Coach Kevin McHale will be a breath of fresh air after the clenched, constipated tenure of Randy Wittman. It is no secret that McHale doesn’t like the travel involved in coaching, and no secret that his wife Lynne hates him getting back into that end of the profession–another sign that he only took the job because Taylor left him no other choice–but his 31 games on the sidelines during the second half of the 2004-05 season showed him to be a smart, capable coach, probably second only to Flip Saunders in Wolves’ history.
There is no question that McHale is going to shake things up…
McHale is a deserving, easy target, but this kind of dysfunction always begins and ends with ownership. Over the summer, the Chicago Bulls wanted to hire Timberwolves assistant coach Bob Ociepka for Vinny Del Negro’s staff. Ociepka had been raised in Chicago, had been a successful high school coach and had family there. He wanted to take the Bulls job. For low-level assistants, this is a common transaction. Everyone expected the Wolves to give the blessing and let Ociepka go. It was common courtesy.
Well, the Wolves were willing, but there was one condition, two league sources said: Management wanted five airline tickets as compensation. This way, the Wolves could interview replacements. No one had ever heard of such a low-rent, cheap move, but whatever. This is how Minnesota runs its operation. At all the wrong times the Wolves drive tough bargains.
It’s hard to fault Wittman. Clearly the players had tuned him out. But they tuned him out for the very reasons Taylor and McHale decided to hire him in the first place. If you’ll recall, the Wolves supposedly needed a no-nonsense guy who held the players accountable. They wanted a disciplinarian who could get the guys to play a fundamentally sound, defensive game.
Now we find that the players were afraid to make a mistake under Wittman and always were looking to the bench after messing up, which was often. The new theory is that they need to be nurtured and that they need to play a more free-flowing, loosey-goosey game. This is quite an about-face from what management initially asked of Wittman.
So, he took the coaching job and lost the title, but when the questions stopped Monday, there was the impression McHale will continue to have more influence in personnel matters than anyone.
That’s because Taylor left behind a vacuum — left Stack, Babcock and Hoiberg to do some of this, some of that, but no one in charge.
But will Fred Hoiberg, who many expect to be the next GM, do any better? That’s debatable. He, like everyone else in the Wolves front office, is linked to Kevin McHale and the terrible decisions he’s made. Does Glen Taylor not know that there are lots of qualified people outside the state of Minnesota who can run a basketball franchise? Has he not met any of these people in the years he’s owned this team? Was Kevin McHale hiding them from him?
Always savvy in business affairs unrelated to basketball, Glen Taylor hasn’t exactly distinguished himself as a keen, insightful owner of an NBA team. Maybe that’s changing. Taylor just made his brightest move as owner of the Timberwolves. Nah, it wasn’t firing Randy Wittman as coach. That was a no-brainer. The smart thing Taylor did was strip Kevin McHale of his power over basketball decisions.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
