Well, it’s all over. This 20th anniversary season ended tonight with a 97-90 loss to putrid Sacramento, but here are two things every regular on this blog should be thrilled with:

* The loss and Memphis’ win means the two teams tie for the fifth-worst record and a blind draw will decide who’s slotted fifth and who’s slotted, who gets a 7.6 percent chance and who gets a 7.5 percent chance in the draft lottery at the No. 1 pick in the June draft.

* Glen Taylor told my colleague Sid Hartman that the man he hires to replace Kevin McHale in the front office can choose his own coach if he wants, even if Mac the Coach wants to return to the bench. That would answer the befuddling question of why you’d decide upon a coach before you pick your front-office boss.

http://www.startribune.com/sports/wolves/43073597.html

After the game, McHale again refused to answer questions about his professional future and, according to Kevin Love, he told his players little in the locker room, other than he would call them when he was decided about his future.

My best guess at this point: By mid-May, you’ll have a new VP of basketball ops (or maybe he’ll simply be called GM) and Mac will be headed to the lake and the golf course when he isn’t doing some TV work somewhere.  If they’re going to make this move by well before the draft, it’s probably going to have to be an assistant somewhere because it’d be awfully hard to get another NBA team to allow its main decision maker to move before the draft (plus, it’d be hard to sell someone who already has a top job on coming to Minnesota and this franchise).

I’ll also wager it’s a meticulous research-oriented, numbers-geek type. Taylor mentioned to me not too long ago how the other NBA teams whose front offices he studied value different things and he seemed intrigued by those that put emphasis on stats and data crunching.

Someone on here mentioned Houston asst GM Sam Hinkie. If not him, then someone like him.

He’s the kind of guy who’d be about as far away from Hall of Fame player Mac as you can get. Here’s a look at the new-school kind of exec in the league:

http://newsok.com/article/3232747

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 3:22 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.