Bucks vs Wolves in Ames

[Monster]

It depends on this Butler deal whether or not those boos continue. Who's to say Thibs doesn't get a good return -- much better than what the Heat have been leaking to the media -- and brings a young cornerstone to the franchise? More cheers than boos, I assure you.

Yes, I agree that there are scenarios where Thibs stays...two that I can think of:

1) the scenario you lay out, where a team really wants Butler and sends us a good return that Thibs can work successfuly with...preferable a wing who can make a three and shore up what looks to be the worst defense in the league right now. I don't foresee this happening, but if it did and the club started the season winning at the same pace it did last year, the boos might abate and Glen might bide his time before moving on Thibs.

2)more likely, no deal gets done before the season starts and Butler moves back into the starting lineup (as he indicated he would 4 days ago). This scenario might not be pretty...there's clearly not a lot of love between Butler and KAT/Wig. But Butler instantly transforms our defense, and we then have enough talent on the court to overcome the bad blood and Thibs' antiquated coaching, and a season of 45-48 wins slows down the boos and allows Thibs to keep his job until the end of the season.


I still think Thibs is gone before Christmas, but the above two scenarios are not out of the question.

Some of the Boos are for Thibs and some of those are for Butler but he wasn't there to receive them. It's gonna be brutal if Butler comes back and gets booed. Jimmy will probably be fine though he seems to feed off that type of stuff to some extent.

[Monster]

Speaking of owners and GMs the Suns fired their GM now and Sarver is not an owner many people have any type of good things to say about. Woj actually mentioned McHale as a canidate to watch there! Glen get him before he gets scooped up!!!!! Lol

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

I can't believe Butler would come back to the squad. And even if he did, there is no chance we'd be as good as last season. Heck, we think Wiggins is checked out now, wait until Butler comes back. He'll melt into the woodwork never to be seen again. KAT may too.

[rapsuperstar31]

I'm sure Glen Taylor is great to work for if you don't care about winning or excellence. He lets you go fishing and ditch your work all year. The only way this team gets better is when we get a new owner. Glen's reputation has got to be at an all time low. Every former GM that I have seen interviewed about the trade situation emphasized how difficult Glen's comments made things. Every major instance like this in our franchise Glen "gets involved" and it becomes even more of a diasaster. Easily the worst owner in sports.

I can't argue that Glen has made some bad decisions, but I find him far from the worst owner in sports...he's not even close to the worst owners we have had locally. There are owners who refuse to spend any money on their teams, and I find that much more frustrating than Glen's poor decision making...long-suffering Twins fans will attest to Glen's superiority as an owner over Calvin Griffith and Carl Pohlad for sure. I also rank Glen far ahead of the group of owners who have exhibited bad personal behavior (Mark Cuban, Donald Sterling, etc, etc, etc)...Glen has always been a model citizen.


Flip Saunders often talked about how great it was to work for Glen, and it would be difficult to argue that Flip didn't care about winning. Sam Mitchell too. I'm not excusing some of Glen's poor decisions...hiring Thibs being the one we're suffering with now...and I always call him out when he does something I don't like.. But he wants to win and is willing to spend to win, and he's not a dick...and those are three qualities I look for in an owner (a pretty low bar, I admit).


If a fan thinks the Wolves are going to suck until Glen is gone, they may want to consider adopting another team, because he is going to be around for a while. He's a billionaire who could be ditching the cold and snow and jetting off to exotic places all winter, but instead he is courtside with his wife for almost every game. The guy loves basketball and knows the value of his franchise goes up every year...why would he sell? Now, he's also a prudent businessman and recognized a couple years ago that his investment in the Wolves was too big a percentage of his net worth, so he has reduced his percentage ownership in the last two years. But sell? Not likely for a while.

Yes the Twins owners suck and so does Cuban....but they at least have championships.

[khans2k5 [enjin:6608728]]

I can't believe Butler would come back to the squad. And even if he did, there is no chance we'd be as good as last season. Heck, we think Wiggins is checked out now, wait until Butler comes back. He'll melt into the woodwork never to be seen again. KAT may too.

Well this team looks like it will be lucky to win 30 games without Jimmy so if he did come back I can't imagine it can be worse than what we've seen without him.

