Yesterday brought about one change folks have been clamoring for quite passionately lately: Randy Wittman was fired. The person folks have been complaining about for much longer — Kevin McHale — stays in the organization to take over for Wittman but is stripped of his VP duties (at least in theory). Here are some leftover thoughts and questions from the day, as we prepare to watch McHale’s 2008-09 coaching debut tonight against the Jazz, who employ a coach that has been with Utah exactly 20 years. [By the way, one unnamed person, upon hearing the news, summed it up by saying, “So they fired Dracula but kept Frankenstein?”]

1. Wittman got what he deserved. You could see it in the body language of players. You could hear it whenever Wittman talked about a loss. This train went off the tracks fast and early. The preseason and first 19 games of this season were like Lindsay Lohan’s career. Excitement and promise faded to ranting, hand-wringing and car wrecks (figurative in one case, literal in another). Now it’s time for some rehab.

2. What is McHale’s motivation to stay? We had this discussion yesterday with Rocket, who can’t figure out why McHale even wants to keep any sort of job with this team, given he’s being stripped of power and is generally despised by the fan base. We can see it one of two ways. One, he still has a deep pride (he is one of us, after all) and doesn’t want to leave this job being deemed a failure, and therefore is willing to roll up his sleeves to work in the trenches. Or two, owner Glen Taylor is punishing him and basically said no moves will be made unless it is the precise move that is made, and he is going to clean house at the end of the year. The past 13 years, and the relationship between Taylor and McHale, make us think there is at least a strong hint of the former in this move. Reusse was dead-on: in the absence of any other capable bosses, McHale still looks like the boss even though he had his title taken away.

3. That said, what can we expect from McHale the coach? Statistically, McHale is the best coach in Wolves history. That’s right, his 19-12 mark (.613) in 2005 after unceremoniously dumping Flip Saunders in midseason the year after the team went to the Western Conference finals means McHale is the best in team history. Someone call Forbes! But seriously, if there is a strange light in all this it’s that McHale as a coach does seem more consistently competent than McHale the VP. (Of course, Matt Millen was better at nuclear physics than he was at running a team, so all of this is relative.). At the very least, he should command more respect than Wittman and will be a new voice. Kevin Love should benefit from having him around. He’s a Hall of Fame player, so he should be good with X’s and O’s. There could be some good to come out of this.

4. What impact does this have on the casual fan? Some will be energized by the modest shakeup. A few we’ve talked to are even intrigued by the prospect of McHale as coach. A pretty sizable number, though, are waiting for the other shoe to drop (McHale being ousted) before they feel like much has been accomplished.

5. What happens at the end of the year? McHale restores a modicum of respectability to the team, guiding them to something like 25-28 total wins by going something reasonable like 23-40 in his games as coach. At that point, if Taylor wants to invigorate his base, he will clean house. There are a bunch of No. 1 picks to be made, and a whole closet full of basketball fans eager to be excited by some fresh blood making those choices and coaching those players. The names Flip Saunders and Sam Mitchell are tossed around these days because they are available, familiar and, to a large degree, pretty good at what they do. But we worry that they are also a link to the old guard — of an old boys’ network in charge and of a team that, even at its absolute best, peaked with one nice playoff run that ended before the NBA finals. Taylor could do much worse than to hire Flip as coach/GM, or to try to coax Flip into running the team and Mitchell — who is still being paid by Toronto — to coach it. The best move might just be to start over from scratch with a whole new group in charge. We’re not sure if Taylor has reached the point where he would do that. Time — and the rest of this season — will tell.

Fasola-link! The Madrid Metro.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 9:33 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.