Wiretap: Wolves Reportedly 'Not In A Good Place Right Now Internally' With Karl-Anthony Towns

[AirP.]

Glen Taylor was not the one who made Andrew Wiggins "off-limits", can you stop propagating that lie? Like, you've been corrected like twenty times, you are just willfully lying at this point.

Just to add... from 2017

Taylor also told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that Wiggins is not available in any trade. Wiggins name had come up as someone the Cavaliers targeted in a possible trade for Kyrie Irving.

https://sports.yahoo.com/wolves-owner-wants-meet-andrew-213047766.html

That doesn't say it was his decision. He's just relaying the information.

Ok... and here I would say the wording "not available in any trade" would be his words and not Thibs, because I could see Thibs absolutely trading Wiggins for a number of players in the league.

Also, if Wiggins is not tradeable in the FO's view, why would the FO trade a lot of good talent for a better version of Wiggins instead of continuing to develop Wiggins by bring in players to support him and his game? To get the best out of a Wiggins type player(super athletic) you'd want to have a PG with incredible vision and passing like Rubio(to make use of his athletic ability) and add a good/great 3&D type player opposite of Wiggins(to stretch the defense). Instead Thibs brought in a scoring PG with average at best defense(a defensive downgrade from Rubio) and quite frankly, a much better version of Wiggins opposite of Wiggins. Nothing that was done last year was to complement Wiggins which is very odd, you hand a player a max contract, say we need you to get better(owner) then don't add tools to help him get better, in fact the FO took tools away from Wiggins and he ended up having his worst season.

It's just odd to me, if Thibs was on the Wiggins isn't tradable and give him the max bandwagon, Thibs the coach really didn't show that in his actions with the way he utilized him last season, actually quite the opposite.

If Thibs was on board with Wiggins isn't available for Kyrie, was fine giving him the max and then utilized him the way he did this year, he should be fired and nobody should ever consider him for an NBA head coaching or FO job again.

[Worm Guts]

[

Also, if Wiggins is not tradeable in the FO's view, why would the FO trade a lot of good talent for a better version of Wiggins instead of continuing to develop Wiggins by bring in players to support him and his game?

. Only Thibs knows exactly why he does what he does, so I can't speak why he made his decisions but it's perfectly reasonable to assume he acquired to Jimmy Butler as an example for Wiggins. Someone with lesser physical gifts than Wiggins who made it through hard work and effort. And you can argue there are better fits, but there are far worse situations than having two athletic wings who can score (if Wiggins reaches his potential).

[Worm Guts]

If Thibs thought Wiggins and Butler wouldn't work, then why would he trade for Butler when already knew he was going to have to max Wiggins? That's something he would have already known at the time of the Butler trade.

[shrink]

I think we have a much better understanding of how our owner operates than you do, and that's what is sort of obnoxious about you standing on your soap box. Glen Taylor has his issues, he's involved and often makes bad decisions, but when you infer that he's a heavy handed micro manager, you're just wrong.

Glen usually gets heavy handed with the really dumb decisions. The joe Smith contract, the love contract, selling 1st round picks ect

You really think Glen was being heavy handed when he made those decisions? Come on now, he was going right along with his GM.

Exactly. If anything, Taylor is the opposite. If you want to complain about him, I think that he is too loyal, and gives his GM’s too long a leash, when sometimes they should be fired sooner. I think most recognized David Kahn wasn’t working out.

[Note30]

Yes, I started watching the Timberwolves way more closely when Thibs was hired because I actually like watching players give effort and try to win, the Bulls INSTANTLY looked different when Hoiberg took over. Then again, Gasol took less money to play for Thibs, J.Teague instantly wanted to come to Minnesota with Thibs, Butler was fine with Minnesota with Thibs(he actually was being pursued by Cleveland with LeBron and said no to them). So yeah, I guess there are people who actually prioritize effort and trying and I enjoy that.

Awesome. So we establish that you're more invested in Thibs and Butler, Gibson then the rest of the team and the city, cool. Any point bad-mouthing Thibs is going to just fly by you. Like the fact that his system is outdated, he'd be better as an assistant coach, and that basketball has evolved past his methods.

Also, I currently live 10 minutes from the Thunder arena should I be a Thunder fan? As a small child the team me and my dad would go see, the Kansas City Kings, left, should I have stayed a fan of that franchise although there was really no way to follow them except through the weekly Sporting News or yearly NBA magazines. All I had was cable and I believe WGN and TBS so it was between the Bulls and the Hawks, I picked the closer team.

I'm not from Minnesota, I just don't like bandwagoners. If you picked Chicago why are you patrolling our boards? If our franchise is so **** and our ownership is bad, why are you here, surely you should be bad mouthing the ownership that hired and fired Thibs?
Seems like something here is lost.

Also, I did a decade in the military, I kinda understand that people can yell, cuss and scream because they're passionate that the people under their watch reach their potential, it was quite eye opening in my teens to see my Technical Instructors be real people after 6 weeks for them yelling during basic training, quiet eye opening to see them as real people and talk about taking turns on being good cop/bad cop to bring us together. I'm guessing a lot of people on this board have never gotten to see how that works.

