The first day of the rest of the season
Once again, there is a Saunders in charge of Timberwolves basketball.
Ryan Saunders, son of the late Flip Saunders - a Minnesota icon, officially took the reigns today, holding his first practice as (interim) head coach, followed by his first media scrum.
Saunders represents a diametric opposite of Tom Thibodeau in almost every way. Glen Taylor cited the team’s lackluster record as the reason for making the change, and while that certainly was a factor, the overriding impetus is simply that the team needs a culture change. Saunders - who shares has the same open, honest empathy his father was famous for - gives the team a much-needed positive energy towards both the players and fans. After three years of Thibs’ emotionally draining approach, this is a good change.
So now, in a way, the season beings again (again). Ryan Saunders has the green light to show he belongs in the captain’s chair. Here’s some of the questions that will need to be answered for him to succeed.
1. Can Saunders control the locker room?
Coaching is something Saunders has been preparing for his entire life. Unlike most head coaches, who transition into coaching from a playing career or work in basketball operations, Saunders has pursued coaching from day one, and had a pretty great example to follow in the footsteps of.
At the same time, he is only 32 years old, making him the youngest head coach in the NBA by a nautical mile. Three of the players - Taj Gibson, Luol Deng and Anthony Tolliver - are older than him. That’s going to be a challenge.
Can Saunders command the respect of veterans who are older than him? Can he effectively get through and teach the players that are younger than him - something that Thibs utterly failed at, because in a very real way, he never tried. Can he hold guys who are his peers and who he considers close friends accountable?
Saunders has a lot of respect in the locker room - more, probably, than Thibs did even - but that was as an assistant who didn’t have to be the bad cop. The confidence Saunders projects and the way he handles the inevitable confrontations that arise for every head coach will go a long way towards determining his success.
2. What sort of basketball will the Wolves play now?
Tom Thibodeau let the game pass him by. There’s really no other way to put it. In a video-graphic data driven era of basketball, where teams innovate to exploit the versatility of their players and pursue efficient shot selection, Thibs stubbornly stood as an anachronism. He slotted players into single, position-defined roles, built his playbook on outmoded isolation plays, and eschewed the three point line on both ends of the floor. That’s just not a sustainable way to play basketball in 2019.
Enter Ryan Saunders.
The expectation is Saunders will move the Wolves towards the rest of the NBA, spreading the floor and pushing the pace on offense, and implementing a switching defense rather than Thibs’ old ICE system that continuously left the corner three open. Reports from his first practice noted that he encouraged the team to play faster and more fluidly.
Most likely, the Wolves will use a premium version of the offense Saunders has utilized while coaching the Wolves’ summer league teams, which has strongly emphasized pick-and-roll play and threes. The finest example of this comes from 2016, when Saunders and Tyus Jones teamed to nearly win the SL championship.
Speaking of which, Tyus could benefit massively from Saunders’ coaching. Ditto for Dario Saric and Anthony Tolliver. Jones and Saric both excel at faster, freelancing paces where they can put their court vision and snap reflexes to maximum use, and Tolliver lives to bomb away from three. Jones and Karl-Anthony Towns are lethal in pick-and-roll - which should also benefit Robert Covington on the three point line - and anything that gets the ball into KAT’s hands more than Thibs did will be a good thing.
3. Is Derrick Rose about to become a problem?
So….
Rose was using a slang phrase that’s fairly common in Chicago (which is not a defense of his using it) He didn’t mean it literally and clarified that in an apology later. But the comment points to an intense, underlying frustration on Rose’s part that could become a locker room problem in the second half of the season.
To be blunt, Derrick Rose is not here for the Timberwolves, he’s here for himself. He may say he just wants to contribute - and may even believe it - but his number one priority is himself. First and foremost, his goal is to try and prove he can be and MVP caliber player again. He chose Minnesota because he knew Thibs would invest in enabling that, even to the team’s detriment at times. Now Thibs is gone, and Rose is likely about to take on a much different role within the offense.
Simply evaluating Rose, much less directing him, is an incredibly complex task - one that will likely be the first and more serious test of Saunders’ ability to control the locker room. In all cases of him playing for someone other than Thibs - after his firing in Chicago, then in New York, then in Cleveland - Rose has been, quite frankly, an unmitigated disaster on the court. At the same time, he wasn’t healthy then as he is now. At the same time, Chicago’s grumbling that Thibs’ guys didn’t know basketball, but rather just memorized his sets, wasn’t without merit.
There’s a serious question of whether Rose is any good as a basketball player outside of Thibs’ system. There’s an equally serious question of whether he has any interest in trying at basketball outside of Thibs’ system. And by that, I don’t mean whether he will play hard, but whether he will play the role he is asked to play. If Rose doesn’t take to a change in direction - if he, say, resists being asked to facilitate for KAT rather than seek his own shots, or chafes at Tyus taking priority in the rotation - there’s a real chance he becomes a loose cannon and uses his playing time to just seek his own glory (contract).
It’s something the Wolves are going to need to keep a very, very close eye on, particularly with the trade deadline approaching. From a PR standpoint (disregarding his comments yesterday) Rose has been the biggest seller for the Wolves. He generates interest in the team at a national level that none of the other players come close to. But, if he becomes a locker room problem, the Wolves can’t be hesitant about trading or cutting him.
It’s very Timberwolves that, on a day when the son of a franchise and state icon is promoted to replace a coach everyone grew tired of, the national conversation about the team was entirely about one of the players telling fans to kill themselves. The team has an obligation and a necessity to leave the bad vibes behind. If Rose doesn’t want to get on board with that, then the team should leave him behind too.
