Rebuilding a Franchise
Posted by GreekHouse on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 8:11 pm
I still remember when it hit me. I was sitting at my computer last season, looking at the Twolves payroll on hoopeshype.com and getting depressed over how terrible it looked. I had a revelation. It was one of those moments of total clarity. The Wolves will never win a championship with Garnett. It was a tough thing to accept and maybe that's why it took me so long. Once it happened, I was surprised it didn't occur to me sooner.
So why couldn't we win a championship with him? Simply put, the Wolves would never be able to get enough talent around him. They had a few good young players, but they were also laden with terrible contracts. Some of our young players could develop into potential all-stars, but it wasn't going to happen in time. Because of all the terrible contracts the Wolves had, there was really no hope of signing a good free agent either. By the time our young players were ready and we had some money for free agents, KG would be in the decline of his career. In the meantime, he will have wasted years of his prime on a team that never had a chance.
Once it became obvious that we couldn't win a championship with Garnett, there was only one thing we could do. We needed to trade him. Because he's one of the top players in the game we should be able to get a lot for him. The longer we wait, the less we'd be able to get. Plus, it would be in KG's best interests if we could move him to a contender. Although it might be a depressing though, it was the best option for both KG and the Timberwolves.
I figured that any trade would have to do at least 2 of the following 3 things:
- Bring in a young player who is already on his way to being a superstar in the league
- Get one or more draft picks
- Get rid of some of our bad contracts
Of the 3 things listed above, the third was obviously going to be the hardest to do. Since Garnett has a huge contract, it would be very hard to move any of our other contracts along with him. So really I thought we should at least get the top 2 things on the list. People like Al Jefferson, Ben Gordon or Andrew Bynum were all reasonable prospects.
The summer was almost over and the Wolves still hadn't traded Garnett. I had heard all sorts of rumors about potential trades, but I was starting to worry that McHale wasn't going to get it done. I thought that maybe he was just somehow hoping that all of our young players would magically develop into all-stars over night.
Then it finally happened. The Wolves completed the largest single player trade in NBA history. I looked at the deal and was quite happy. We got a future franchise player in Al Jefferson, 2 future first round draft picks and a bunch of young players who could still make a name for themselves. On top of that, we got Ratliff's enormous contract which expires at the end of the season. It's not quite the same as unloading Jaric's albatross contract, but it was good enough.
The reaction from Minnesotans was quite negative. It was a little disappointing to hear, but not surprising. KG has basically been everything you could ever want in a superstar and now we're trading him for a guy that most casual NBA fans probably haven't even heard of and some spare change.
In reality though, it was a very good trade. It was good because we got everything we needed from the trade and not trading him was a worse option. Yes, it's painful to lose KG, but it would be even more painful to sit through another season like the last one. KG would slowly age while our team doesn't have the players to compete. Eventually we would have had to trade him (or wait until he retires or we lose him to free agency), at that point, we will basically have to start from scratch. Essentially, we would be delaying the inevitable.
I think many people expected us to trade him for someone like LBJ or somebody else who is already an established superstar, but here was basically no way that would have happened. Trading for a young (but comparable) superstar would have been a bad deal for the other team since they would have basically been trading for a player of the same value but who is older. If we trade for another superstar who's closer to KG's age, then we would basically be in the same situation, but with a different player.
The fact that we were able to get someone who seems like a lock to be a superstar is fantastic. Along with that we got two draft picks and a handful of other young talent. The other young guys may or may not pan out to be decent NBA players, but now is a good time to take a risk on them.
Since the trade, McHale has made several good moves to keep the Wolves going in the right direction. The key idea for them is to try and prep the way for the future and get rid of anything that might get in the way. Ricky Davis was certainly not going to help us, so getting rid of him was a benefit to the team. Same thing with Blount. In the meantime, we pick up a contract with only two years left on it (Walker will be gone by the time the Wolves are ready to compete again), so we basically get rid of a bad three year contract for a bad two year contract while picking up another draft pick. Juwan Howard wasn't going to be too useful to us, so cutting him gives more playing time for our young players to play and avoids having to cut one of them. Then last night, we signed Jefferson to a 5-year/$65 million contract. This was an excellent dea as the price seems reasonable for someone who should put up 20/10 for the next 5 years.
The main problem with the Wolves right now is that McHale is still their GM. While he's done a good job this off-season, this is the easy part of rebuilding. I'm worried about how he will handle things in the future when the Wolves will start looking to add some veteran talent to the roster. Unfortunately, McHale has shown repeatedly that he has no idea how to take a good team and turn them into a championship contender.
