Minnesota Sports Forum

Good post LST. But the counter would be that if Sam is such an innovative mind - why do we only have 26 wins? I guess you could counter with "we're young" "he took over a tough situation when Flip died", "he doesn't have his own assistants" etc. And all those things should be considered. But I think many others would go back to the fact that if at the start of the year we knew we'd be healthy this year (aside from KG and Pek), most would have expected a few more wins. The current starting five has been healthy the whole season, but Sam didn't put them together until a couple months ago. That was a mistake and many wanted this current group together a long time ago.

I don't think Sam is a complete buffoon. I just believe a more accomplished coach would be a better fit for these young guys. But at the end of the day - it doesn't matter. It's looking more and more like Milt and Sam are coming back for year two.

Ah, the triumphant return of LST for a spirited defense of his guy Mitchell. Love it!

Judging what great coaching or horrible coaching looks like at the NBA level is not one of my strong suits so I have generally been less opinionated on this topic than others. But I have gradually gone from Sam-neutral to anti-Sam as the season progressed, mostly because he seems to take very little personal accountability for his team's performance.

That being said, he's done some good things too. I'm a big believer that it's OK to have different coaches for different phases of a team's development. It is possible for Mitchell to have done a good job this year while at the same time identifying a coach that is better suited for next year or the year after. I'm not sure Mitchell's style works well with a team that starts to mature and grow professionally.

Sam has a lot of faults and no one is ever going to convince me there aren't better options out there. But I don't hate everything about the guy. You can find some positives if you dig hard enough. I just want the franchise to finally go all in on a collective commitment to excellence. Let's not half ass this anymore. We finally have some building blocks that can make us a legitimate contender. Now we need to fill in the leadership void with a staff that can match the promise of our young stars. Don't put ankle weights on for real games.

By the way, good to hear from you LST.

CoolBreeze44 wrote:I just want the franchise to finally go all in on a collective commitment to excellence. Let's not half ass this anymore.

You could make the case that the illegal contract they signed Joe Smith to years ago was going all in. My biggest problem with the all in philosophy is with Taylor ultimately making those decisions it won't take much for the championship potential in this young team to run off the tracks.

At this point my biggest concern is that Taylor isn't signing an experienced PBO because of the situation with the team sale. That means we have Milt, who may well be one of the next good/great front office execs, but Taylor is going to keep his hand on the wheel because of Milt's lack of experience, thus to many very important decisions are ultimately being made by Glenn. Giving Mitchell another year to make his case is the least of my worries right now.

TheSP wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:I just want the franchise to finally go all in on a collective commitment to excellence. Let's not half ass this anymore.

You could make the case that the illegal contract they signed Joe Smith to years ago was going all in. My biggest problem with the all in philosophy is with Taylor ultimately making those decisions it won't take much for the championship potential in this young team to run off the tracks.

At this point my biggest concern is that Taylor isn't signing an experienced PBO because of the situation with the team sale. That means we have Milt, who may well be one of the next good/great front office execs, but Taylor is going to keep his hand on the wheel because of Milt's lack of experience, thus to many very important decisions are ultimately being made by Glenn. Giving Mitchell another year to make his case is the least of my worries right now.

Right, at some point we are going to hit an inflection point - it could be now in fact - and the final decision maker - not just the guy signing off - but literally making hands-on decisions is the same one that has overseen one of the worst professional franchises in modern history. Sobering indeed.

TheSP wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:I just want the franchise to finally go all in on a collective commitment to excellence. Let's not half ass this anymore.

You could make the case that the illegal contract they signed Joe Smith to years ago was going all in. My biggest problem with the all in philosophy is with Taylor ultimately making those decisions it won't take much for the championship potential in this young team to run off the tracks.

At this point my biggest concern is that Taylor isn't signing an experienced PBO because of the situation with the team sale. That means we have Milt, who may well be one of the next good/great front office execs, but Taylor is going to keep his hand on the wheel because of Milt's lack of experience, thus to many very important decisions are ultimately being made by Glenn. Giving Mitchell another year to make his case is the least of my worries right now.

Well Taylor isn't going anywhere unfortunately. So that part we have to live with. Is it better to have Glen and Sam, or Glen and somebody else?

CoolBreeze44 wrote:

TheSP wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:I just want the franchise to finally go all in on a collective commitment to excellence. Let's not half ass this anymore.

You could make the case that the illegal contract they signed Joe Smith to years ago was going all in. My biggest problem with the all in philosophy is with Taylor ultimately making those decisions it won't take much for the championship potential in this young team to run off the tracks.

At this point my biggest concern is that Taylor isn't signing an experienced PBO because of the situation with the team sale. That means we have Milt, who may well be one of the next good/great front office execs, but Taylor is going to keep his hand on the wheel because of Milt's lack of experience, thus to many very important decisions are ultimately being made by Glenn. Giving Mitchell another year to make his case is the least of my worries right now.

Well Taylor isn't going anywhere unfortunately. So that part we have to live with. Is it better to have Glen and Sam, or Glen and somebody else?

