Wolves Press Clippings

Wolves Press Clippings

Their most important players are young enough to get carded at every bar in America, but as an organization? The Timberpuppies may have just grown up.

The Minnesota Timberwolves hired Tom Thibodeau to be their head coach. That is the best possible move they could have made, and it is encouraging for more than the obvious reason — that Thibodeau is good at his job.

It’s also encouraging because the Timberwolves immediately identified him as the best available head coach, and hired him quickly and after firing former favorite son Sam Mitchell.

Wolves owner Glen Taylor, maestro of so much former dysfunction, acted quickly, decisively, aggressively and correctly, and in doing so may be creating a powerhouse NBA franchise even as he edges toward the exit.

That’s not even the best part of this hire. The best part is that the best available coach wanted to coach the Timberwolves.

Thibodeau could have sought out the Knicks job, or could have waited for another so-called glamour job. Instead, he chose to winter in Minnesota instead of working for Phil Jackson, coaching Carmelo Anthony and striding around Madison Square Garden. This is what the basketball world looks like when it stands on its head.

Even more strange is that Tibs made the right choice.

For once, the Wolves were in a no-lose position. Scott Brooks helped develop Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant into superstars and would have been a fine choice to do similar work with Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins and Zach LaVine.

Jeff Van Gundy is a savvy coach who eventually would have driven everyone crazy. He could have worked well for a year or two before we started calling him Other Van Gundy and wishing he would go back to annoying us with a microphone.

But Thibodeau was the best of the good available options. He’s a workaholic who holds players accountable. He’s an excellent strategist. He’s one of the best defensive coaches in the game.

The Wolves won the day with this hire. Now they need to understand how difficult it is to win a season, no matter how talented your players and coach are.

The NBA is driven by stars, and that means strategic expertise is not always the most important part of a coach’s tool chest. Personality and relationships matter in this league.

Thibodeau is known for yelling out defensive instructions from the sideline on every possession of every game in an 82-game season. His attention to detail is famous, which means that he expects everyone around him to be as attentive.

In a perfect world, all NBA players would appreciate being coached hard and being asked to give maximum effort on the defensive end, and someone with Thibodeau’s personality could coach a lifetime in the same place.

In the real world, even a home-run hire like Thibodeau will face challenges beyond designing inbounds plays. He’ll have to develop a productive long-term relationship with his stars. He’ll have to get them to run through 14 picks on the defensive end without giving them reason to look forward to leaving in free agency. He’ll have to be a caretaker for a fragile franchise as well as the coach who applies verbal spankings.

That’s a difficult job, and that’s why so many good coaches get fired in the NBA. Being a strategic genius guarantees you nothing.

But those are future concerns. Today, the Wolves are more stable and promising than ever before. They aren’t trying to piece together a patchwork lineup around Kevin Garnett in his prime. They aren’t trying to keep Kevin Love happy. They aren’t hiring people for important positions because they’re fun to play golf with, or because their third cousin knows someone in the front office.

Suddenly, the Minnesota Timberwolves have the best young talent in the league and the best available coach working for them.

For all of their losing, the past two years could not have gone better for a franchise trying to build a champion.

Wolves Press Clippings

As the Timberwolves close in on a deal to make Tom Thibodeau their new head coach and president of basketball operations, here are five questions (and answers) about him:

This is a big one since it was an oft-repeated critique toward the end of his successful five-year stint in Chicago.

While the numbers can’t tell us how Thibodeau ran practices or how hard he was on players, they can tell us how many minutes his best players logged. And, well, it appears as if this is a little overblown. While it’s true the Bulls always had a player ranked in the top five in minutes played every year under Thibodeau (either Luol Deng or Jimmy Butler), they never had two players who were in the top 10.

There might be an element of truth to it; but this also might be the case of something repeated so often people assume it’s true — as well as a narrative retroactively used against Thibodeau as it became clear he and Chicago were headed for a breakup.

This one absolutely is well-earned. Thibodeau’s Bulls ranked in the top-5 in the NBA in terms of points allowed in four of his five seasons.

And before that, he was considered the defensive mastermind of the Celtics, where he was the team’s associate head coach. He took over that role in the 2007-08 season — the same year Kevin Garnett was traded from Minnesota to Boston – and the Celtics won the NBA title on the strength of their defense.

3) Does this mean the Wolves job really was the best one available this offseason?

This is more subjective, but let’s connect some basic dots: Thibodeau was considered by many to be the best candidate available. And the Wolves were able to hire him. So yes, as wild as it might sound to those who have followed this team, it stands to reason this was the most attractive job out there this offseason.

Of course not. But it is another piece of puzzle that is starting to come into place in impressive fashion. If the Wolves are looking for the most optimistic possible trajectory, they need only look across their practice court at the WNBA’s Lynx.

That franchise was a non-factor for a long time. But the steady accumulation of top-end talent (including No. 1 picks Seimone Augustus and Maya Moore) combined with the right leadership (veteran players including Lindsay Whalen plus head coach Cheryl Reeve) has yielded three championships in the past five seasons. It looks like the Wolves have the talent and the coach. We’ll see where that takes them.

5) Does Thibodeau’s contract include any provisions about an unlimited supply of the type of track suit he had when he was an assistant with the Wolves a quarter-century ago?

I doubt it, and that’s an opportunity lost. The track suit (pictured from a Star Tribune file photo) is a thing of beauty and I’d pay 100 dollars American for one right now.