Right now, all the deals are easy and no pressure. There isn't really anything he has to do. Getting rid of Davis and Blount was nice but non-essential. McHale could basically sit back and wait for a better deal if he wants. When the Wolves want to "get good" again, he will not have this luxury. He will need to act quickly and decisively and not cave to pressure. The Cassell for Jaric deal seems to me the most egregious case of him doing this. The whole league knew that we were desperate to get rid of Cassell and it seems as though McHale just panicked and took whatever trade was available. This will not fly if we want to ever build a contender. If continues to do this, the Wolves could basically end up being a sub-30 win team for the next decade again. If the Wolves replace him with a talented GM, the Wolves could have a championship contender in the a few years.
Loading ...
Nice write-up. Are we going to see a season preview? I keep hearing these guys are bound for tough times, but if Jefferson is as good as advertised, shouldn't this squad be at least as good as the last two years? 32-33 wins?
I don't think I'll have a chance to do a season preview before the season actually starts. We are going to suck, that's for sure. Jefferson is good, but he's not as good as KG. Foye is also out indefinitely.
The point of the season for me is not going to be how many games they win, but to watch the young players develop. It doesn't really matter if we win 32 games like you said, or 17 like Sports Guy said. We're not making the playoffs in either case. We should be worse than last season when we only won 32 games. I would guess more than 20 though. It's really pretty hard to win fewer than that in the NBA.
The one thing we don't want is winning too much.
Is Jimmy Rodgers available? Tanks for the memories...
The Wolves most pressing need is a PG. Foye is a 2.
Yeah, but this is the kind of thing they can worry about later. For the time being, they should just try to get as much young talent at whatever positions they can find and then fill in the gaps later.
For the time being, they should just try to get as much young talent at whatever positions they can find and then fill in the gaps later.
I think it's interesting that that's the strategy that basically every major league baseball team has when they draft.
I see no reason not to just try and get the most talented players. If the wolves end up with two dominant C/PF, they can be like the Spurs of the late 90s when they had Duncan/Robinson. If they find that they're really hurting at some other position, they can always try to make a trade.
It seems pointless to me to draft a PG just because they need one if there is a clearly more talented player at some other position. Right now they have holes at basically every position that need filling and it never hurts to add depth.
In the draft, you guys are absolutely right. But if we're without a PG as the season starts, and we have to play Foye out of position for long stretches of time, that's probably not good either.
I think E-6 may have been alluding to acquiring a serviceable PG via trade or off the scrap heap, eventually.
What makes you think that McHale was behind the most recent moves? All the evidence would say that someone else was responsible for them.
That front office has more people in it than there are players on the roster.
It could be. I'm certainly not in a position to know who is pulling the strings right now. Whoever is doing it is doing a fine job though.
Nice. My sentiments exactly. I'm actually looking more forward to this season than the last two. Jefferson and Cory Brewer is a nice nucleus to build around. McCants and Foye are decent scorers. Hopefully a 1 guard can be picked up for next year. This should be a fun squad to watch grow up.
I think this gives McHale the wiggle room to walk away. I suspect this will be his final season - in fact I bet there's a greater than 70% chance he exits before season's end. One might say, despite the ugliness in the middle, he will have left the Wolves better off than when he became GM. At least the sheet is clean enough for someone else to succeed.
I by no means think McHale is great, but twice in 10 years he assembled a roster capable of winning a championship. Even though the Cassell/Spreewell affair was done out of desparation, it did for a short window, give the Wolves a chance at the ultimate goal and surrounded Garnett with the right talent to maximize his considerable skills.
One last thing - I think at some point in the future McHale will be vindicated for firing Flip, who will soon be relieved of his coaching duties in Detroit.
I hope you're right about McHale. It would certainly look bad for him if he left immediately after trading the franchise's best player. If he leaves after the season, then it does save some face for him.
McHale did a great job of drafting Garnett and I liked the move to bring in Spree and Cassell. Unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot else that I've liked from him. I feel like he really should have been able to build a team that was a perenial powerhouse. I'd compare his performance to an expert chess player playing grandmaster. The expert may not make any huge blunders, but he will make a series of moves that weaken his position. Even though most of these moves aren't terrible, the cumulation of them adds up to disaster. This is basically what McHale did to the team. Over time, he slowly weakened the organization so that the Wolves couldn't even make the playoffs despite having Garnett.
-The Joe Smith debacle (and subsequent loss of 1st round picks)
-Finally getting a first round pick and blowing it on Endi Ebi (or whatever that f*ckers name was) when Josh Howard was still on the board.
I'd call these huge blunders before I called 'em chess moves.
Ndudi Ebi. A pick that will live on in infamy.
Well, he certainly made his share of blunders too. I wouldn't say the Ndudi pick was a huge blunder, making a bad first round pick happens to a lot of GMs. It's certainly not as bad as when the Pistons took Darko in the first round. I thought it was a terrible move at the time since they were already competetive and needed a player not a project.