This isn't the military, its basketball. Can that mentality help? Sure. But I don't think PJax, Sloan, Carlisle, Stevens, Synder ever coached in the manner that Thibs does. PJax is one of the best coaches in NBA history. In fact, Pop who does have a military background. He sticks closer to the doctrine that basketball and team basketball is important, and ultimately that basketball culture can become family like. Yes its important to give the tough talk when needed, BUT that doesn't mean you treat basketball like a transaction. If you yell at people like you yell at a machine you're not going to end up with positive results.

Oh and guess what? KAT would be chosen over Thibs, look at the most recent article.

A decade of basically being in the nba lottery and that's what you end up with, congrats on that and congrats on taking 2 PGs before S.Curry was picked.

Congrats on Thibs destroying the best superstar he's had. Also congrats on being just as irrelevant since MJ. If you're gonna bash on our franchise GTFO.

Thank your owner, he kept Wiggins off the table, at the most it would have cost Minnesota Wiggins and possibly Dunn and you would have kept LaVine and had Markannen(who Thibs mentioned at the time of the guy he would have taken). Taylor's even mentioned the playoffs were his priority and LaVine being out half a season was the reason he let him go and kept Wiggins.

Actually it wouldn't have. We had to max Drew because your genius of a GM locked in our leverage. Trading for Butler is the reason we gave Drew the max.

Butler has a year left on his deal. If he walks were screwed so we have to prioritize the back up in case he does. Wiggins had all the leverage.

He knew if he didn't get an extension.
a.) Butler might have looked at Wiggins walking (3rd best player) and refused to sign an extension.
b.) The Wolves would need him to make the playoffs and continue a deep run for years to come.
c.) The Wolves couldn't get an equivalent wing of his potential and skill on the market
d.) The Wolves would lose all trade leverage without an extension and a lot of good will with other future young players.
e.) MOST importantly, if Butler walked, and Wiggins wasn't extended or took the QO the organization would collapse, lose Towns possibly, and be sent back to no playoff hell.

If we had LaVine and Andrew, we could have told Andrew that we're not giving him the max unless he performs well this year. If we lost him to a max in RFA, we still had LaVine as an RFA. The franchise would live. We could have even negotiated.

I don't know what you mean by us losing Dunn, he's locked in on 3 years remaining *2 now.

Who's fault is it that Thibs isn't a better coach than Sam Mitchell? He had a full year and training camp to prep these guys to make the jump from a 29 win team to 37/39 win team. Instead we got 31.

We had to make the playoffs this year or we'd be tied with the Clippers and all the marketing we did to be the new look Wolves (jerseys, stadium, etc.) would have been for naught. This assumption was tied to the fact that Thibs was a decent coach/POB.

It would be interesting if Thibs wouldn't have been hired, you'd currently be in season 14 of no playoffs and looking at paying 3 young players near max money to be possibly .500 one day, what a great position to be in. Also, the owner had to OK any trades or extensions, you know the owner, the guy who went to the media to beg Wiggins to take the max only to wait 4 months for Wiggins to finally say ok and sign it. But yes, keep telling me how big of a problem Thibs is... it's your owner.

Uhhh, any GM could have made that trade for Butler. At 16 we picked a guy to be 5th on the depth chart, instead of at PG where we were suffering. Trade the pick for a young PG if you can't draft one at BPA. Instead we have a guy who has little trade value this year. Great. Maybe with Brad Stevens or Synder level coach we'd also be in the playoffs. Maybe we'd finally figure out how to effectively use the best PG we've ever had instead of making him stand in a corner (Rubio not Teague unless thats not clear). Maybe we would have selected better talent than Kris Dunn, or made a trade to acquire a young player (24 and below) that would have been of equal use.

Sure, except you should talk to the Chicago fanbase about the quite enjoyable season of watching a try hard team without their superstar(Rose) and then Deng in the playoffs get to the 2nd round, some of the most enjoyable basketball I've ever watched and I watched the Bulls through the Jordan years. I appreciate hard work and defying the odds, unless you have one of the top NBA players in the league(if not a historically great player), a championship is damn hard to achieve.

A.) That was in that joke of a conference.
B.) 2nd round and mediocrity is the reason the Chicago FO decided to blow it all up and fire Thibs, and trade for LaVine and Dunn.
C.) I'll agree that that ball was enjoyable, that Nate Robsinson year was fun in the PO. You guys still lost in the 2nd round, but it was fun.
D.) Great, thats why you go and cultivate and develop top players instead of yelling at them 24/7.

You can put the need for the playoffs on your owner, it was his priority to get there and that's why you have Wiggins, Patton instead of LaVine, Dunn and Markannen. I'm not sure if you noticed but Thibs kinda empowered your youth last season which led to a stunning 31 games. You could have went all in and added JJ Reddick this summer for the same price as Philly did and possibly gotten up to 35-37 wins but I'm not really sure what the point in that was, the rookie contracts were nearing their end, this team could have only been as good as these players potentially could be and man... Wiggins is not exactly where you'd want him after 4 seasons being picked #1.

