Central Iowa’s favorite NBA Development League team is back for their second season in Des Moines. Yes, the options are quite limited and this could only be the Iowa Energy.

The Energy are playing hotter than the inside of mascot Surge’s head this year as they won their first five games as well as nine of their first ten. Having seen them in person, I can with complete confidence call myself an Iowa Energy fan. It would be hard not to for many reasons. Here are my top five reasons to go see the Energy in action this winter.

Reason 5: Curtis Stinson. Sure Stinson broke my heart, as well as that of every other Cyclone basketball fan, as he left Iowa State after his junior season to try to pursue a career in the pros. While Stinson did not quite make it to the NBA, he did find a nice home 25 miles south of Ames in Des Moines playing for the Energy.

For the Energy, Stinson is having nothing short of a great season. He is averaging 13 points, seven assists and close to eight rebounds a game. The guy plays such strong basketball with smarts and makes very few mistakes. Yeah, so it’s a biased Iowa State fan saying this but when Jeff Horner and Adam Haluska played for the Energy last year I cheered for the former Hawkeyes as well.

Reason 4: NBA players stop by. Since this is the Developmental League, many NBA teams send their struggling younger players down to the D-League when they are not quite cutting it in the NBA. The competition level always stays very high because everybody playing is a short step away from making it to the big time. All of these guys want to impress the scouts and get called up when they get their opportunity.

Reason 3: Surge. The dude is crazy. Mascot of the Iowa Energy could not be a better fit for the team as he walks around the entirety of Wells Fargo Arena with an abundance of energy.

Surge is a man with a large mascot head, a red cape, red boots, purple unitard and an unlimited spark of energy. Watching him walk about and do his thing is a large part of the entertainment on any given night in the arena.

Reason 2: Cheap tickets. The intramural office here at Simpson often offers tickets several times throughout the year to students for the incredibly low price of three dollars. I realize everyone here is a college student strapped for cash, but three dollars? Is that so much to break you?

Not only are the tickets cheap, they are also good seats in the lower bowl of Wells Fargo Arena. It’s nothing to complain about watching stud basketball players play each other sitting close to the intense action for three bucks.

Reason 1: This is as close to the NBA as Iowa can get. I try to keep up with the news as much as possible, and I have yet to hear of any NBA franchises wanting to move from their large market to Des Moines, Iowa.

No offense to the state I consider home and love, but Iowa doesn’t have any NBA cities. So with apologies to Dubuque, Cedar Falls, Council Bluffs and any other cities in Iowa that think they may one day support an NBA franchise-you won’t.

This is why we need to take advantage of what we have. Go one time, cheer hard, support the Energy and you may call yourself an Energy fan at the end of the day.