I think the wolves could have survived any of these blunders (except perhaps the Joe Smith one) in isolation. It's the cumulation of poor moves that really hurt.
Darko was an enormous blunder (Anthony and Wade still on the board, fer chrissakes). So Dude-E wasn't that big of a blunder, but I think McHale was arrogant with that pick. He didn't think he needed a contributor -- his team was so good that he could pick a project. Then, he picked a total, complete bust. If he had gone with the sure pick there, we'd have had a player that could have contributed.
Given the situation, McHale was the only person other than Taylor who could have traded Garnett. From a PR perspective and to be fair to his successor it was really the only choice. It looks like on paper it worked out fine, but it should have been done two years earlier.
It was the right thing for him (McHale) to do - to take the dagger for ridding the organization of its most valuable asset. It's only my opinion, but treating Garnett as the centerpiece, rather than viewing him in his true role as "Pippen" excacerbated the problem of trying to build around him.
I think Saunders needs to bear more blame for not making more adjustments to his philosphies. Surely, if he's such a coaching genious, he should have found a way to get them past the first round more than one time. They should have had a 3 year mini-run with Casell and Spreewell - and some of that is on Garnett for not taking a more public frontal stand against their behavior. With stronger leadership he might have held it together - but of course as we've all been told, that's not Kevin's way..
I also wonder how much a powerhouse they could have been with any combination of players given that Garnett's prime years here overlapped with the Shaq/Kobe run in LA and Duncan and Co. in San Antonio
Is Jefferson our center? Who's at center? Ratliff and Doleac? I know they've been pretty thin at that spot recently, and we lost Blount. No 7 footers on the roster, I not
I think we might have 3 or 4 positions of need... not counting the bench... or the front office...
The early word is that Ratliff is healthy again, and playing a lot like he did when he was a perennial All-Defensive Team performer. What was initially thought of as just an expiring contract has quietly become our starting center. Doleac is a stiff.
Doleac is a stiff.
With an expiring contract.
Impressive outing last night for the Rockets. Utah destroys GS in Oakland the night before and Rockets travel to Utah and drill the Jazz behind 47 from T-Mac. Mike James sighting! 15 points and 7 assists off the bench.
I have both T-Mac and Boozer on my fantasy team. That game made me very happy.
Rather candid, two-part interview with Glen Taylor from the PiPress. He throws some stones (including a couple at KG) and blows some kisses (at McHale and Wittman.).
More than a couple of stones at KG. Basically, according to Taylor, KG was the problem.
Yeah, I guess it was more than a couple. I found the spin he was trying to put the situation rather graceless, to say the least.
This seems like a rather huge flaw to have in a GM. It seems like he's managing the team the way I manage my fantasy basketball teams. I basically just look at players and say "Hey, that guy looks good and I need assists, I'll get him". This is fine for managing fantasy teams, but he's running an actual basketball team in that way. If you do that against other professionals, you're going to get destroyed.
He also talks a lot about the possibility of hiring Hoiberg as a GM. I don't understand why people would ever want to hire a professional player as a GM. Playing basketball and being a GM are two completely different skills. It makes about as much sense as hiring an ex-player to design and build a new stadium for the Twins.
Well, some ex-players are good general managers *cough* Jerry West *cough*. But, for every Jerry West, there's an Elgin Baylor, Michael Jordan, Mitch Kupchak, Kevin McHale, etc.
The General Manager, in addition to all the business stuff, needs to be a dispassionate talent evaluator. And that is not something that a lot of players possess.
Yeah, and let's not forget about that guy from New York!
Of course I'm not saying that the two skills are exclusive. I'm saying they're independent skills. If I were hiring a new GM for the Timberwolves, I would not start by looking at ex-players.
Even though I'm sure I might be struck dead for saying it, I'm not that big of a fan of Larry Bird in a management role.
Do the Wolves still have Bracey Wright?
No, I believe he is playing in Europe now.
Greece, according to Wikipedia
Dude has his own official site too: http://www.braceywright.net/
That's pretty good for a D-Leaguer. Hasn't been updated in awhile, though.
Actually, it's an "Offical" site, according to the page title. That would be awfully clever typo if it was indeed a non-official site.
When I was a small lad, we went to a Pacers game at Market Square Arena versus the new Wizards (this game I believe) and when Calbert Cheaney was introduced during the starting lineups the applause was...respectfully thunderous, I would say. He got a really loud cheer, but not quite as loud as any of the Pacers as the crowd was careful not to cheer louder for the opponent than the home town team. Going to IU will get you that applause for life in Indiana. I was at this game versus the T'Wolves. Bracey Wright came off the bench, and there wasn't an announcement over the PA, but people still caught on and he got a warm reception. Not quite like Cheaney's, but still nice.