LOL WHAT. WE HAD 29 THE YEAR BEFORE! TWO **** GAMES. "EMPOWERMENT". Dude get your nose out of his ass hole.

ANYONE CAN GO DOWN WITH AN INJURY. Chicago had D.Rose was the youngest MVP and he went down with a career altering injury and instead of just tanking the players on the roster continued to play with passion and the team continued to do well and the fans had a team they could root for.

Fine.

Actually I think you'd be wrong with LeBron, see... some of the greats actually have incredible work ethics, Thibodeau tries to create these work ethics in players by pushing them, I think you'd really be surprised about how much they'd click trying to push excellence onto LeBron's teammates.

What's really funny, all these players the media kept saying we believe these players can't stand Thibs(narative from chicago's FO) Thibs, this player hates Thibs yet he seems to have a strong connection with his players and a lot of them come back to play with him. I'm looking around and I see J.Butler who was OK with being traded to Thib's team, I see T.Gibson fine with signing for Thib's team, I see A.Brooks fine with reuniting with Thibs, hey look, D.Rose took less to join up with his old hated coach Tom Thibodeau and interesting enough J.Noah has mentioned you know know what you had till it's gone with Thibs. Why would players who have options or tons of money in the bank go play with a guy they didn't like?

LOL A.Brooks would be lucky to have a job anywhere else, D.Rose couldn't get signed anywhere as well (he played well, props to him), Gibson got overpaid, and Butler doesn't have a choice if he's getting traded (and of course he's going to say that about his previous coach). Teague was literally this franchises only real signing and he's a massive chode tool.

LeBron can't coexist with any coach besides LeBron, it wasn't a shot at your dough boy.

Work ethic =/= yelling.

LeBron has work ethic, he's always pumping up his team. Same with Tim Duncan, Parker, Nowitzki.

[AirP.]

[

Also, if Wiggins is not tradeable in the FO's view, why would the FO trade a lot of good talent for a better version of Wiggins instead of continuing to develop Wiggins by bring in players to support him and his game?

. Only Thibs knows exactly why he does what he does, so I can't speak why he made his decisions but it's perfectly reasonable to assume he acquired to Jimmy Butler as an example for Wiggins. Someone with lesser physical gifts than Wiggins who made it through hard work and effort. And you can argue there are better fits, but there are far worse situations than having two athletic wings who can score (if Wiggins reaches his potential).

Ok, let me get this straight... it's perfectly reasonable(to you) for Minnesota to trade a #5 pick, #7 pick and Zach LaVine for a mentor for Wiggins and a #16 pick? That's a really awful move for a franchise. I get bringing in a vet to help teach Wiggins to be a better professional but not multiple lottery picks and a guy who could be a near max contract player too.

[Note30]

[

Also, if Wiggins is not tradeable in the FO's view, why would the FO trade a lot of good talent for a better version of Wiggins instead of continuing to develop Wiggins by bring in players to support him and his game?

. Only Thibs knows exactly why he does what he does, so I can't speak why he made his decisions but it's perfectly reasonable to assume he acquired to Jimmy Butler as an example for Wiggins. Someone with lesser physical gifts than Wiggins who made it through hard work and effort. And you can argue there are better fits, but there are far worse situations than having two athletic wings who can score (if Wiggins reaches his potential).

Ok, let me get this straight... it's perfectly reasonable(to you) for Minnesota to trade a #5 pick, #7 pick and Zach LaVine for a mentor for Wiggins and a #16 pick? That's a really awful move for a franchise. I get bringing in a vet to help teach Wiggins to be a better professional but not multiple lottery picks and a guy who could be a near max contract player too.

Well guess who made that move?

[AirP.]

If Thibs thought Wiggins and Butler wouldn't work, then why would he trade for Butler when already knew he was going to have to max Wiggins? That's something he would have already known at the time of the Butler trade.

Because he expects to be able to change the owner's mind on Wiggins with Butler's play compared to Wiggins(it's kinda why I said LAST OFFSEASON... I didn't expect Wiggins on the roster opening day 2018)? If Minnesota didn't trade for Butler and tried to build around Wiggins I wouldn't expect much success for this franchise.

Eh... I'll try to find my post of the 2018 roster thing.

[_AIJ_]

signs people with off the court issues.

Who exactly?



Sent from my iPhone using RealGM mobile app

[Worm Guts]

[

Also, if Wiggins is not tradeable in the FO's view, why would the FO trade a lot of good talent for a better version of Wiggins instead of continuing to develop Wiggins by bring in players to support him and his game?

. Only Thibs knows exactly why he does what he does, so I can't speak why he made his decisions but it's perfectly reasonable to assume he acquired to Jimmy Butler as an example for Wiggins. Someone with lesser physical gifts than Wiggins who made it through hard work and effort. And you can argue there are better fits, but there are far worse situations than having two athletic wings who can score (if Wiggins reaches his potential).

Ok, let me get this straight... it's perfectly reasonable(to you) for Minnesota to trade a #5 pick, #7 pick and Zach LaVine for a mentor for Wiggins and a #16 pick? That's a really awful move for a franchise. I get bringing in a vet to help teach Wiggins to be a better professional but not multiple lottery picks and a guy who could be a near max contract player too.

