In a Super Bowl tribute, the Minnesota Timberwolves turn out their arena lights (VIDEO)

A year ago we had a hard time figuring out just exactly what shut out the lights during an Indiana Pacers/(then) New Jersey Nets tilt at Indianapolis’ Banker’s Life Fieldhouse. A few days after Sunday’s Super Bowl, we’re still trying to determine what shut off the lights in the third quarter of The Big Game. Perhaps we’ll wait for Alex Jones to chime in.

We’ve got a pretty good idea of why the lights went out in Minneapolis during the relatively tame first and second quarters of a Minnesota/Portland contest, one in which 1/1,000,567,009th as many people watched as Sunday’s NFL finale. The Timberwolves – a pretty self-aware organization in terms of promotion that enjoys taking the mickey – decided to shut off the lights for a bit. Sports Illustrated’s Point Forward blog pointed it out this morning, because like most other people on earth, we weren’t watching the Minnesota Timberwolves/Portland Trail Blazers game last night. Watch:

I see what you did there, Minnesota Timberwolves.

We’ve also seen what they did before, albeit unintentionally. Check out the last time the lights went out in a Wolves game:

And what’s strangest about either of these instances is that a stray carom off of a terrible jumper from Trenton Hassell or James “Hollywood” Robinson had nothing to do with the lights shattering, the anti-‘Natural.’

As it usually is, we always like to presume that Johnny from ‘Airplane!’ pulled the plug on things. If somebody already made this reference on Super Bowl Sunday we’re unaware, as we were watching a Minnesota Timberwolves game tape at the time.