Tom Thibodeau was fired and he has been replaced with Ryan Saunders. I have been a Timberwolves season ticket holder for 30 years now. I am one of under 200 individuals who can say that. I have seen an awful, awful lot of bad things and terrible basketball. I have seen many people come and go. With that perspective, my thoughts on the Thibs Era:
The Good
1) Thank you Thibs for the one playoff appearance. The Wolves had not reached the playoffs since 2004. They managed to win game 82 against Denver and make the playoffs. I went out to a bar and bought random people drinks after Game 82. Why? Did I view this as a step to an NBA title? No.
I viewed the playoff appearance as a way to avoid the laughingstock label that has plagued this franchise for so long. (I will note here that the people I know on the non-basketball side are excellent at their jobs, but the on-court product they sell is the worst in the history of professional sports, at least last I looked at winning percentages - it is possible that the new Browns are worse.) When you see the graphic go up, "Have not made the playoffs since George W. Bush's first term" you cringe.
So, thanks Thibs. That was worthwhile.
2) Thibs was a pretty good evaluator of talent. Look, he knew Butler was good, and Butler was very good for us (on the court). He knew that Jeff Teague was an above average PG who had gas left in the tank. Same with Taj Gibson (old, but still good). He drafted Okogie, who has been good for a low #1. He drafted Bates-Diop, who has been good in the G League for a mid-low #2. He acquired Tolliver, who (when played, see below) has been a worthwhile player.
He dumped Kris Dunn and LaVine and passed on Markkanen. Sure he had missed on his odd love of Dunn originally (passing over Jamal Murray and Buddy Hield - who both were better players and filled a huge need). But if you could say you would have one really good year of Butler and then get Saric and Coveington and not have signed LaVine to an $80M deal, I'd take that deal any day.
3 Thibs has a concept of what he wants to do, and he does it. There is some benefit to this. I mean, Kurt Rambis's players would say "We hate having to run the Triangle Offense" and he'd respond, "85% of what we run isn't the Triangle Offense." OK, so that is WORSE! Your players do not even know what they are being asked to do. Thibs' players at least knew what they were being asked to do, and, quite frankly, they were often pretty good at it. For example, while the Wolves ran a caveman style offense, they were in the upper echelon of the league in Offensive Rating. This would be like an NFL team running th ball 75% of the time in today's game and still scoring 24 points a game. Odd, illogical, but I guess it works.
The Bad
4. Thibs' defense, his alleged calling card, never worked. Whether it was (as most believed) because it was horrifically outdated, or whether it was (as Thibs believed) that his players were too bad or dumb to figure it out, what does it really matter? When you run a scheme that makes you a bottom 20% defense (sometimes worse), how do you just blindly stick with it? If you were teaching someone math, and they had the same blank stare at you for 2 years, would you show up every day and continue to use the same exact teaching method? One would hope not.
This, of course, goes to Thibs' personality -- when something is wrong, it cannot be his fault. "I know this defense works. It worked in 2008 and 2011. It works still today." Well, here is an example of actual coaching -- I coached an 8th grade B team for my daughter. We were pretty bad. We started like 3-8. So I had a sitdown with the girls and I said, "Look, what do you LIKE about what we do and what do you NOT like about what we do?" Got input, heard things about how we could do better. Where it made sense, I added more stuff they liked and reduced the stuff they didn't like. Ended 15-15. That is the sort of stuff you need to do. Thibs was completely unable and unwilling to adjust his defense to his players or to the modern game. In his defense, it appears that no player or coach or owner was willing to suggest that either.
5. Thibs hitched his wagon to different guys, generally not corectly. Look, Taj is a very good player. He shouldn't be getting 36 minutes a night. Wiggins played 36 a night, regardless of whether he was good, bad, indifferent, or VERY indifferent. There were absolutely no consequences for bad play if you were one of the guys Thibs liked.
It took me all of one scrimmage to recognize that Jamal Crawford was a horrific defensive player and would give you almost zero rebounds a game. Thibs played him a lot (from what I gathered, less than Crawford was promised, but way too much for what he was giving you). Crawford averaged more shots per 36 than Towns.
