Wolves Press Clippings

Wolves Press Clippings

The Minnesota Timberwolves announced the hiring of ex-Chicago Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau on Wednesday. Thibodeau will serve as the coach and president of team operations. He will be joined by San Antonio Spurs assistant general manager Scott Layden, who will take over as the Minnesota GM.

According to reports, Thibodeau has agreed to a five-year contract and it appears he will be paid rather handsomely:

Thibodeau and Layden worked together with the New York Knicks in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the former was an assistant coach and the latter ran the front office. This, obviously, would be a bit of a role reversal. Milt Newton, who was the Timberwolves' general manager, "could remain on in a position that reports to Thibodeau and Layden if he so chooses," according to Jerry Zgoda of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

While Thibodeau has no front-office experience, it is unsurprising he would be interested in this dual role. He famously clashed with the front office while coaching the Bulls, and this would take that potential problem out of the equation.

“We are extremely excited to welcome Tom Thibodeau back to the Timberwolves,” said Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor. “Through this process we quickly identified Tom as the best leader to shape our talented team and help them realize their full potential. Tom's resume speaks for itself. He is a proven winner, leader and one of the most well-respected NBA head coaches over the last decade. His teams have annually been among the league leaders in defense and we are excited about the approach and mentality he will bring to that side of the ball. The future of the Minnesota Timberwolves has never been brighter and we are very pleased to have Tom as our basketball operations leader moving forward.

“Scott Layden brings over 30 years of experience in the NBA to his new role within our organization, including several years in basketball operations leadership positions with Utah, New York and most recently San Antonio. His decades of front office experience will be integral as we head into an extremely exciting time for our organization. In getting to know Scott, he has impressed me with his not only his basketball acumen, but also his character and integrity. Tom and Scott will work in concert together in shaping our roster moving forward. We are confident this partnership gives us the best chance possible of winning an NBA title.”

It is impossible to know whether Thibodeau would make a good executive, but on the coaching front, the Wolves couldn't possibly do better than this. Thibodeau is known as a defensive genius, and he's underrated offensively. For a young team that needs to build an identity, he seems like a perfect choice. Thibodeau surely has other options, but no team can offer him the young talent that Minnesota can -- Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins are future all-stars, and Thibodeau should be able to help them reach their full potential.

Wolves Press Clippings

Tom Thibodeau's departure from the Chicago Bulls was long and messy and inevitable. I knew it, and he knew it, the last time we spoke when he was in their employ.

"I learned a long time ago, there's things you don't control so you don't worry about them," Thibodeau told me after the Bulls were ousted in six games by LeBron James' Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference semifinals last May. He was standing in a hallway outside his office deep within the United Center.

"To me," he said, "as long as you put everything you have into each and every day, you can live with whatever the results are. And I feel good about that."

Thibodeau indeed will put everything he has into his new job as the president and coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves, who announced the hiring on Wednesday.

Though the details haven't been made public, reports have speculated that Thibodeau's annual salary could approach $11 million -- which would put him right at the top with Spurs president-coach Gregg Popovich. The Clippers' Doc Rivers, who also owns both titles, makes $10 million a year; Stan Van Gundy pulls down $7 million a year to wear both the coach and executive lapels with the Pistons.

Knicks president Phil Jackson makes $12 million a year, and he doesn't even have to coach; he's currently contemplating hiring body double Kurt Rambis to do so for him.

After taking a year off following his dismissal in Chicago, Thibodeau was able to corral what was regarded as the best job in the NBA marketplace this summer -- with full organizational control to go with it. With a young nucleus of Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins and Zach Lavine, another top-10 pick on the way, and an old head from his Boston days, Kevin Garnett, sticking around to show the yutes how it's done, Thibodeau uncovered a coaching gold mine in Minneapolis.

A fountain of yutes, if you will.

Towns, Wiggins and Lavine are all 21 or younger and firmly under the Wolves' contractual control. With only two veterans on double-digit deals (Ricky Rubio and Nikola Pekovic), Thibs the executive will have oodles of cap room to fortify the roster that Thibs the coach will inherit. It's a great situation.

How great? Think about this hypothetical: If the Cavs and Wolves jobs were open at the same time this summer, and if complete control were available in both places, which one would be more appealing? A sound argument could be made that the Minnesota job is more attractive long term, which is both an expression of the reality that James is getting older and also an indictment of the Cavs' decision to trade Wiggins for Kevin Love.

So there is plenty to like about the Minnesota situation from Thibodeau's perspective -- much of which was put in place by the late Flip Saunders, whose vision for the franchise is very much still blossoming.

But what about the Wolves? Did they get the right guy?

On paper, there is no disputing Thibodeau's resume. He won 65 percent of his regular season games in five seasons in Chicago, advancing to one conference finals and three conference semifinals. Both in Chicago as the coach and in Boston as Rivers' top defensive assistant, Thibodeau's teams were consistently among the most creative and accomplished defensive teams in the NBA. No one ever built a stronger dam for the onslaught of LeBron.

It's also a fact that Thibodeau's Bulls teams were way above the league average in another category that you don't want to be the best at: games missed due to injury. Headbutting between Thibodeau and the front office over rehab and return-to-play protocols was one of the many issues that left the relationship irreparably broken.

Of course, Thibodeau's replacement, Fred Hoiberg, oversaw more games missed due to injury this season than in any of Thibodeau's five.

Nonetheless, when the Bulls fired Thibodeau last spring, there were three jobs open: Orlando (which hired Scott Skiles), New Orleans (which hired Alvin Gentry) and Denver (which hired Michael Malone). Thibodeau wasn't a serious candidate for any of them.

Thibodeau was owed about $9 million by the Bulls at the time, so there was little incentive for him to go right back to work. And he spent his down time wisely, fulfilling his assistant duties with Team USA and visiting several teams -- the Celtics, Rockets, Warriors and Pistons among them -- to absorb details of their organizational structure and relationships.

The visits were often billed as Thibodeau doling out defensive advice, but to be honest, it was more of a learning experience for him. In Chicago, Thibodeau rarely picked his head up from his film study or game-planning long enough to breathe, much less interact in a constructive way with those who were supposed to be "pulling in the same direction," as Bulls VP John Paxson put it in the news conference announcing Thibodeau's dismissal.

The directions were usually opposing when Thibodeau was with the Bulls, which makes his success there all the more impressive. Working alongside someone he knows and trusts -- Scott Layden, who joins Thibodeau in Minnesota as GM -- should help. So, too, will learning from his mistakes.

If the Timberwolves are getting a kinder, gentler, more communicative Tom Thibodeau -- one with a broader vision than the next pick-and-roll coverage -- then they're getting a hell of a coach and basketball mind.

But if the security cameras show Thibodeau hovering in his office, ear-deep in game film at 3 a.m. in the middle of a back-to-back in January, then this could be trouble.

As I said, it's a great situation; too great to squander.