Jimmy Butler is obviously more than a mentor. Being a mentor doesn’t mean his value as a player goes away.

[Worm Guts]

If Thibs thought Wiggins and Butler wouldn't work, then why would he trade for Butler when already knew he was going to have to max Wiggins? That's something he would have already known at the time of the Butler trade.

Because he expects to be able to change the owner's mind on Wiggins with Butler's play compared to Wiggins(it's kinda why I said LAST OFFSEASON... I didn't expect Wiggins on the roster opening day 2018)? If Minnesota didn't trade for Butler and tried to build around Wiggins I wouldn't expect much success for this franchise.

Eh... I'll try to find my post of the 2018 roster thing.

Anything is possible but in no way do I think that is the most likely scenario. I think it’s way more likely he thought he could make Butler and Wiggins work

[AirP.]

Sorry, didn't see this.

Awesome. So we establish that you're more invested in Thibs and Butler, Gibson then the rest of the team and the city, cool. Any point bad-mouthing Thibs is going to just fly by you. Like the fact that his system is outdated, he'd be better as an assistant coach, and that basketball has evolved past his methods.

Actually Thibs and Towns(who is the most important player for this franchise). Bad mouthing on Thibs? The Crawford signing was a hail mary with the cap space available and ended up being a horrible signing. He doesn't make good plays on the fly/in the moment. He's a coach who does tons of research, tries to give the player as much info as they can get to be successful and then let's the players decide games. Does the yelling get old, sure, but I heard it when I played basketball, I heard it in the military and it doesn't really bother me. The question is why does he do it, I don't think it's out of hate, I think it's because he's passionate towards the game. If someone has a good point I'm fine with it, may not see eye to eye on it but people have opinions, I just like knowing the reason for opinions.

I'm not from Minnesota, I just don't like bandwagoners. If you picked Chicago why are you patrolling our boards? If our franchise is so **** and our ownership is bad, why are you here, surely you should be bad mouthing the ownership that hired and fired Thibs?
Seems like something here is lost.

I can't pick a team and deep dive into it? It would be great to have a lot more time to devote to more teams but really, as deep as I get with a team it takes a lot of time. I usually have tweetdeck up and streaming a bunch of different Timberwolves topics throughout the day, luckily my profession allows me to do that.

This isn't the military, its basketball. Can that mentality help? Sure. But I don't think PJax, Sloan, Carlisle, Stevens, Synder ever coached in the manner that Thibs does. PJax is one of the best coaches in NBA history. In fact, Pop who does have a military background. He sticks closer to the doctrine that basketball and team basketball is important, and ultimately that basketball culture can become family like. Yes its important to give the tough talk when needed, BUT that doesn't mean you treat basketball like a transaction. If you yell at people like you yell at a machine you're not going to end up with positive results.

Oh and guess what? KAT would be chosen over Thibs, look at the most recent article.

Yes there's different ways to coach and to a lot of people Thibs probably the most annoying style. Phil Jackson one of the best coaches in history? I guess because of the situations, I give way more credit to Tex Winters and the all time great players that were on the rosters before Phil took over. The Bulls were on the cusp of getting past Detroit with Doug Collins and had he stayed the coach I completely expect those championships to happen anyways.

Congrats on Thibs destroying the best superstar he's had. Also congrats on being just as irrelevant since MJ. If you're gonna bash on our franchise GTFO.

There's only a few franchises that have the money and the ownership to sustain being a great franchise.
What superstar did Thibs destroy? I hope you're not talking about Rose since people were worried that his style of play would destroy his knees and one day it did, one of the reasons he quit attacking the basket(which also made him a much lesser player). Injuries happen but since Chicago's FO didn't want Thibs in the first place(the owner signed him) the usual FO mouthpieces in the Chicago media would put out negative things about Thibs which is why we have these narratives now. Popovich played Duncan tons of minutes(including over 40 a night one season) but hey, he knows what he's doing, Thibs playing Butler LESS minutes then Hoiberg and still, it's all about Thibs.

Actually it wouldn't have. We had to max Drew because your genius of a GM locked in our leverage. Trading for Butler is the reason we gave Drew the max.

Even with Wiggins year this year, someone would have given him the max. Portland screwed OKC over with Kanter, Brooklyn screwed Washington over Porter, it was going to happen. Chicago though is too cheap for that game, they wouldn't trade Asik to strengthen the team for a finals run and then let Asik go after signing a loaded offer with Houston. Chicago is such a frustrating franchise. I think they were making nearly 60 million a year in profits at that time.

Butler has a year left on his deal. If he walks were screwed so we have to prioritize the back up in case he does. Wiggins had all the leverage.

Butler wants to win and doesn't care where he does it, if the franchise puts winning above "development" I'm sure Butler will stay, if he goes... huge blow for the franchise but it also says the team isn't doing what it could do to win. It's like the mini version of what LeBron does.