[thedoper]

I'm sure Glen Taylor is great to work for if you don't care about winning or excellence. He lets you go fishing and ditch your work all year. The only way this team gets better is when we get a new owner. Glen's reputation has got to be at an all time low. Every former GM that I have seen interviewed about the trade situation emphasized how difficult Glen's comments made things. Every major instance like this in our franchise Glen "gets involved" and it becomes even more of a diasaster. Easily the worst owner in sports.

I can't argue that Glen has made some bad decisions, but I find him far from the worst owner in sports...he's not even close to the worst owners we have had locally. There are owners who refuse to spend any money on their teams, and I find that much more frustrating than Glen's poor decision making...long-suffering Twins fans will attest to Glen's superiority as an owner over Calvin Griffith and Carl Pohlad for sure. I also rank Glen far ahead of the group of owners who have exhibited bad personal behavior (Mark Cuban, Donald Sterling, etc, etc, etc)...Glen has always been a model citizen.


Flip Saunders often talked about how great it was to work for Glen, and it would be difficult to argue that Flip didn't care about winning. Sam Mitchell too. I'm not excusing some of Glen's poor decisions...hiring Thibs being the one we're suffering with now...and I always call him out when he does something I don't like.. But he wants to win and is willing to spend to win, and he's not a dick...and those are three qualities I look for in an owner (a pretty low bar, I admit).


If a fan thinks the Wolves are going to suck until Glen is gone, they may want to consider adopting another team, because he is going to be around for a while. He's a billionaire who could be ditching the cold and snow and jetting off to exotic places all winter, but instead he is courtside with his wife for almost every game. The guy loves basketball and knows the value of his franchise goes up every year...why would he sell? Now, he's also a prudent businessman and recognized a couple years ago that his investment in the Wolves was too big a percentage of his net worth, so he has reduced his percentage ownership in the last two years. But sell? Not likely for a while.

I completely disagree that "he wants to win and is willing to spend to win". He is on record saying spending the luxury tax (the one time he did it) was a mistake. He held out and let his building rot until the city finally gave him some money to help renovate. He was also the chief negotiator for the owners to get back the 7% from the players in the last work stoppage. That matters to the players. Yes he paid Thibs some real money, but that is a pittance to what owners are making now.

Yes we have had some bad owners in Minnesota baseball, but baseball had a ton of horrible owners in that era. Compared to his peers in his sport (modern NBA Basketball), and with his 20 year legacy of failure in terms of wins and losses, Glen is horrible.

[longstrangetrip [enjin:6600564]]

I can't believe Butler would come back to the squad. And even if he did, there is no chance we'd be as good as last season. Heck, we think Wiggins is checked out now, wait until Butler comes back. He'll melt into the woodwork never to be seen again. KAT may too.

Yeah, it does seem weird, doesn't it? I mean, most of us have moved on, and haven't really considered the possibility of Butler wearing a Wolves jersey again. But the deals on the table are crap, in my opinion, and neither Thibs nor Glen want to make a dumb deal. And Jimmy is a basketball junkie who also wants to get paid, and Woj reported a few days ago that Butler isn't going to miss any regular season games. So absent a substantially better offer appeating in the next 9 days, I expect Butler to be back on the court in San Antonio with his good friends Karl and Andrew.

So, how will the team perform? I don't agree that there is no chance we'd be as good as last year. Yes, there will be discord, but it's not unprecedented for teammates to hate each other and still perform. Wig might even start fogging a mirror just out of spite to "show Jimmy" he has some heart. I'm on record as saying this is a 45-48 win team with Butler on the court, but they could be much better. There's no question in my mind that the bench is much better...Tolliver, Okogie, KBD, and Deng replace Belly, Aldrich, Crawford, Bazz and that hyphenated guy. That's gotta be a huge improvement, doesn't it?

So, I still want Thibs to be let go, an interim coach like Saunders to be promoted while Glen searches for the next POBO, and Butler to be traded for a good return. But neither the Wolves nor their trading partners seem desperate to make a deal. So, I think we need to prepare ourselves for the circus that will be the Return of Jimmy. At least we know we can hold an opponent under 120 points is he comes back...Thibs has shown he can't do that without Jimmy.

