Wolves for Sale Thread

[AbeVigodaLive]

My favorite Glen Taylor move was endorsing the embarrassing Mark Madsen three point game... to get another ping pong ball... to win that coin flip... to draft one spot higher... to draft the better player... only to trade him for cash...

... and then rip the only superstar in team history for not trying his hardest a few months later... right after that superstar joined another team... and then immediate won a title as its best player.

That's my favorite.

[Lipoli390]

Performance-wise there is really no way an ownership group could be worse then Glen's last 20 years primarily because of his longevity. The risk of something worse than Glen is an owner who wants to sell the team.


Lip how can you say Glen doesnt meddle when we have Ryan Saunders as our head coach?

How can I say that? Well, I didn't say that. I said "he may have meddled a few times in ways that were detrimental to the team, but nothing to that effect has been confirmed." I then went on to hold him accountable for elevating Ryan Sanders. So I obviously believe meddled in that decision. I just haven't seen any independent confirmation that or any other suspected meddling. But let's acknowledge the central problem with Glen Taylor's ownership -- namely his incredibly poor hiring decisions. As owner he has only one job related directly to basketball operations -- and that's to hire a good President of Basketball Operations. He largely failed in that one main responsibility.

You dont think he meddled in the Joe Smith signing that lost us an unprecedented number of draft picks? Or in any of the decisions to make trades for cash?

He may be bad at hiring which is an owners primary function, but then he seems to be bad at every other facet that he gets involved in. Player relations, being the face of the "poor owners" in CBA negotiations, deal making.

I dont personally see how it could get much worse.

Taylor didn't meddle in the Joe Smith deal. That was all McHale who did what he thought he had to do to keep Joe Smith. However, Glen allowed McHale to do the deal and that was really risky. To be fair, the Wolves weren't the only organization doing those sorts of "illegal deals." But in the grand tradition of the Wolves bad luck, the Wolves ended up getting caught. They got caught because Smith dumped his agent who negotiated the illegal deal on his behalf. The former agent then outed Smith and the Wolves out of spite. But Glen was particularly dumb in allowing the illegal deal to be put in writing.

As for the cash deals, I only know the details on one of them - selling the 27th pick the Wolves could have used to select Gobert. I've heard from people I trust inside the organization that it was Flip's decision to sell the pick because he didn't want to add any more young players and couldn't get a veteran player he wanted for the pick. That all makes sense because there's no doubt Glen allowed Flip to do whatever he wanted. Glen had a history of allowing his front office executives to do whatever they wanted and to go on doing it far too long. He didn't tell McHale to draft Ebi instead of Josh Howard or to let Chauncey Billups go in favor of relying on Terrell Brandon's frail body to carry the team's PG responsibilities. He didn't tell Khan to take Flynn or Rubio over Curry. He didn't tell Kahn to draft Derrick Williams or Wes Johnson. He didn't tell Flip pass on McCollum and then trade down and take Bazz over Giannis. And from what I've heard from people in the organization, he did NOT tell Thibodeau to keep Wiggins in favor of trading Zach and Dunn for Butler. Thibodeau came here because, in his words, the Wolves had "the best young talent in the League." Towns and Wiggins were the two keys to his assessment. He didn't want to give up on Wiggins' talent and he thought that Jimmy would be a good influence on Wiggins. When things started to go south with Jimmy, I'm told that Thibodeau kept Glen in the dark. If anything, I'd say that Taylor should have been MORE active in basketball operations. Glen was generally hands off, but unfortunately he was hands-off with bad executives he never should have hired.

You won't get an argument from me that. Glen was a good owner because I don't' believe he was. But he wasn't directly responsible for drafting Flynn over Curry or any of the other horrible draft decisions by one Wolves front office after another. He wasn't responsible for letting Billups go in favor of Terrell Brandon. The list goes on. We can nit pick the little things if we're obsessed with proving how horrible Taylor was. A lot of those things are untrue or exaggerated. In the end, what made him a bad owner was his terrible judgment when hiring the heads of his basketball operations. It's that simply; and it's that sad.

Lip,Glen's name was on the Joe Smith contract and it was "hidden" in his safe. It is his deal in spite of any impact or influence McHale had on him. People have been finding ways to give Glen the benefit of the doubt for a while, I personally cant do it. Ultimately were splitting hairs if Glen is somewhere between the worst and 10th worst (if youre really generous) owner in sports.