He knew if he didn't get an extension.
a.) Butler might have looked at Wiggins walking (3rd best player) and refused to sign an extension.
b.) The Wolves would need him to make the playoffs and continue a deep run for years to come.
c.) The Wolves couldn't get an equivalent wing of his potential and skill on the market
d.) The Wolves would lose all trade leverage without an extension and a lot of good will with other future young players.
e.) MOST importantly, if Butler walked, and Wiggins wasn't extended or took the QO the organization would collapse, lose Towns possibly, and be sent back to no playoff hell.

Still think some rebuilding team would have no problem giving Wiggins the max and letting him be the tank commander and HOPE he finally gets it or being traded wakes him up and pushes his effort level up. It took Oladipo multiple trades to get to that point and he finally got very serious about his offseason training.

If we had LaVine and Andrew, we could have told Andrew that we're not giving him the max unless he performs well this year. If we lost him to a max in RFA, we still had LaVine as an RFA. The franchise would live. We could have even negotiated.

Did Thibs make Glenn Taylor go to the press and announce I have a max contract waiting for you, come talk to me and sign it!

Who's fault is it that Thibs isn't a better coach than Sam Mitchell? He had a full year and training camp to prep these guys to make the jump from a 29 win team to 37/39 win team. Instead we got 31.

RIght, those young teams should get dramatically better quickly. The NBA isn't that hard to win in, it's easy.

We had to make the playoffs this year or we'd be tied with the Clippers and all the marketing we did to be the new look Wolves (jerseys, stadium, etc.) would have been for naught. This assumption was tied to the fact that Thibs was a decent coach/POB.

Up till the most important player being hurt for 6 weeks, you probably would have ended up with home court advantage in the first round and had a real chance to get to the 2nd round.

Uhhh, any GM could have made that trade for Butler. At 16 we picked a guy to be 5th on the depth chart, instead of at PG where we were suffering. Trade the pick for a young PG if you can't draft one at BPA. Instead we have a guy who has little trade value this year. Great. Maybe with Brad Stevens or Synder level coach we'd also be in the playoffs. Maybe we'd finally figure out how to effectively use the best PG we've ever had instead of making him stand in a corner (Rubio not Teague unless thats not clear). Maybe we would have selected better talent than Kris Dunn, or made a trade to acquire a young player (24 and below) that would have been of equal use.

Then other GMs should have pulled the trigger huh? Luckily Thibs kinda knew who Chicago's FO probably liked and how much they liked them and also knowing that Chicago tried to acquire LaVine before Thibs got to Minnesota was key too.

A.) That was in that joke of a conference.

Sure.

B.) 2nd round and mediocrity is the reason the Chicago FO decided to blow it all up and fire Thibs, and trade for LaVine and Dunn.

They didn't "blow it up" till 2 seasons after Thibs, actually cost them a lottery pick from Sacramento. Chicago fans were watching that pick for 3 or so years and it turned into 2nd rounders(from the Deng trade).

C.) I'll agree that that ball was enjoyable, that Nate Robsinson year was fun in the PO. You guys still lost in the 2nd round, but it was fun.

1 team wins a championship each year and regularly a team wins multiple championships in a small amount of time, so very few franchises ever win a championship, all you can really hope for is a real chance and hopefully some exciting basketball to win.

D.) Great, thats why you go and cultivate and develop top players instead of yelling at them 24/7.

You're hung up on the yelling(a lot of people here are which I get), the question is why is he yelling, is it because he hates someone or that he wants the best for someone and is upset at the effort/play. Once again, I've dealt with it and understand it, most probably haven't and don't.

LOL WHAT. WE HAD 29 THE YEAR BEFORE! TWO **** GAMES. "EMPOWERMENT". Dude get your nose out of his ass hole.

What difference does 25 or 35 games won really mean? You're looking for progress at that point and sure, wins can be a measure for progress but it's not the only one.

LOL A.Brooks would be lucky to have a job anywhere else, D.Rose couldn't get signed anywhere as well (he played well, props to him), Gibson got overpaid, and Butler doesn't have a choice if he's getting traded (and of course he's going to say that about his previous coach). Teague was literally this franchises only real signing and he's a massive chode tool.

Actually it was reported that teams were interested in him, most were just offering 10 day contracts to get him in and look at him closer. Not sure how much Gibson was being overpaid but Chicago traded him because they expected him to make more then 10 million after his contract was up, more then liked ~12 million was a good price for him, Minnesota paid 14 for only 2 years(I'd expect Taj wanted more years, over pay some for a shorter contract.

Work ethic =/= yelling.

You're right, but yelling can help some players. I'm not sure anything will help Wiggins, I don't see him being very emotional, more of a chill type personality which is great trait to have except in something competitive. A personality like that, you basically get what you get. Seeing what he does against the Cavs makes one wonder why that doesn't happen more often from Wiggins... he does have the ability, he just doesn't have the drive.

LeBron has work ethic, he's always pumping up his team. Same with Tim Duncan, Parker, Nowitzki.

Same with Butler and a lot of NBA players, but most of those guys are fringe players having to work hard to stay in the league. If you get a high potential player with that type of drive, grab them. Donovan Mitchell seems to be that type of player from what I've heard... but then again you can see the emotion and fire from Mitchel during games. What an incredible pick by Utah.

