Minnesota Timberwolves forward Joe Ingles started his first game in over three years on Friday night and there was a special reason why.
Minnesota head coach Chris Finch opted to put Ingles in the starting lineup to ensure he got into a game with his autistic son, Jacob, in attendance.
Ingles, 37, was held scoreless in six minutes in a win over New Orleans, but that hardly mattered to Ingles and his family.
According to The Athletic, Ingles had his wife, Renae, and their three children at the game after they spent the entire season in Orlando, where he played last year.
Jacob attended a Timberwolves game earlier in the week, but Ingles didn’t get on the court.
Finch made sure that didn’t happen again.
“Sometimes you’ve got to do the human thing,” Finch said, according to the site. “We always talk about, ‘All these minutes matter,’ and those minutes mattered for another reason.”
Ingles is in his 11th season in the NBA, eight of which were spent with Utah.
“Someone put it in my head as an idea to make sure Joe can see the floor and I figured if we’re going to do it, let’s do it in style,” Finch said. “Guys were behind it and I think it gave us just the right boost that we needed and change of energy. Not often that you get to do those types of things, but we’re really happy that we could.“
Ingles, who has played in 19 games this season, took the opportunity to raise awareness about autism.
“This s–t is real,” Ingles said of his son’s condition. “It doesn’t matter who you are or your lifestyle, your money, whatever. Jacob doesn’t really care I play basketball… He wants his dad home and every time I say I’m going to play basketball, he’s like ‘Ughhh.’ Which I’m sure a lot of kids — it’s not just me obviously.”
And Ingles wants people to understand the challenges families impacted by autism face.
“We’ll keep doing what we do,” Ingles said. “We’ll keep pushing the awareness and doing what we can to help other families, but I think people just need to understand this is a real thing. It doesn’t go away with money. It doesn’t go away with the situation that you’re in. All we can do is talk about and obviously for us, give Jacob the best chance to fit in this kind of crazy world that we’re in.”
