Timberwolves fire head coach Randy Wittman

The Minnesota Timberwolves hired Randy Wittman to instill toughness and discipline in their team.  Unfortunately, it didn’t work as evidenced by their 4-15 record.  On Monday, Wittman was fired by owner Glen Taylor.  Wittman’s replacement is a familiar face to all basketball fans—former Boston Celtics great Kevin McHale. 

The decision was reportedly made by Taylor last week, but wanted McHale to agree to become his new head coach before he pulled the trigger.  Reports also suggest that McHale was essentially given a “my way or the highway” proposition where he’d give up his duties as the team’s VP of Basketball operations and become head coach or leave the organization entirely.  Prior to the change, McHale had ‘veto power’ over all personnel decisions but that’s no longer the case. Taylor did give McHale some time to mull it over and once he’d made his decision he swung the hammer.

Among other things, Taylor wanted McHale’s assurances that he’d not approach the assignment with the mindset that he was an “interim” coach:

"There are a few people in this league who have taken on roles where they've been coaches and general managers, but I think that's a very difficult thing. I just want it to be very clear when I said to Kevin that I am offering him the coaching job, that this is a full-time coaching job. He is to concentrate on it 100 percent. That's the commitment he gave me and I'm confident that's what's best for this team."

Though the decision to fire Wittman had already been made, McHale described Minnesota’s 23 point home loss to the Clippers on Saturday as something of a “last straw” calling the result and the effort that produced it “unacceptable”:

"It just looks like the guys are very beaten down. They've only played 19 games this season. They have 63 games left. It's no time to be beaten down. There's still time to rally and get going."

McHale didn’t have a stellar track record on his personnel moves, but none will haunt him more than the draft day deal that brought Randy Foye to Minneapolis and sent Brandon Roy to Portland.  Foye has shown considerable promise and will very likely blossom into a decent player, possibly an All Star.  Problem is that Roy has already become a superstar in only his third season and looks every bit like a future Hall of Famer.  It might not end up being as bad as Portland’s infamous decision to take center Sam Bowie with their #2 pick in the 1984 NBA draft instead of a talented shooting guard whom you might have heard of named Michael Jordan, but the potential is there. 

McHale insisted that he didn’t view his removal from the executive org chart as a demotion:

"We'll all talk and go over decisions and everything else. It's just that, with the full-time coaching, it's just hard to assume both mantles on that. For me, I'm going to jump in with both feet on this."

The Timberwolves players expressed cautious optimism at the move.  Forward Mark Madsen gave his take on McHale’s reassignment:

"Sometimes you just need a change Obviously Glen Taylor felt that very strongly. And so I buy into that now.

"Hopefully with that change we can rejuvenate, we can win some basketball games and we can take everything that coach Wittman taught us and apply it. And we can take something new from Kevin McHale and apply that."

McHale concluded by reaffirming that the team’s in-game performance is now his full responsibility:

"If this doesn't work, it'll be on me. The thing I told Glen is that nothing changes with the plan. The plan stays the same. We have a lot of cap room in the future. We have multiple [draft] picks. Nothing's going to change. The only change is that I'm going to spending all my time coaching."