[AirP.]

. Only Thibs knows exactly why he does what he does, so I can't speak why he made his decisions but it's perfectly reasonable to assume he acquired to Jimmy Butler as an example for Wiggins. Someone with lesser physical gifts than Wiggins who made it through hard work and effort. And you can argue there are better fits, but there are far worse situations than having two athletic wings who can score (if Wiggins reaches his potential).

Ok, let me get this straight... it's perfectly reasonable(to you) for Minnesota to trade a #5 pick, #7 pick and Zach LaVine for a mentor for Wiggins and a #16 pick? That's a really awful move for a franchise. I get bringing in a vet to help teach Wiggins to be a better professional but not multiple lottery picks and a guy who could be a near max contract player too.

Jimmy Butler is obviously more than a mentor. Being a mentor doesn’t mean his value as a player goes away.

Right... but he was only under contract for 2 seasons(3rd player option) and during those 2 years Minnesota really won't be a true contender(although they might be on the cusp of it next year baring injuries... with a little more chemistry and improvement).

Butler can see the potential in Wiggins, he also has seen the contract given to him, so he knows unless Wiggins gives better effort in games, winning in Minnesota will be really tough.

It would be really incredible for Minnesota if Wiggins finally "gets it" and gives the kind of effort he should give on the court, when he's giving effort he is a difference maker, a good value at a max contract... not sure but a way better value then what he showed this season.

[Note30]

Sorry, didn't see this. Actually Thibs and Towns(who is the most important player for this franchise). Bad mouthing on Thibs? The Crawford signing was a hail mary with the cap space available and ended up being a horrible signing. He doesn't make good plays on the fly/in the moment. He's a coach who does tons of research, tries to give the player as much info as they can get to be successful and then let's the players decide games. Does the yelling get old, sure, but I heard it when I played basketball, I heard it in the military and it doesn't really bother me. The question is why does he do it, I don't think it's out of hate, I think it's because he's passionate towards the game. If someone has a good point I'm fine with it, may not see eye to eye on it but people have opinions, I just like knowing the reason for opinions.

Cool gp, still don't agree with your yelling stance tho.

I can't pick a team and deep dive into it? It would be great to have a lot more time to devote to more teams but really, as deep as I get with a team it takes a lot of time. I usually have tweetdeck up and streaming a bunch of different Timberwolves topics throughout the day, luckily my profession allows me to do that.

Sure you can, but it really should be your own. I like what the Celtics are doing this season, and love their team, but I'm not going to go over there and criticize... well its hard to criticize them.

Yes there's different ways to coach and to a lot of people Thibs probably the most annoying style. Phil Jackson one of the best coaches in history? I guess because of the situations, I give way more credit to Tex Winters and the all time great players that were on the rosters before Phil took over. The Bulls were on the cusp of getting past Detroit with Doug Collins and had he stayed the coach I completely expect those championships to happen anyways.

Fine, sure but in my eyes he managed to coach two of the best players and made hot headed players agree with each other. I think that takes effort.

There's only a few franchises that have the money and the ownership to sustain being a great franchise.
What superstar did Thibs destroy? I hope you're not talking about Rose since people were worried that his style of play would destroy his knees and one day it did, one of the reasons he quit attacking the basket(which also made him a much lesser player). Injuries happen but since Chicago's FO didn't want Thibs in the first place(the owner signed him) the usual FO mouthpieces in the Chicago media would put out negative things about Thibs which is why we have these narratives now. Popovich played Duncan tons of minutes(including over 40 a night one season) but hey, he knows what he's doing, Thibs playing Butler LESS minutes then Hoiberg and still, it's all about Thibs.

Yeah Rose. But I guess this point I'll concede to you.

Even with Wiggins year this year, someone would have given him the max. Portland screwed OKC over with Kanter, Brooklyn screwed Washington over Porter, it was going to happen. Chicago though is too cheap for that game, they wouldn't trade Asik to strengthen the team for a finals run and then let Asik go after signing a loaded offer with Houston. Chicago is such a frustrating franchise. I think they were making nearly 60 million a year in profits at that time.

Then we still would have had LaVine, in which case in either case it would be a 4 year max not a 5 year max. We would be paying him less. Thats a win.

Butler wants to win and doesn't care where he does it, if the franchise puts winning above "development" I'm sure Butler will stay, if he goes... huge blow for the franchise but it also says the team isn't doing what it could do to win. It's like the mini version of what LeBron does.

Exactly, and this whole franchise was in development mode. I didn't like the trade and that was one of the reasons why.

Still think some rebuilding team would have no problem giving Wiggins the max and letting him be the tank commander and HOPE he finally gets it or being traded wakes him up and pushes his effort level up. It took Oladipo multiple trades to get to that point and he finally got very serious about his offseason training.

Still wouldn't have been a 5 year contract, and we still would have had LaVine.

Did Thibs make Glenn Taylor go to the press and announce I have a max contract waiting for you, come talk to me and sign it!