Thibs' reliance on Derrick Rose (who has completely re-worked his shooting and become a good shooter) appeared to some to be a great idea. But if basketball-reference.com has him at 116-116 ORtg/DRtg, what is he really giving you? A lot of difficult isolation scoring which he gives back on the other end? Thibs also was so happy to be correct about Rose that he literally played him to exhaustion, to the point where he was too tired/sore/injured to play! I mean, a fair evaluation is that the guy is either a guy you trade and get value for ("sell high") or he is a guy you play fewer minutes (15-24) and prolong his career and what you can get out of him both during a single seaon and in the long run. Thibs played him 30+ minutes, often over 34.
6. Thibs had a weird habit of signing players (Cole Aldrich, Anthony Tollver) and then not playing them. While these guys are just role players, why spend money on them if you are just going to have them ride the pine? You'd be better off signing no one and then acquiring prospects that other teams had to cut at the end of training camp. It is cheaper, and there is probably a higher ceiling for some of these guys.
Weird.
The Ugly
7. Thibs's primary weakness was that he could never take a long-term view and try to develop the franchise. He viewed every game, even every possession, as the end of the world. If someone literally told Tom Thibodeau within two minutes of the end of the Hawks game, "You better get Rose out or there is a 75% chance he gets hurt and is out for a week" Thibs would take the 25% chance. He needed the Hawks win that badly. To make matters worse, the risk did not always result in a reward.
Up 25, down 25, the starters were running the last 3 minutes of the game. There might be a 2% chance that the bench could blow that lead or the starters might come back. All that really mattered was the one single game. Every game was Game 7 of the Finals.
Imagine if you had to drive 3,000 total miles in 10 days. On day 4 you are sick and throwing up. You'd spend that day in bed, maybe drive more the next day. Thibs would get a bucket and throw up in it as he ground out his 300 miles. It would be 100% completely unnecessary to do so, and it probably would endanger the entire trip and maybe his life, but he'd do it anyway, because it wasn't the trip, it was the day that mattered.
8. Thibs was a horrific micromanager. It is almost impossible to play excellent basketball if you do not enjoy it. I would tell my players when I coached, "Look, if you cannot find joy in basketball, you ought to consider some other sports." Now, I had a coach in 11th grade who screamed at us and constantly had us do sprints in practice and who employed a full-court press against every opponent (we were very white and very slow and small). We had the #1 player in the three-county area. We went 7-11. The next year we lost our best guy, got a new (more rational) coach, and went 12-6.
It just isn't any fun to play basketball when your every move is scrutinized. It sucks. So when a player is a bench guy getting maybe 15 minutes and he gets pulled for his first mistake, you have now effectively lost him as a player. He will not provide you with much value.
To make matters worse, some players were micromanaged and punished for errors, while others (see #5 above) were micromanaged but never disciplined for anything.
9. Thibs alienated his players and did not understand how to play to their strengths,
Towns - 3rd Team All-NBA, 4th on the team in shots per minute. How does that possibly occur? Towns at the end of a game stepped in-bounds while throwing in the ball. Thibs, "You stupid motherfucker!" Now, this is inappropraite coaching or teaching at any level. If your 15th guy got in and forgot to dribble the ball, you'd treat him better than this.
Right before Thibs' firing, he was willing to say that Towns had played "the best he has played." Well, wow! Alert the media! Towns had gone 28-12 for 6 straight games, the longest such streak since Moses Malone in 1982. Thibs phrased this once in a generation streak as, basically "Towns is playing better." Towns' reply, "He said something nice about me!?!? Wow."
Tyus Jones - as I have said numerous times, Tyus Jones is a great "with the ball" player. he SUCKS as an "off the ball" offensive player. Where does Thibs insist on playing him? With DRose and Jamal Crawford getting huge Usage and Tyus standing in the corner waiting for the ball. So, you are taking guys with MAYBE a 2-1 assist to turnover ratio and having them handle the ball while your 6-1 assist-to-turnover guy (who is a very poor spot-up shooter) stands in the corner. If you are going to operate with this strategy, then you need to not play Tyus at all. Play an off guard or just play a huge defensive lineup. Play someone who will compensate defensively for how terrible Crawford and Rose have been as team defenders (and Crawford as an individual defender).