Lol. We are definitely spilling hairs on this one. :).

[kekgeek]

News coming out that Glen Taylor has donated money to Steve King in the past for his campaigns. I am not an expert at all in politics and don't know much about Steve King but everything I have read is Steve King is one of the most White Supremacist in recent political history. Either way probably not the best look for Glen.

Besides Glen keep the Wolves in Minnesota he really sucks ass

[Camden [enjin:6601484]]

News coming out that Glen Taylor has donated money to Steve King in the past for his campaigns. I am not an expert at all in politics and don't know much about Steve King but everything I have read is Steve King is one of the most White Supremacist in recent political history. Either way probably not the best look for Glen.

Besides Glen keep the Wolves in Minnesota he really sucks ass

Racism and "white supremacy" gets thrown around so much that I have to scoff at the comment itself. Not yours specifically, but those media pieces attempting to vilify politicians on the right.

Glen Taylor's political affiliation and donations mean little to me, personally. He's free to do as he pleases when he's not steering this Wolves franchise into the dumpster. The latter is what I care about and hopefully we're on our way back to some sort of respectable level of basketball.

[kekgeek]

News coming out that Glen Taylor has donated money to Steve King in the past for his campaigns. I am not an expert at all in politics and don't know much about Steve King but everything I have read is Steve King is one of the most White Supremacist in recent political history. Either way probably not the best look for Glen.

Besides Glen keep the Wolves in Minnesota he really sucks ass

Racism and "white supremacy" gets thrown around so much that I have to scoff at the comment itself. Not yours specifically, but those media pieces attempting to vilify politicians on the right.

Glen Taylor's political affiliation and donations mean little to me, personally. He's free to do as he pleases when he's not steering this Wolves franchise into the dumpster. The latter is what I care about and hopefully we're on our way back to some sort of respectable level of basketball.

I think it can effect basketball side of it though.

[thedoper]

I can't imagine that Glen has a great position amongst players at all, regardless of his political affiliations. Between the relationship with Garnett (and now McHale too) and his active role in representing the owners in CBA negotiations, and by all accounts in the previous CBA's being one of owners who actively stated the owners are struggling and the players should be giving up more. Now that Sterling is gone it's hard to think of another owner that could be perceived at in a worse light by players.

[WildWolf2813]

I can't imagine that Glen has a great position amongst players at all, regardless of his political affiliations. Between the relationship with Garnett (and now McHale too) and his active role in representing the owners in CBA negotiations, and by all accounts in the previous CBA's being one of owners who actively stated the owners are struggling and the players should be giving up more. Now that Sterling is gone it's hard to think of another owner that could be perceived at in a worse light by players.

I don't need Glen to be some hardcore Democrat to run the team. Honestly, Glen could be a high ranking member of Al-Qaeda for all I care and as long as the team was good it wouldn't matter.

Glen is known to be a really nice guy who is dumb as rocks when it comes to basketball related decisions. Supporting racists is really not gonna help matters when he has an uphill battle to climb when it comes to player relations. When the only great thing to happen to this franchise wants nothing to do with you, that speaks way more volumes than anything Glen can say or do, so he's gonna be in this perpetual hell until he sells.

[Lipoli390]

I can't imagine that Glen has a great position amongst players at all, regardless of his political affiliations. Between the relationship with Garnett (and now McHale too) and his active role in representing the owners in CBA negotiations, and by all accounts in the previous CBA's being one of owners who actively stated the owners are struggling and the players should be giving up more. Now that Sterling is gone it's hard to think of another owner that could be perceived at in a worse light by players.

I don't need Glen to be some hardcore Democrat to run the team. Honestly, Glen could be a high ranking member of Al-Qaeda for all I care and as long as the team was good it wouldn't matter.

Glen is known to be a really nice guy who is dumb as rocks when it comes to basketball related decisions. Supporting racists is really not gonna help matters when he has an uphill battle to climb when it comes to player relations. When the only great thing to happen to this franchise wants nothing to do with you, that speaks way more volumes than anything Glen can say or do, so he's gonna be in this perpetual hell until he sells.

I agree.