- The Timberwolves signed Andre Miller, Kevin Garnett and Tayshaun Prince last summer in part to provide veteran assistance for their young core, but Miller nonetheless criticized the Wolves last week on a podcast with The Vertical’s Chris Mannix for relying too heavily on their young players, notes Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune. Miller bought his way out of Minnesota and signed earlier this month with the Spurs. “There was no way I was going to stay in Minnesota on a team that never had any goals, from what I thought,” Miller said. “I didn’t want to sit there and let this be my last year. There were no expectations in Minnesota with that team and which way they wanted to go. It wasn’t communicated, so I was like, ‘If this is my last year, I can’t go out like this.’ ”
The Timberwolves will need to make a tough decision this summer regarding whether or not interim coach Sam Mitchell will remain in the position going forward. Mitchell had the difficult task of taking over the reigns after the tragic passing of Flip Saunders, and the team has gone 25-49 under his command this season. Team owner Glen Taylor will be the one to make the call on whether or not Mitchell leads the team in 2016/17, and he has indicated that he’ll evaluate both Mitchell and GM Milt Newton to determine the employment status of each. When asked directly if both Mitchell and Newton would be retained, Taylor was non-committal, saying, “I like my coach, I like my general manager, they’re really nice people,” Taylor said. “We’re working together. What I told them is in this business of basketball, we’re going to do the whole season first and then at the end of the season we’ll do the evaluation.” While that may not have been the strongest endorsement, Taylor’s comments certainly allow for the possibility that Mitchell could stick around in Minnesota. More recent comments from Taylor have lent credence to the idea that Newton will remain in his job through the summer, at least.
This brings me to the topic for today: Should the Wolves retain Sam Mitchell as head coach for next season?
Minnesota, while not expected to be a playoff contender heading into the 2015/16 campaign, hasn’t taken as much of a step forward as many would have liked this year. The team has already eclipsed its woeful 16 wins of a season ago, but given the amount of young talent the franchise has, struggling to get to 30 victories cannot be considered a successful run in my book. To be fair, Mitchell took on the daunting task of keeping the team together and focused after Saunders’ death and certainly deserves praise for how well he has managed that difficult dynamic. But questions have emerged about his rotation patterns and how well he has developed some of his younger players, which should be the primary consideration when the team chooses its next coach.
So now I turn the discussion over to all of you. Is Mitchell the right man to entrust with the future of the team and budding star Karl-Anthony Towns? What do you think about the job the coach has done this season? If you don’t think Mitchell should be retained, share with us whom you think the Timberwolves should pursue this offseason in his stead. Take to the comments section to share your thoughts and opinions. We look forward to what you have to say.
- When the Jazz traded two draft picks to the Wolves in exchange for the rights to Trey Burke, the team thought it was a coup, but nearly three years later it would appear Minnesota came out on top in that transaction, Mike Sorensen of The Deseret News writes. Both players Minnesota acquired (Gorgui Dieng and Shabazz Muhammad) have been productive, while Burke is stuck in a reserve role despite the run of backcourt injuries Utah has endured this season, Sorensen notes. Burke admits he wonders what his career would be like if he had gone to the Wolves, the scribe adds. “I think about it every time I play against them — it motivates me,” Burke said. “That’s one of the teams I play really well against. It’s just motivation, that’s how it’s been my whole life, the underdog who’s overlooked.”
Paul Pierce‘s decision on whether to retire after the season may be tied to what Timberwolves power forward Kevin Garnett chooses to do, Mark Murphy of the Boston Herald reports. The former Celtics teammates text each other at least once a week and have frequently considered the possibility of retiring at the same time, Murphy continues. But the Clippers’ veteran small forward admits that he has no idea what Garnett has in mind, Murphy adds. “I never know what KG is going to do, because he said he was going to retire four or five years ago,” Pierce said. “Every year he says he’s done, and every year he keeps coming back. It would be great.”
- Ricky Rubio acknowledged that the Timberwolves had trade talks about him last month, but he’s confident the team isn’t going to ship him out, as he said in an appearance on the “Tot Gira” show on Catalunya Radio in Spain (transcription via Gigantes del Basket; translation via HoopsHype). Rubio, under contract through the 2018/19 season, was linked in trade deadline rumors to the Bucks and, less prominently, the Knicks.
Timberwolves GM Milt Newton will be in charge of the draft and free agency for the team this summer, owner Glen Taylor said today on “The Chad Hartman Show” on WCCO-AM, according to Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities (Twitter links). Newton hadn’t previously been assured of remaining the team’s top basketball executive beyond this season after inheriting the role this past fall upon the death of president of basketball operations Flip Saunders. Taylor also said that it’s unlikely he’ll complete a deal with Grizzlies part-owner Steve Kaplan, who was to purchase a 30% share of the Wolves and perhaps eventually succeed Taylor as controlling owner. Kaplan, who’d have to sell his stake in the Grizzlies to buy into the Wolves, has reportedly met resistance from primary Grizzlies owner Robert Pera.
Newton and coach Sam Mitchell have essentially been on one-season trials since Saunders’ death, as Jon Krawczynski of The Associated Press noted in a recent interview with Hoops Rumors. The fate of Mitchell’s job remains undecided, but it appears Newton is safe for now. Minnesota has had a largely quiet season on the personnel front outside of buyouts with Anthony Bennett, Kevin Martin and Andre Miller. The team didn’t make a trade. The offseason ahead figures to be pivotal, however. Minnesota, which has the last two No. 1 overall picks on its roster, is in line for another top-five selection, as our Reverse Standings show.
