Khalid El-Amin won three state titles and an NCAA championship, but he first came to prominence during a high school basketball showcase at Target Center in the mid-1990s.

Initially called the Triple Header of Hoops, Minnesota basketball fans might know the event by another name: the Timberwolves Shootout.

In the inaugural shootout in 1996, El-Amin led Minneapolis North to an 85-56 blowout win over Virginia’s Oak Hill Academy, a two-time national champion and the No. 2-ranked team in the country.

Over a span of two decades, the Timberwolves Shootout impacted a generation of Minnesota players.

“We wanted that challenge,” El-Amin told Strib Varsity. “We wanted to put Minnesota basketball on the map. We wanted to show we had good basketball in Minnesota.”

El-Amin, who went on to win a national title at Connecticut, was eventually dubbed the best high school point guard in the country after outplaying Oak Hill’s William Avery, a Duke recruit.

That victory gave instant hoops credibility to the State of Hockey. Other powerhouse programs lined up to come to the Twin Cities to compete in an NBA arena.

Renamed the Gatorade Timberwolves Shootout in 2001, the state’s premier regular-season basketball event attracted teams from Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., and other basketball hotbeds. It hosted 50 future NBA players, from local standouts like Cole Aldrich, Kris Humphries, Rick Rickert and Tyus Jones to out-of-state stars like Kevin Love, DeMarcus Cousins, Josh Smith and Jrue Holiday.

“We saw that this was a basketball hotbed that nobody knew about,” said Jeff Munneke, the Timberwolves and Lynx vice president of fan experience and former director of the Timberwolves Shootout. “We saw the passion from fans for how good the teams and players were here. We looked at this as helping to provide a platform to shine a spotlight on the best Minnesota basketball talent and give local players and coaches a chance to perform on the big stage.”

The last official shootout was a six-team field in 2016, ending just as the state’s hoops scene was taking off. Growing costs — the Wolves spent about $10,000 per out-of-state team — and compliance issues with an NBA team running the high school event created too many obstacles, Munneke said.

It’s not surprising to hear some people craving the chance to experience something like the Wolves Shootout again.

“Minnesota basketball is now on the national stage, so it’s a no-brainer to bring top high school basketball talent to Minnesota and allow players here to face that,” El-Amin said. “It would bring nothing but more recognition for the state.”

Former Gophers standout Trevor Mbakwe, who played in the 2006 event, cherished the experience because “you grew up watching the Wolves play.”

“To get a chance to play on that same court under the bright lights against a different team from a different state was fun,” Mbakwe said.

Munneke, the last remaining employee from the franchise’s inaugural year in 1989, came up with the idea of the event after inviting Park of Cottage Grove, led by former Gopher Sam Jacobson, to play rival Woodbury at Target Center in the early 1990s. DeLaSalle also played Monticello in a game that featured DeLaSalle’s Ben Johnson, who later became the Gophers coach, and Joel Przybilla, who went on to play at the U and became an NBA lottery pick.

Munneke eventually teamed with then-DeLaSalle coach Dave Thorson to convince Oak Hill coach Steve Smith to play Minnesota North as part of a triple-header. That game was sandwiched between a girls game between Blake, which featured Carolyn Moos, a future Stanford and Lynx player, and Osseo, and the Wolves hosting the Cleveland Cavaliers that night.

Fans were charged $10 admission for the high school games, and that included a ticket to the Wolves game.

“We had this young Timberwolves franchise,” Munneke said. “And we were looking at ways to have a deeper connection into the Minnesota high school scene. … There’s so much pride, opportunity and community involvement in these things.”

In 1999, Munneke had a soft verbal agreement with St. Vincent-St. Mary’s Catholic High School of Akron, Ohio, to bring a young LeBron James to Minneapolis for the Wolves Shootout. It didn’t come to fruition.

Still, Munneke credited Thorson, now a Gophers assistant, and retired Nike marketing executive Tony Dorado with using their relationships to help expand the shootout’s reach. They landed schools from the West to East coasts, including Love-led Lake Oswego from Oregon.

Love’s full-court outlet passes that became legendary at UCLA and in the NBA were on display at Target Center before his NBA career, which included three All-Star selections with the Timberwolves. The 6-10 blue-chipper had 41 points, 14 rebounds and seven assists in a win vs. Osseo in 2007.

“The second play of the game, he threw a [60-foot] chest pass to Rick Adelman’s kid, Pat, streaking down the court,” Munneke said. “It was literally one bounce and a layup. For five seconds there was hush silence at Target Center, and it was like ‘Oh my goodness, did this just happen?’ He threw like six or seven of those passes.”

In 2008, the St. Paul Central girls team, coming off an undefeated season, was featured in the shootout against Long Beach Poly, the nation’s No. 2-ranked team. Kiara Buford, who went on to play for the Gophers, had a strong performance in the Minutemen’s loss to the California powerhouse.

