Reusse: From the lovable land Down Under, Joe Ingles serves as statesman for Timberwolves

Finding movies or TV series to stream is an ongoing task for a couple of senior citizens in a near suburb to the west of Minneapolis. Agreement is difficult to reach, one reason being the old man’s fondness for tales set in Outback areas of Australia.

A while back, the husband offered the exciting news that another season of “Mystery Road” had arrived.

“What’s that again?” she said.

“It’s outstanding; it’s Australian,” he said.

“Of course it is; no thank you,” she said.

A lifelong fascination with Australia was multiplied in 2000, when I was part of Team Star Tribune in Sydney for three weeks covering the Olympics. It was fantastic, even though the paper product and not digital was the emphasis and much of the copy seeing daylight was based on events that had occurred 1 ½ days earlier.

No matter. On the night of the Opening Ceremony, I was in a large sports bar filled with locals.

Dang, those Aussies were fun; more sarcastic than Yanks, but also proud beyond belief that the Olympics were there.

The best moment was when Colin Hay and his Men at Work came onto the stage to perform “Down Under.”

Paul Hogan was with them dressed as Crocodile Dundee, Greg Norman was there without a green jacket, and as the music pounded, half of the 250 people in the bar were crying tears of patriotic joy.

For “Down Under.” A song that includes a tribute to the Vegemite sandwich.

Rachel Blount, recently retired Strib Olympics reporter, was in the stadium in Sydney. Asked this week about the reaction to “Down Under,” she said:

“It felt like the entire nation was there, screaming at the top of their lungs. And when Cathy Freeman appeared and ascended up those steps in the waterfall to light the torch … utter madness."

Aussies.

You gotta love ‘em, and we have Example A of that with the Timberwolves in Joe Ingles, originally from Adelaide, the veteran who didn’t break into the NBA until 2014 with Utah just after his 27th birthday, who set a league record of playing in 418 consecutive games (384 regular season, 34 playoffs) and now is winding down his career with basically zero playing time.

Considering what he was expecting when signing with the Wolves last July, to have played in 19 games for an average of six minutes, it has been astounding to see the attitude that Ingles has brought to the sideline.

On Thursday, after the Timberwolves had done a second consecutive fadeaway in the third quarter at Oklahoma City and defeat again was inevitable, Nickeil Alexander-Walker hit a three to open the fourth.

As he turned, there was Ingles up off his seat, leaning toward NAW and pumping a fist in his direction. As the cousin of league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, NAW had been terrible in Game 1 on Tuesday.

Two days later, Nickeil was ready to fight to still make it a contest in the fourth quarter, and Ingles was up and taking immediate notice.

There was a 10-minute conversation with Ingles last week, after the Wolves had eliminated Golden State in five games and they were practicing as OKC and Denver were concluding a seven-game series.

Q: “You signed here in early July, presumably to play 12-15 minutes a night to fire up corner threes. Then the trade, and now you don’t play. Quite a disappointment, correct?”

Ingles: “Of course I would like to be playing. But near the end of a career, do you want to be the player that is negative, or do you want to help in whatever way you can?

“There’s no one here, young guys, veterans, stars, who isn’t a good guy. I’m not going to be a bad guy.”

The Timberwolves stunned their followers — and presumably Ingles — by trading Karl Anthony-Towns to the Knicks for Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo at the end of September.

The need for Ingles to add those occasional minutes of three-point shooting was consumed by much longer shifts for DiVincenzo. And when young talent such as Terrence Shannon Jr., Jaylen Clark and Rob Dillingham (when healthy) could barely get off the bench for coach Chris Finch, what chance was there for Old Joe?

By in-arena observation, it seemed as though Ingles became the Wolves’ unofficial lobbyist with the referees. You could see him chatting ‘em up for a couple of minutes before a game. You could see him walking over as the teams were in a timeout.

“You’re never yelling at ‘em, Joe,” I said. “It looks as though you’re asking, ‘What happened there?’ ”

Ingles smiled. “I’ve been around a long time,” he said. “I know most of the refs, and most are good guys. They’ll usually talk to me.”

Ingles made one start this season — on March 21, when Jacob, the autistic son of Joe and Renae (Hallinan), a former international player in what the Aussies call “netball,” was in Target Center with the family to watch a game.

Finch started him, Joe played six minutes and it was the first time Jacob was able to stay until the end of a game.

Asked last week if Ingles had value without playing, Finch said: “Absolutely. … He’s a leader on this team. He has such a high basketball IQ. He runs scrimmages with our young players every day. He has a great relationship with all these guys."

He also seems to have that with the referees — a veteran with “future coach” written all over him.

“That’s good because that is what I want to do next,” Ingles said. “I want to coach.”

Down Under or here, Joe Ingles would seem a lock to be a good one.