No but we had no choice but to give Wiggs the max once we traded for Butler, I think I explained that quite well already.

RIght, those young teams should get dramatically better quickly. The NBA isn't that hard to win in, it's easy.

OKC 2009-10, GSW 2012-3, WAS 2013-4, Philly (this year), and I'm sure many others won around 45-50 wins and had poor win count (~29-33) before without veteran superstars like Butler on the team with young talent leading the way on the roster.

Up till the most important player being hurt for 6 weeks, you probably would have ended up with home court advantage in the first round and had a real chance to get to the 2nd round.

And that's the point, if your franchise revolves around a linchpin then it takes one bad move for total collapse - thats not sustainable.

Then other GMs should have pulled the trigger huh? Luckily Thibs kinda knew who Chicago's FO probably liked and how much they liked them and also knowing that Chicago tried to acquire LaVine before Thibs got to Minnesota was key too.

No one had the assets we did. Dunn, LaVine, and #7 from last year, this year would probably get you Kawhi Leonard.

They didn't "blow it up" till 2 seasons after Thibs, actually cost them a lottery pick from Sacramento. Chicago fans were watching that pick for 3 or so years and it turned into 2nd rounders(from the Deng trade).

Obviously checking out what you have in the tank with Butler and seeing if you can build behind him is worth it. I think that decision was pretty sound.

1 team wins a championship each year and regularly a team wins multiple championships in a small amount of time, so very few franchises ever win a championship, all you can really hope for is a real chance and hopefully some exciting basketball to win.

What? NO. Play for the chance to win a ring in timeframe or your whole team is treadmill. No one cares about treadmill teams.

You're hung up on the yelling(a lot of people here are which I get), the question is why is he yelling, is it because he hates someone or that he wants the best for someone and is upset at the effort/play. Once again, I've dealt with it and understand it, most probably haven't and don't.

Fine, I feel like I've beat this horse too much. I don't see eye to eye w/ you on this issue.

What difference does 25 or 35 games won really mean? You're looking for progress at that point and sure, wins can be a measure for progress but it's not the only one.

Wins is the difference. Also a lottery pick range from 4-11. Wins are the only indicator that matters, anything else is BS, you're using to convince yourself of improvement.

Actually it was reported that teams were interested in him, most were just offering 10 day contracts to get him in and look at him closer. Not sure how much Gibson was being overpaid but Chicago traded him because they expected him to make more then 10 million after his contract was up, more then liked ~12 million was a good price for him, Minnesota paid 14 for only 2 years(I'd expect Taj wanted more years, over pay some for a shorter contract.

I think we could have had him for less.

You're right, but yelling can help some players. I'm not sure anything will help Wiggins, I don't see him being very emotional, more of a chill type personality which is great trait to have except in something competitive. A personality like that, you basically get what you get. Seeing what he does against the Cavs makes one wonder why that doesn't happen more often from Wiggins... he does have the ability, he just doesn't have the drive.

Copy paste. Fine, I feel like I've beat this horse too much. I don't see eye to eye w/ you on this issue.

I think its a coaches job to make players act competitive in games, or to drive some change to make that happen, whether its a benching or other.

Same with Butler and a lot of NBA players, but most of those guys are fringe players having to work hard to stay in the league. If you get a high potential player with that type of drive, grab them. Donovan Mitchell seems to be that type of player from what I've heard... but then again you can see the emotion and fire from Mitchel during games. What an incredible pick by Utah.

Sure. The kid is cool.

[vagelis]

In my opinion Thibs likes athletic guards who can drive to the rim. He loves D. Rose, he likes J. Butler and now A. Wiggins. I think that these 3 are his favorite players of his career.
I think that the decision to max Wiggins is Thibs decision. If we remember the previous summer, Taylor wanted to speak with Wiggins before giving him the max. So, maybe he didn't want to do it but he finally did it because Thibs wanted it.
Personally I like Thibs as GM but I think he has to be more calm as a coach. Some players maybe cannot cop with someone yelling on them.
But we have to admit that with him the Wolves made big strides and we lost a series against a great team which has possibilities to win the championsip this year.

[Crazy-Canuck]

If thibs wanted to get rid if wiggins, he would have. Taylor loves rubio, but that didn't stop thibs from getting rid of him anyway.

And all these taylor vetoing Wiggins rumours started from doogie. And lets say doogie has been less than reliable when it comes to the twolves since thibs took over.

[Streakers33]

Not every trade or draft or signing is going to be the perfect.. we have to take the good with the bad.. and hope the good decisions out way the bad ones...that’s actually the balance that wins


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[PharmD]

Yeah, I hate Thibs as much or more than anyone but i'm not sure that it's the right time to fire him. It may be, depending on stuff. Certainly it is the right time to complain about him and that's why Al Gore invented the internet.

If players don't want to play for him and we lose or can't sign guys because of him then we should probably fire him. There was maybe some of this last offseason. But there was some evidence that guys were kinda/sorta willing to play for him.