After a three-year hiatus following the 2016 event, the Wolves played a part in trying to revive the shootout with the Clash of Champions, a featured matchup at Target Center between Minnehaha Academy and California’s Sierra Canyon. Highlighted by Jalen Suggs and Chet Holmgren for Minnehaha Academy and LeBron James’ son Bronny for Sierra Canyon, it was a sold-out event. Suggs scored 23 points and Holmgren had 12 blocks in the Redhawks’ 78-58 victory.

The Wolves are a much hotter ticket these days, but is there a chance the high school shootout could return to Target Center with different organizers? Maybe.

The closest thing to bringing national prospects to the Twin Cities came in the summer during an AAU tournament at Eden Prairie. That drew an enormous crowd, but games were called off after a fight in the stands.

In early December, Breakdown’s 17-team basketball tourney in Edina was also stopped because of safety concerns. That came after a fan altercation forced a game between Tartan and Hopkins to be suspended.

Could a bigger venue with more security solve some of those problems? Possibly. The Wolves, unfortunately, might not involve themselves like they did for so many years.

“As this thing became bigger and bigger, the NBA got concerned about compliance and recruiting advantages with all the governing bodies,” Munneke said. “That more or less ended it for us. But I was asked to present this whole formula probably four or five times at NBA meetings. … It was just about networking and building relationships. That was it.”

Basketball Across Minnesota

Fuller’s five

Five Minnesota ballers who stood out:

Tessa Johnson, South Carolina: The former St. Michael-Albertville star had 18 points on 5-for-8 shooting from three-point range in a Dec. 28 win vs. Providence. She leads the SEC in three-point shooting at 49.2%.

Lola Lundquist, Blue Earth Area: The senior guard scored 28 points to lead the Bucs to a 67-34 win over Henry Sibley on Dec. 27, which snapped the program’s 37-game losing streak.

Mya Moore, Orono: The Creighton recruit and senior guard put up 42 points, nine rebounds and nine steals in a Dec. 27 win against St. Michael-Albertville.

K.J. Wilson, Tartan: The sophomore had a career-best 33 points with nine three-pointers in a Dec. 23 win over conference foe Mahtomedi. But his team-high 18 points were just as big in a Dec. 27 win vs. Maple Grove in the Capitol City Classic.

Mya Wilson, Hill-Murray: The junior forward filled up the stat sheet with 33 points, 16 rebounds, eight assists and five steals in a Dec. 29 win vs. Richfield. The Pioneers scored a school-record 108 points. Her 38-point performance Dec. 31 vs. Champlin Park put Wilson over the 2,000-point career mark.

Minnesotans in the pros: Ex-Gopher doesn’t miss

In early December, former DeLaSalle standout Jamison Battle suffered an ankle sprain while playing with the NBA’s Toronto Raptors. The injury initially threatened to keep him sidelined for most of the month.

Battle, who played at George Washington, Minnesota and Ohio State in his college career, was only out for about two weeks and returned to play in seven games for Toronto through a Dec. 29 win vs. Orlando.

During that span, the 6-7 forward had an 11-point performance, shooting 4-for-4 from the field, including 3-for-3 from beyond the arc in a Dec. 23 win vs. Miami.

College team of the week

The Gophers women’s basketball team put its heartbreaking home loss to Maryland in the past by beating Indiana on Dec. 29 in Bloomington.

Senior Amaya Battle, a former Hopkins standout, scored a season-high 20 points and grabbed eight rebounds in the 71-48 win at Indiana. Sophomore Tori McKinney, a Minnetonka product, added 17 points in the first Big Ten win this season for the Gophers.

Minnesota Top 25 update

Wayzata seemed untouchable against Minnesota competition this season, going 8-0 with an average margin of victory of over 20 points. The No. 1-ranked team in Class 4A suffered its first loss of the season Dec. 29, falling 67-64 to West Allis Central, the No. 2 team in Wisconsin’s biggest class. The Trojans bounced back with a 73-68 win vs. Nicolet (Wis.) on Dec. 30 behind Christian Wiggins’ 34 points.

Final thoughts ...

When I first moved to Minnesota in the early 2000s, I was immediately drawn to the Target Center, and not just for Timberwolves games as a big NBA fan. Word was the Wolves Shootout featured future Division I stars coming from local high schools and around the country. That reminded me of my alma mater in Hawaii, which for decades has hosted the ’Iolani Classic, which also brought in Oak Hill and other national powers. What a small world.

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Basketball Across Minnesota will be published weekly on stribvarsity.com. Don’t be a stranger on X after reading, as chatting about these stories makes them even more fun to share. Thanks, Marcus (@Marcus_R_Fuller on X).