And can we pry ONE positive comment from Thibs abaout Tyus? I mean, here is a guy who you don't value (he wants to play him 12-16 minutes a game) and when forced into action as a starter (due to injury) he was one of your best plus-minus players (generally the best) and was a key to several winning efforts. Answer - no, that will not occur. In one such game earlier this year, Tyus was a key to victory, when asked about Tyus, Thibs said "I thought Jarryd Bayless played very well." Um, OK.
Wiggins -- now, it may be that no one can ever unlock Andrew Wiggins, but I can assure you this - playing him as a standstill "end of the play" spot up shooter - this is not his highest and best use. So, again, if you believe that he can only be used in that role, you need to cut his minutes and play Tolliver or Bjelica instead. Same as the Tyus example. If you have a car that will go 120 miles per hour and rides rough when under 40 mph, don't drive it the 5 miles to and from work. Drive it on long trips.
What is really clear is that Towns hated Thibs, Tyus resented Thibs, Teague regularly tried to embarrass Thibs with the media, Bjelica couldn't wait to get away from Thibs, Butler knived Thibs in the back (maybe in the front), Gorgui almost had a mental breakdown playing for the guy, Crawford felt lied to and betrayed. And those are the guys I, as a fan, know about.
10. Thibs' Behavior Was Unprofessional
Look, we all wish we were king. And I think Thibs figured he was king. Great. But if you really ARE NOT the king and you have a boss of any kind, then you need to build up some relationships and gather some relationship "chits" you can cash in later when things go poorly.
-- When your boss asks you to a barbecue, go.
-- When you are the coach of a team, appear in the media and do some PR. If you come off poorly in person, have someone write you some B.S. emails to the fans, or recite some text written for you on video..
-- Do not lock employees from one side of the business out of your side of the business.
-- Do not throw a laptop through a glass conference room wall.
-- Do not tell free agents you want them and then don't play them as you said you would.
-- When your owner tells you to trade a guy, do your effing job and trade the guy.
-- Don't call your superstar a "stupid motherfucker" for committing a turnover.
-- Reward consistently good play and punish consistently poor play with minutes.
-- Talk to your players.
-- Say nice things about your best players or guys who give a lot of effort, even if you don't want to.
-- Don't scream and micromanage every possession.
-- When your team is playing poorly, don't panic.
-- When your team is playing poorly, don't demonstrate by your body language that you are disgusted/worried. Instead, put up an aura of "we know how to recover from this".
These are 13 things that, again, I know about just as a fan. Imagine the plethora of other terrible unprofessional things I am forgetting or that I am unaware of right now.
Conclusion
Grading on the very kind grading curve that is Wolves Coaches, Thibs was not terrible. He had a team that made the playoffs and he was almost .500 overall. So, I'd place him here:
1) Flip
2) McHale
3) Adelman
4) Dwane Casey
5) Thibs.
Thibs defeats Musselman, Lowe, Blair, Rodgers, Wittman, and Rambis, Sam Mitchell and anyone else I am forgetting.
(For you Muss defenders, he was crazier than Thibs when it came to lack of player development, lack of professionalism, and winning at all costs. For Sam fans, Sam understood player development, but his teams were very poorly prepared and he could never adjust in-game).
So, how terrible has the Timberwolves franchise been? Thibs is clearly a top-half coach in their history!
Ryan Saunders -- long-time assistant. Will undoubtedly have better relationships with the key Wolves players and is an immediate huge upgrade on professionalism. His dad was an offensive genius, but didn't give a damn about defense (Garnett was basically the eraser for all of Flip's defensive indifference, with mixed results). Hopefully Ryan will take the good of his dad and find some way to care more about defense.
As someone who has seen 30 years of basketball and yet only 1 year where we won any playoff series, obviously I am rooting for Ryan very hard.
HM
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