-Rubio didn't want to play for him

Fair but was it becasue of Thibs the coach or Thibs the GM trying to trade him for a year(it took nearly a whole year to find ONE TEAM to give up a 1st for Rubio, that should actually tell you something about his value to the rest of the league).

-We set out to 'go big buck hunting' after the Jimmy trade, only to fall on our face and end up blowing our cap space on Taj Gibson.

Haven't people on this board here talked about J.Butler being possibly the 2nd best player for this franchise? If not the 2nd best, definitely top 5 and that's falling on your face?

-Taj was willing to play for Thibs again, but wasn't exactly willing to take a discount to do it (certainly got paid significantly more than his market value)

One of the reasons Chicago moved him was because he was making 9 million and expected him to command much more in FA, not really sure how "overpaid" he was.

-Teague was willing to sign
-CJ Miles said we were his first choice (Thibs elected to sigh Taj instead and roll with Crawful/min guys as backup wings)

He didn't pick Crawford over Miles, he picked Crawford for the amount of cap he had available with a premium put on shooting.. and no defense which ultimately made Crawford a bad signing.

-No buyout people were interested in signing despite our terrible bench and a plethora of opportunities

Like who, not the guys who went to Philly, both had recently played for Philly and probably felt comfortable going back to them. Either of those players would have helped Minnesota. Ily and Bel played about 50 minutes a game together for Philly, not sure near that much time was available in Minnesota.

-Reggie Rose was willing to sign with us after being bought out, although we may have been his only offer

It was rumored he had other options even above the minimum but wanted to go back and play with Thibs since he knew he'd be utilized better, he absolutely wasn't utilized correctly in Cleveland. It's really tough to fit in with a LeBron team.

-Crawful opted out and said he's not coming back.

It would be interesting if it were he didn't get enough minutes because... he shouldn't of played as much as he did, I'm not talking about his offense, his defense was the big problem.

We shall have to see. If agents are telling Glen that players aren't interested in playing for Thibs than that's pretty bad. But on the other hand, Thibs has capped us out for the foreseeable future so maybe it doesn't matter too much. But even being able to pick up Marco Belinelli or Corey Brewer-type guys off the junk pile would help this depth-challenged roster incredibly.

You had Kyrie Irving list Minnesota as a destination he wanted to be moved to.

The OWNER took Wiggins off the trade market, cost you more in the Butler trade and probably cost Minnesota the chance to land a PG who showed to be an incredible scorer on the highest stage.

Even if you don't like Teague(I understand if people don't, especially in his role this last year), that was a pretty big signing. Who was the last big FA that decided to sign in Minnesota before Teague?

AirP brah, you misunderstood almost every sentence that you responded to.

For example: I said

"CJ Miles said we were his first choice (Thibs elected to sigh Taj instead and roll with Crawful/min guys as backup wings)"

And you said

"He didn't pick Crawford over Miles, he picked Crawford for the amount of cap he had available with a premium put on shooting.."

Yes, i know this. Thibs chose to give the money that could have been used on wing depth and shooting to sign a crony that played a position that was already overcrowded, and then elected to use the MLE/min contracts to fill out the wing rotation. That was a terrible decision but not really the overall point of my post.

I said:

-We set out to 'go big buck hunting' after the Jimmy trade, only to fall on our face and end up blowing our cap space on Taj Gibson.

You responded:

Haven't people on this board here talked about J.Butler being possibly the 2nd best player for this franchise? If not the 2nd best, definitely top 5 and that's falling on your face?

Maybe you weren't following the wolves back then but 'big buck hunting' was from the period right after we traded for Butler. Butler and Thibs were going to go recruit some stars into our plentiful cap space ("players better than me", Jimmy said). It was an exciting time. But we basically faceplanted and ended up using the cap space to downgrade from Rubio to Teague and sign Taj Gibson. Those guys are not better than Jimmy.

[PharmD]

I can see how a military person would enjoy Thibs. That type of shout-ey leadership style is more suited to the military where you have to do a lot more 'coordination by subordination' than you do in really any other field. It hurts creativity and discourages people from acting on their own initiative but that's a plus in the military and a negative in every other field (where if we have a job that can be done by blindly follow orders we'd just have a robot doing it).

[AirP.]

I can see how a military person would enjoy Thibs. That type of shout-ey leadership style is more suited to the military where you have to do a lot more 'coordination by subordination' than you do in really any other field. It hurts creativity and discourages people from acting on their own initiative but that's a plus in the military and a negative in every other field (where if we have a job that can be done by blindly follow orders we'd just have a robot doing it).

There's a lot of yelling in most competitive team sports, Thibs being loud during games does makes him stick out. Yelling is sometimes the only thing that helps you get through to players who have adrenaline pumping through their veins, it's not personal and most people in those situations understand that. Sure, normal jobs it may not be needed but when you're hyped up(or should be) you sometimes have to go to a higher level to get through to people.

I think you might be surprised how many coaches and how often they yell at players during games, some are just louder than others. Popovich seems to be the standard people like to point to but he can get quite loud, angry and nasty at his player's play but they understand where that's coming from. The only thing that makes Thibs unique is that he does it all game, but you need to ask yourself why, does he hate his players or is he trying to help?