthaPlug while he flexes on an opponent after hitting an and-1. And Dudley says DJ Mad Mardigan discovered that Ant is partial to “Ramen & OJ” by Joyner Lucas & Lil Baby after hearing Mardigan play it during a pre-game rehearsal—Ant demanded that Mardigan run the track back immediately. “So when we really need a bucket in the fourth,” Dudley says, “And Ant is bringing up the rock, we play the “Ramen & OJ” song.”

Dudley D takes his in-game role seriously. “You control the entire atmosphere,” he says. “When I want more intensity, I can push the volume a couple dBs—you’re always trying to augment the basketball.” When I ask him if he’s felt a different kind of pressure in the building this year, he says he’s not thinking so much about the Twitter diehards who are living and dying with each Wolves win or loss, but he appreciates the long string of sellouts. “The Timberwolves obviously haven’t always been sold out every night in years past,” he says. “But no matter what happens on the court, we have to put on a great show and keep the energy up in the building, especially if we’re down with a few minutes left.” He continues, “And you have to remember, there’s a lot of kids in the stands who might be going to their one Wolves game all year—you want to help make sure that everybody is having a great time.”

But at one point during the game, Dudley D and Victor do give themselves credit for augmenting a little 6-0 run—Victor notes that he’s played the same keyboard flourish for three successful defense-to-offense possessions in a row. The way they assess their actual impact on winning and losing seems to be more superstitious than anything though—the players really do feel like a long way away from our perch up near the concourse. At most, it’s like we’re practicing some kind of subliminal voodoo witchcraft up here—which I suppose a lot of crazy fans believe they’re doing. Of course, most fans don’t have control over the soundtrack to the actual game being played.

I tell him my personal favorite audio joke actually dates to last season—and it turns out it wasn’t strictly a Dudley D joint, but a collaboration between Dudley D and DJ Mad Mardigan. When the Wolves played Houston late in the year, Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” had just dropped, and every time Houston made a mistake, Dudley would trigger Bey’s “This ain’t Texas!” Dudley D remembers the gag and laughs. Dudley also gives credit to Mardigan for helping him land the Wolves gig in the first place, just about a decade ago. The two of them have known each other for years—they actually run GenerationNOW Entertainment, a live DJ and music performance business together. And Mardigan owns something that’s perhaps the greatest testament to how much somebody in either of their positions can actually impact winning and losing. Mardigan is also the official DJ for the Lynx, and after each of their four championship-winning seasons, the franchise elected to give him a ring.