Ryan Saunders Has Been Fired - Chris Finch Hired!!!

[TRik]

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Yup. I know of one pretty reasonable poster on here that hates Nurse, which is totally fine, not everyone needs to like everyone.

But he’s a brilliant coach in my book and I think the Wolves were smart to get a coach that worked under Nurse and who Nurse fully endorses.

The Raptors don’t have a roster full of high level prospects, they’ve just maximised player potential and had solid coaching and organisational development. Hopefully Finch brings a bit of that because this roster has the talent to be better.

[Jedzz]

Paid 30 mil a season to mentally check out.

Must be nice being a timberwolves player.

Top deal from Rosas lmfao.

Well the Wolves fixed their Saunders mistake, hopefully that means they can also fix their Dlo mistake.

The priority right now should be to fix their Rosas mistake.

this

[moonpie]

[UnFadeable21]

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[Jedzz]

If the fans were able to see Saunders' inability to coach, I'm quite certain the players did as well.

Heard Tucker over the weekend say he thought Russell checked out games ago (before the injury).

Paid 30 mil a season to mentally check out.

Must be nice being a timberwolves player.

Top deal from Rosas lmfao.

I generally agree with you. But I bet most of us have had an utterly incompetent boss that makes our jobs 100 times more difficult and causes eye rolls almost every time they talk. Hard to work under those circumstances. It seemed everyone knew Saunders, while apparently a great guy, was not ready and was inept at being a HC.

I still think Rosas is not good at his #1 job, talent evaluation. But I’m excited to see what Finch can do, by all accounts a highly qualified offensive coach.

Agree, Rosas talent evaluation. We'll just have to hope for the best from Finch.

I want to know who pushed for JMac from the Nets connection but obviously didn't have quite enough juice with Rosas to get him a larger role/contract. There may be your talent eye still within. I wonder if it was the same guy pushing for the McDaniel's drafting or not.

[Merc_Porto]

“Ryan Saunders and D'Angelo Russell did not see eye to eye. Ryan enjoyed coaching this roster more whenever Russell was out."

No wonder why... 5 years, 4 teams

"Did not see eye to eye" I really dont know what this mean tbh. Dlo had all the flexibility to do whatever he wanted to do in the end of the games he played, the absurd hight usage for such an average point guard is there. Same for the FGA.

Too much power for two players that didnt showed anything to have this kind of power in the direction of the franchise.

Just a reminder that Devin Booker last season demanded the Suns to sign Dlo but they went for Rubio. Unless youre a proven superstar no franshise should accept this demands to get a friend or to fire a coach.

[UnFadeable21]

Chris Finch Intro Press Conference at 5pm on FSN and WCCO Radio

[Klomp]

Offense has plummeted this year, when offense wasn't an issue last year. Wins have plummeted too.

The fall couldn't have been too steep... the team won fewer than 30% of its games last season, too.

Going from 30% to 22% is still a fairly large fall

[Bruteque]

Going from losing relatively gracefully to getting soul-crushed every day of the week and twice on Sundays probably did Saunders in.



Ah, the Vipers' first championship, haha. Now Finch finally gets his chance. We shall see what he comes up with. There are a lot of interesting pieces to play with on the 'Wolves roster.

[AbeVigodaLive]

Offense has plummeted this year, when offense wasn't an issue last year. Wins have plummeted too.

The fall couldn't have been too steep... the team won fewer than 30% of its games last season, too.

Going from 30% to 22% is still a fairly large fall

It's not a good look. It's about the same if the Wolves were 15 - 49 instead of 19 - 45 last season.

Either way... unacceptable.

[Jedzz]

“Ryan Saunders and D'Angelo Russell did not see eye to eye. Ryan enjoyed coaching this roster more whenever Russell was out."

No wonder why... 5 years, 4 teams

"Did not see eye to eye" I really dont know what this mean tbh. Dlo had all the flexibility to do whatever he wanted to do in the end of the games he played, the absurd hight usage for such an average point guard is there.

Oh please. "in the end of the games". We are just going to play you off bench and otherwise have Edwards and Culver initiating on ball with you on the court but in the end of game moments, when behind by ten or fifteen, we'll give you carte blanche to try and save them. Then when you fail to shoot warmly and save us from deficits also because the young kids don't know what is going on or what you are trying to do, our fans will scape goat you. Do you hear yourself? Oh yeah, that plan we had last spring, we are just going to ditch that because we had a couple great ideas the month before our two week camp (you know, those unorganized gym hours they called a camp).

