Dysfunction has a name, and it's the Minnesota Timberwolves
Not that Ryan Saunders was going to keep the job after the season, but the Minnesota Timberwolves have handled his firing and hiring his replacement about as lamely as you can.
The Minnesota Timberwolves lost to the New York Knicks on Sunday, dropping their league-worst record to 7-24. Hours later, news surfaced they had fired head coach Ryan Saunders. Shams Charania of The Athletic was first to report Toronto Raptors assistant Chris Finch will be the next head coach, and he’ll get a multi-year deal.
With a 43-94 record (.314 win percentage), Saunders was likely going to be let go after the season. Having Karl-Anthony Towns and D’Angelo Russell together for just five games since Russell was acquired for Andrew Wiggins, and that to remain five games as Russell is out another 3-5 weeks after knee surgery, was not an excuse for president of basketball operations Gersson Rosas. It was a matter of time before Rosas got a chance to hire “his guy” as head coach, and Finch is definitely that.
Finch was an assistant coach for the Houston Rockets from 2011-2016, overlapping with Rosas’ time in the front office there. The deal to bring him in as the new Timberwolves’ coach was leaked so quickly that it’s not a coincidence.
Finch’s now former team, the Raptors, was just in Minneapolis to play the Timberwolves last Friday night. Roughly 48 hours later, probably regardless of Sunday’s result against the Knicks (and former coach Tom Thibodeau), Saunders was fired and Finch is lined up to replace him. So Rosas, as a practical matter, probably interviewed Finch for the job behind Saunders’ back sometime before Friday night’s game tipped off. The Raptors, to their credit, were not going to stand in Finch’s way if he could get a head coaching job.
Firing Saunders was not the wrong move in the big picture, and maybe owner Glen Taylor should’ve just let Rosas go outside the organization to hire a coach right off the bat. But the timing was curious at best, and downright rotten at worst.
Saunders will not speak ill of the Timberwolves after being fired, surely saying something along the lines of “we didn’t get it done” when he surfaces. But I hope he will speak candidly, and harshly. Rosas deserves it with the obviously underhanded way he handled the move, even if he will say the timing was purely coincidental (as if we’re all stupid, and don’t realize Finch was in town with the Raptors just days ago).
Ultimately, Sunday night was just another night in Timberwolves’ dysfunction and no one is truly surprised. A coaching change that was well-warranted can’t even be done without incredibly poor optics in this organization.