If we assume Milt is still being viewed as an interim GM then I think I'd rather keep Mitchell for another season. Glenn tends to move at a glacial pace and I think the ownership deal falling apart has him once again trying to decide what direction he wants to go. The reason he kept Milt on IMO was to give himself time to make up his mind, thus top coaches are going to be leery of walking into a situation where a new PBO/GM is hired one year into their term and decides to go another direction. On the flip side if they fire Mitchell and hire a new coach then the potential PBO/GM may have reservations being stuck with a coach he doesn't like and an owner who may not be interested in eating the contract.

Honestly at this point I think they're better off keeping both Mitchell and Milt if they keep one, and for that reason I'm resigned to another season of Mitchell but am somewhat open minded given how the team has performed of late. Give them a top 5 pick, a couple bench free agents, let Mitchell build his own coaching staff, and cross your fingers, Glenn can and has done worse.

Edit: I guess you could say my perspective is in the near team I'm more concerned with not damaging the future with hasty, stupid moves than I am with being too conservative.

I want a better coach. But I didn't mind the timeout call at all. Golden State thrives on chaos. They could have rattled off seven points easy at that juncture.

CoolBreeze44 wrote:Sam has a lot of faults and no one is ever going to convince me there aren't better options out there. But I don't hate everything about the guy. You can find some positives if you dig hard enough. I just want the franchise to finally go all in on a collective commitment to excellence. Let's not half ass this anymore. We finally have some building blocks that can make us a legitimate contender. Now we need to fill in the leadership void with a staff that can match the promise of our young stars. Don't put ankle weights on for real games.

Glad you are back Cool and this post is dead on except...

This has been my position for a while and I know people disagree with me. We all want what you describe above every fan and every person that has some stake in a sports franchise does. The reality though is the coach you describe is a rarity in the NBA from my view. I am not even sure LST believes Sam is THE GUY but the coaching list out there are any of those guys THE GUY to take this team from what is still a young team to contender level? Idk I WANT one of those guys to be it but I am very skeptical. I can see Sam being a bridge guy. People are very against this because for a wide variety of reasons people were down on Sam before he had done anything coaching he team.

1. People aren't even happy with Flip coaching and Sam doesn't even have the resume that Flip does so most fans see Sam as a downgrade from Flip.

2. Country club. No other explanation. Here people get tired of this and it's completely understandable

3. Mitchell is a Flip disciple so...plenty of concerns about his offense 3 pointers etc.

4. How things ended in Toronto and he hasn't coached since.

5. Assistants are country club also (except Brian Gates) and therefore a lot of fans have no confidence in those guys.

There is probably more but those are all pretty significant things most fans have to work through even before they get to whatever Sam actually is doing coaching the team and there have been plenty of thins to question but there was a ton of bias against Sam and then him being crabby did him no favors.

I've tried to keep an open mind about Sam. I've watched some pretty crappy teams with sad talent and teams that just didn't play well on the floor. The last couple months I have seen talent and guys playing well most nights. Hey even the good playoff teams have stinkers. The line between talent and influence of coaching is sometimes thin or very difficult to define.

To me though the bottom line is the last couple months we have seen the type of team we had sorta hoped to see this season to one extent or another. They get up and down the floor and the passing most games has been quite the revelation. Coaching has to have some credit for that even if it was Sam getting out of the way some. Remember the year the wolves went to the WCF Flip at one point basically Hanes over the reigns to Cassell and it went from there in a good way. Sam had a tough gig with everything that was thrown at him and you can't say he handled it perfectly but that's asking a damn lot.

Now do I think there are coaches out there that are better than Sam? Yes I do. How long is that list? Idk how many guy on a list of options have a better resume than Sam but how better really are they? Basically there are a bunch of guys out there that helped teams take another step and at some point got dumped. Are those guys so much better that we should get another new coach to get a guy that we may end up dumping 2-3 years later for another coach? Keep in mind I WANT the next coach to be THE COACH for the next 10-15 years or whatever but I am not sure one of the guys out there are the guys for the job. MAYBE we have the that guy around the organization right now. MAYBE it ends up being Brian Gates or some other guy they bring in to the staff under Sam similar to Joeger taking over for Hollins.

This ended up being too long and I don't know if I communicated my thoughts well (this probably should be in another thread about Sam) but to sum it up we all want a great coach and a great team culture and we want to start all that as soon and possible but I feel like the reality is that it's difficult to do and I don't know if I see a guy that's a no brainer to be the guy. I won't be sad if they move on from Sam but I can live with him sticking around for another year maybe 2 till things become more clear in many many respects when it comes to this franchise. * This position is based on the information I have in front of me but it's limited and I realize that. I am no insider but I do feel like I am a reasonably informed fan but that only goes so far. Sometimes being outside the situation can be good and sometimes we don't know good an bad of what is happening day to day in an organization.

* I know you have to move on in life but it's easy to forget the most influential and guy that had his hands on everything and was the driving force and vision behind everything this franchise was doing died how many months ago? Flip's passing left a huge void in so many ways and so it makes sense that trying to find how to move on from it is not going smoothly. It can't be an excuse to. It do the best thing for the franchise but as fans I think it's a reality to keep in mind.