[Lipoli390]

Glen's two fundamental flaws as an owner are: (1) making bad front office and head coach hiring decisions; and (2) waiting too long to move on from and rectify his mistakes.

I made it clear two years ago that I though Glen made a terrible mistake hiring Thibodeau for either position, not to mention both. I believe history has proven me right. And now Glen is compounding his mistake by failing to move on from Thibodeau - a head coach who did no better than Sam Mitchell without Butler and a PBO who kept his head in the sand as the Butler situation crescendoed into the debocle it is today. Every day that Thibodeau remains with the organization further compounds Glen Taylor's poor decision to hire him in the first place. It's time for Glen to break his pattern of delay that we saw when he hung on to McHale and then David Kahn far too long.

I know I'm repeating myself, so I'll make this my last, let's fire Thibodeau post. But the stupidity of hanging on to Thibodeau at this point is so incredibly confounding and frustrating.

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

I can't believe Butler would come back to the squad. And even if he did, there is no chance we'd be as good as last season. Heck, we think Wiggins is checked out now, wait until Butler comes back. He'll melt into the woodwork never to be seen again. KAT may too.

Yeah, it does seem weird, doesn't it? I mean, most of us have moved on, and haven't really considered the possibility of Butler wearing a Wolves jersey again. But the deals on the table are crap, in my opinion, and neither Thibs nor Glen want to make a dumb deal. And Jimmy is a basketball junkie who also wants to get paid, and Woj reported a few days ago that Butler isn't going to miss any regular season games. So absent a substantially better offer appeating in the next 9 days, I expect Butler to be back on the court in San Antonio with his good friends Karl and Andrew.

So, how will the team perform? I don't agree that there is no chance we'd be as good as last year. Yes, there will be discord, but it's not unprecedented for teammates to hate each other and still perform. Wig might even start fogging a mirror just out of spite to "show Jimmy" he has some heart. I'm on record as saying this is a 45-48 win team with Butler on the court, but they could be much better. There's no question in my mind that the bench is much better...Tolliver, Okogie, KBD, and Deng replace Belly, Aldrich, Crawford, Bazz and that hyphenated guy. That's gotta be a huge improvement, doesn't it?

So, I still want Thibs to be let go, an interim coach like Saunders to be promoted while Glen searches for the next POBO, and Butler to be traded for a good return. But neither the Wolves nor their trading partners seem desperate to make a deal. So, I think we need to prepare ourselves for the circus that will be the Return of Jimmy. At least we know we can hold an opponent under 120 points is he comes back...Thibs has shown he can't do that without Jimmy.

Oh, I agree we are a better team with Butler than without. I just don't think we'd be as good as last year. I think we'd be .500-ish. Every year (seemingly) I hear on this board how much better our bench is going to be and it never materializes. While I think there are things to be encouraged by with our two rookies, they are still rookies. Tyus looks really out of sort without a 2nd ball handler and if that 2nd guy ends up being Rose, well, I have no more confidence in him than I did in Jamal Crawford. And Dieng looks as porous on defense as ever. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

[Coolbreeze44]

Pre-season means nothing. Meh. That being said...

1. Is there anything positive about this club right now? I mean meaningful positive stuff... not pie-in-the-sky "but that one rookie looks like a positive rotational player someday!" kind of thing.

2. Fun. Last year was crazy... the best Wolves team in nearly a generation and we were here bitching more than ever. And it's not like it wasn't justified. The team wasn't much fun.

3. Fire Thibs. (He does seem to be stuck in 2012). Keep Thibs. It doesn't really matter, does it? Are the Wolves going to get a true rising coach with Taylor involved and Wiggins on the books? It's time to think outside the box and nab the next generation of Daryl Morey. The Wolves can't compete as a "us-too" type of club. They MUST be trend setters. That's how you level the playing field.
They MUST be trend setters. That's how you level the playing field.

But NOTHING in Taylor's history of ownership suggests that's the case... unless you go with the absurdity of the David Kahn experience. That was a reach... just a disastrous one.

Great post Abe - way to get to the core of this shit show.