[Baseline81]

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Ruthless clearly has a different meaning to Doogie than it does to me. Are Taylor and Rosas supposed to fly him back with the team, have a party, share some memories and cake?

Pretty telling when Doogie says, "Sam Mitchell, one of my guys."

[Jedzz]

Going from losing relatively gracefully to getting soul-crushed every day of the week and twice on Sundays probably did Saunders in.



Ah, the Vipers' first championship, haha. Now Finch finally gets his chance. We shall see what he comes up with. There are a lot of interesting pieces to play with on the 'Wolves roster.

It should be interesting. Will players sit, will trades finally happen to release the logjams?

[AbeVigodaLive]

“Ryan Saunders and D'Angelo Russell did not see eye to eye. Ryan enjoyed coaching this roster more whenever Russell was out."

No wonder why... 5 years, 4 teams

"Did not see eye to eye" I really dont know what this mean tbh. Dlo had all the flexibility to do whatever he wanted to do in the end of the games he played, the absurd hight usage for such an average point guard is there. Same for the FGA.

Too much power for two players that didnt showed anything to have this kind of power in the direction of the franchise.

Just a reminder that Devin Booker last season demanded the Suns to sign Dlo but they went for Rubio. Unless youre a proven superstar no franshise should accept this demands to get a friend or to fire a coach.

I've commented previously about Saunders' seemingly veiled comments about bad decisions and shot selection after some tough losses. Obviously, it's not wise to publicly name the new $28M PG as the culprit... but it was pretty clear there was very little love lost between Saunders and Russell.

[TRik]

“Ryan Saunders and D'Angelo Russell did not see eye to eye. Ryan enjoyed coaching this roster more whenever Russell was out."

No wonder why... 5 years, 4 teams

"Did not see eye to eye" I really dont know what this mean tbh. Dlo had all the flexibility to do whatever he wanted to do in the end of the games he played, the absurd hight usage for such an average point guard is there. Same for the FGA.

Too much power for two players that didnt showed anything to have this kind of power in the direction of the franchise.

Just a reminder that Devin Booker last season demanded the Suns to sign Dlo but they went for Rubio. Unless youre a proven superstar no franshise should accept this demands to get a friend or to fire a coach.

I that regard, I totally sympathise with Saunders. Imagine being forced to play a guy (that thinks he is a superstar), knowing that the player is actually bad for your team schemes, simply because they make 30 million a year and are friends with KAT.

I feel you Saunders.

[_AIJ_]

Off topic

Where on earth is KGdabom???

[Foye]

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Another sign of poor management.

Why the hell do you let Saunders fly to NY if you plan on releasing him anyway?

Not that it matters much but a rather classless move to release Saunders after the first game of a 4 game road trip. There‘s more than enough assistant coaches available on the roster that could‘ve taken care of this game until the deal with Finch was finalized.

[Jedzz]

Something I've wondered about lately is if Rosas essentially took the training wheels off Saunders this year and basically let him hang himself. Jedzz has mentioned how there's been little to no mention of the 3s and layups offense, no talk of efficiency zones, etc. Like Saunders was essentially told to run things how he wants instead of being the puppet. Offense has plummeted this year, when offense wasn't an issue last year. Wins have plummeted too.

Finch is supposed to be an offensive mind, so it'll be interesting to see how he turns it around.

That's a good point, he might have. But he also had Dlo coming in to contend with who obviously likes a long two jumper now and then to take advantage of the defense sagging and make them commit to him. Jim Pete for a number of games was mentioning how the team felt they had to allow the players this part of their game if it was something they were good at and needed. Probably is they used Edwards included in that excuse and basically everyone was allowed to like the training wheels for their system was completely gone and nobody was held in check anymore on anything.

I wonder if Finch can actually surprise us and bring defense to the team when everyone is expecting offense from him. Just by clamping down on all the stupid things.

[UnFadeable21]

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[Jedzz]

I've commented previously about Saunders' seemingly veiled comments about bad decisions and shot selection after some tough losses. Obviously, it's not wise to publicly name the new $28M PG as the culprit... but it was pretty clear there was very little love lost between Saunders and Russell.

Shot selection...they knew who he was when they traded for him. The team let everyone have horrible shot selection this season.

I agree there might have been an issue between the two and when he was missing games and decided later to have knee scoped I assumed he was told to just wait this out as changes were coming. Either he was getting traded or other players were, or the coach was. Posted about this last couple weeks. I think the issues started in the first week, maybe even preseason when Culver and Edwards bratpack were initiating so much offense.