From Chris Tomasson/Rocky Mountain News, former Timberwolves player Anthony Carter on McHale’s last coaching stint.
“It was a learning experience,” said Carter, who will see McHale and the Timberwolves on Wednesday at the Pepsi Center. “He didn’t really know all the X’s and O’s, but he had a good assistant coaching staff that was helping him out with a lot of plays. He kind of let us run whatever we wanted.
“He was trying to draw plays, and it was like a little Etch and Sketch. Like a kid just messing around. . . . He just gave the clipboard to the assistant coaches sometimes.”
From the profile of the blogger who runs the site I Hate Rashad McCants:
Rashad McCants is ruining my life. I love basketball. Or, more accurately, I USED to love basketball. Rashad McCants is making it more difficult for me to enjoy my favorite sport. He’s stripped away the aesthetics. Now, all I see is a horrible basketball player who constantly makes stupid plays, takes stupid shots and glowers stupid facial expressions. I turn the channel sometimes when he enters the game. I hate everything about his game. And, I assume, everything about him, too. This malcontent has highjacked the local pro team. I want it back. Please.
McHale’s been awful for this team at times, mostly awful, but he’s also made some very sound moves, and a lot of his failures seemed like the right move at the time. This doesn’t mean he deserves to stay on with the Timberwolves past this season (Fred Hoiberg will likely take on his own coach, and McHale will gleefully take on his own couch), but this doesn’t mean McHale’s been an abject failure.
For one, we wouldn’t even be talking about Kevin McHale as an NBA executive had he not taken a chance on Kevin Garnett back in 1995. This was the first player to jump straight to pro basketball from high school in decades, and the success rate for such a jump varied from the comical (Darryl Dawkins) to the sublime (Moses Malone) to quite forgettable (Bill Willoughby, and I’m not joking here, I had to look his name up because I drew a blank there for 30 seconds).
From John Hollinger/ESPN:
Granted, the optimism should be cautious — the folks now in charge in the front office are either unknown quantities (Jim Stack, Fred Hoiberg) or, less encouragingly, known quantities (Rob Babcock). Plus, it’s likely that McHale still will have owner Glen Taylor’s ear, even though there’s no logical reason for Taylor to continue listening. In fact, it’s Taylor’s James Dolan-esque stewardship of the Wolves, including his baffling reluctance to fire McHale, that’s the real story here.
Still, one can always hope…
This is the second coaching stint for McHale, who had a 19-12 record with the Wolves in 2004-05 and was asked if his new job necessitated a wardrobe change.
“My wife I’m sure will have something, but I’m not that worried about it,” he said. “I’m a lot more worried about us being able to get flow in the game. I’m a lot more worried about us pushing the ball up. I’m a lot more worried about us fighting and competing than I am about what I’m going to wear. What I’m going to wear is the least of my concerns.”
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