How much say Kaplan would have had about whether to retain Newton and Mitchell was one of the issues that he and Taylor were sorting through as they tried to finalize a deal on the ownership share, but Taylor had been preparing to make those decisions on his own as of earlier this month, as Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune wrote then. Taylor, 74, has said that he won’t sell the team to anyone who’d move it out of Minnesota, and it appeared as though Kaplan was on board with the franchise staying put, so the dissolution of their negotiations throws the franchise’s long-term future into some doubt. Taylor said it looks like it’ll take years for Kaplan to resolve his situation in Memphis, as Wolfson notes.
- The Timberwolves are taking a similar approach to how the Thunder built their roster through the draft in order to become a Western Conference power, Tim Bontemps of The Washington Post observes. The franchise’s collection of young talent and potential top five pick in this year’s NBA draft have Minnesota primed to become a force in the near future, Bontemps opines. The scribe also predicts that interim coach Sam Mitchell will retain the job for next season, pointing to his closeness to the late Flip Saunders as well as his rapport with veteran Kevin Garnett.
WEDNESDAY, 11:14am: The signing is official, the team announced (Twitter link). Minnesota’s press release also confirms that Smith’s second 10-day signing took place on March 12th, not March 13th.
TUESDAY, 12:12pm: The Timberwolves will sign Greg Smith for the rest of the season, reports Jon Krawczynski of The Associated Press (Twitter link). The big man previously signed a pair of 10-day contracts with Minnesota. His second 10-day deal expired overnight, according to Krawczynski, and that jibes with the information on the RealGM transactions log, which shows Smith as having signed the pact March 12th. The team didn’t give a formal announcement until March 13th, making it seem as though today, and not Monday, is the final day of the contract. Regardless, it appears Smith will be sticking around as Minnesota’s 14th player.
Smith has averaged 10.3 minutes per game across nine appearances with the Wolves so far, though he hasn’t had much of a role in the team’s offense, averaging just 2.3 points per contest. His size has come in handy as fellow big men Kevin Garnett and Nikola Pekovic deal with knee and Achilles tendon injuries, respectively.
Keeping Smith still leaves Minnesota with an open roster spot, one of two the Wolves reaped through buyouts with Kevin Martin and Andre Miller. A minimum-salary contract for Smith would cost the Wolves no more than $128,161 if it doesn’t carry into next season. Even on top of the $111,444 total for the two 10-day contracts, it’s still much less than the $609,083 the team saved in the buyouts.
Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor sees a number of similarities with his current roster and the team he inherited upon purchasing the franchise in 1995, Sid Hartman of The Star Tribune relays. “I just think when we first bought it, we had a franchise that was pretty down and hadn’t done very well,” Taylor said. “We put a plan to get some young guys in here. That’s when we went out and took a gamble on KG [Kevin Garnett] and Stephon Marbury and our goal was to build for the long run and get a better team. We did that. It took us a while to get a championship team. In one sense we’re sort of like that again. We have a lot of young guys and we have to be patient, and I’m hopeful we’ll have a chance for the championship again, just like we did during those earlier years. So I’d say we’re similar.”
Nuggets center Jusuf Nurkic is trying to pick up the pieces of an injury-plagued second season in the NBA, writes Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post. After earning second-team all-rookie honors in 2014/15, Nurkic has seen his playing time and effectiveness limited by an aching left knee. He had surgery during the offseason to repair a partially torn patellar tendon, but the knee hasn’t responded the way he hoped it would. He is averaging 6.8 points and 4.8 rebounds in just 23 games. “I can’t control this stuff,” Nurkic said. “When I hear my name I go in. I haven’t heard it a lot this season for some reason, but I will be a professional until the end and try to finish the season the right way.” In October, Denver picked up his option for 2016/17 at $1,921,320. He also has a team option for 2017/18 at $2,947,305.
There’s more news today out of Denver:
- Both Emmanuel Mudiay and Nikola Jokic have strong cases to be first-team choices on this season’s all-rookie team, Dempsey contends in a separate story. Mudiay, the seventh player selected in the 2015 draft, leads NBA rookies in assists with 5.7 per game and is fourth in scoring average at 12.3 points per night. His main competition for first-team honors in the backcourt will come from the Lakers’ D’Angelo Russell and the Suns’ Devin Booker, Dempsey believes. Jokic was a second-round pick in 2014 who played in the Adriatic and Serbian leagues before coming to the NBA. He ranks second among rookies behind the Wolves’ Karl-Anthony Towns in player efficiency rating and is fourth in rebounding and eighth in scoring.
- The Nuggets don’t know if Danilo Gallinari will play again this season, but the injured small forward plans to be part of the Italian team in the Summer Olympics, according to Marco “Barzo” Barzizza of Eurosport [hat tip to Emiliano Carchia of Sportando]. Gallinari suffered two torn ligaments in his right ankle during a late February game. The injury was expected to keep him out of action for about a month, but the Nuggets may shut him down for the season even if he does recover. “I don’t know if I’ll be back before the end of the season,” Gallinari said. “I am very happy to be in Denver and before thinking about new teams I hope to win something here and to play for the Denver Nuggets for many years.”