Can somebody please explain to me what we are supposed to see in this guy? A person who comes in with a 33% win percentage and replaces a very promising Dwane Casey and then progresses towards a 28% win percentage. Have you ever seen the face of a head coach like Phil Jackson? He looks like he's in control, and his confidence strengthens the morale of his players.

Wittman, on the other hand, looks like a deer who's caught in someone's headlights. I don't have confidence in him, and I'm watching the game. I can't imagine how annoying he'd be if he was coaching me.

We could have kept Dwane. We could have went after Stan Van Gundy.... ANYBODY but this guy, please!

Dwane had completely lost the team and had absolutely no consistency at all in his rotation. He had to go. I was even fine with them bringing in Wittman to fill in for the rest of the year just to keep things on an even level instead of marching in a new guy with a totally different system.

However, locking him up to a long-term deal after he's proven NOTHING as a head coach was ludicrous in my opinion. Maybe if there were truly no takers for the job due to our bad situation... But I find that hard to believe with only 30 NBA head coaching positions in the entire world. If you can get one, you take it.

I agree with both you and Derok. It made sense for him to finish off the season after Casey was fired. I agree with you that I have NO IDEA why in the *#()$&@)( hell we gave him a three year extension. That's mind boggling. What a terrible decision. Who was behind that anyways?!?!

However, I agree with Derok that Casey absolutely had to go for the reasons he stated. Also, he was terrible at drawing up plays or making any adjustments whatsoever. Casey and (Dim)Wittman are equally terrible coaches in my book. Jeff Van Gundy where you at? Oh wait, we got Wittman for three more years. Awesome.

I completely agree with DeROK and College Wolf that Case head to go. I'm not ruling out that he might have a moderately successful career as an assistant or even head coach in the NBA, but on this team, at this moment of time, he head to go.

Am I happy with the fact that from all coaches Randy Wittman got this three-year-deal? Certainly not, but albeit I definitely do not envision Coach Wittman as a coming Hall of Famer, neither in this dimension or any thinkable or unthinkable parallel universe, I would like to add the following thoughts:

First:
When Caey was replaced with Wittman last season, the common take on the season among realistic observers and presumably the brass as well was that the season was already down the drain. A dysfunctional and unbalanced roster, a frustrated franchise player, a once lauded free agent addition with nerves like twines, a rookie with high potential but no experience playing the position he was supposed to inherit...the list goes into eternity. And with the expectation that even draging this sorrid team into the playoffs would earn them nothing more than the right to get sweeped in the first round and cost them the draft pick wasted on Marco Jaric. Sooo...does somebody really believe that Wittman wasn't ordered to sink the season?

And following the assumption that he did exactly that, going into full-tanking-mode by playing the either listless or overmatched veterans while still finding time for the Wolves' young players, inserting them mostly in garbage time, where they could honest their skills against the opponents' bench players, I claim that no one can honestly be convinced, at least not beyond reasonable doubt, that Wittman did a bad job...considering his task.

Second:
Every new coach needs contractual security to work. If the management does not signalize it's full support to a coach by giving him a longterm contract, he will in most cases fail to ever gain the full respect of the players, who'll be rightfully thinking that they'll be here long after that coach will be replaced by the next one, so why care?

Third:
I'll make this one short. Without a guy like Kevin Garnett to coach, with the expectations of having a lottery team at hand for likely the next three years at least and not residing in one of the most deisered places to live in the NBA...do you really believe the Wolves had a realistic chance of attracting a high class coach like van Gundy? Maybe they should have tried at all or harder or maybe they have and lost out...I don't know, but I doubt they had fre agent coaches fighting for that position.

The whole gobbledegook means:
For some reason I can not fully understand, Wolves management believes that Wittman has what it takes to coach this team. But nothing I have seen him do with the T-Wolves (given the assumptions I have stated above) nor with the Cavs (from 1999-2001) has convinced me that he is simply inapt of being a head coach in the NBA. Replacing him now with another coach, by the way, especially if he was indeed ordered to tank, would be extremly unfair, making him leave on a very bad note and probably lowering his chances to get a job elsewhere. So I would say we should still give him the benefit of the doubt to prove in one whole season with a freshly assembled team what he is capable to do. And being forced to work with such role models as Blount, I'd say it is quite fine to give him a contract that runs at least as long as his.

It's not that I wouldn't prefer the Wolves had never fired Saunders or that some proven NBA head coach with a winning record would patrol the sidelines next season...but being things the way they are...I think we should give Wittman a fair try in a true season. At least he's not reggie Theus!

Sanyarin wrote:
Very well said my friend...The Daddy has nothing more to add. The MN reporters who bash the Casey firing couldn't have followed the Wolves whatsoever. He had about as much control over that team as Tom Thundstrom has over his wetdreams....

daddyfatsax wrote:


Very well said my friend...The Daddy has nothing more to add. The MN reporters who bash the Casey firing couldn't have followed the Wolves whatsoever. He had about as much control over that team as Tom Thundstrom has over his wetdreams....[/quote]

Good point!

daddyfatsax wrote:

Bwaahahahahahahahahahaha

DeROK wrote:
Yeah, that's right up there with Notre Dame locking up Weiss!!

Count it!

whiskeydizzy wrote:

At least Weiss was a proven champion with the Patriots. I think the Wolves did worse by locking up Wittman... something like a career coaching winning percentage in the vicinity of .350 or so.

College Wolf:Like I said above, I do not believe that Wittman will ever be a top-flight coach in this league and it's strange that - from all people - I jump to his defence, but...

...do you remember the roster he had on hand in Cleveland 1999-2001? I would like to see Riley, Brown or Jackson squeeze 50 wins per season out of those units! And it was still his first head coaching job, don't forget that.

...I still believe that he was ordered to intentionally loose games last season, and do not know how many games were tanked in Cleveland when the season came down, so his record is surely affected by those factors. Coaching bad teams always does bad things to your winning record in more than one way.

...I just don't see how we could have attracted a better coach with the situation that we have on hand, because no winning coach would like to ruin...can you guess it...his record, exactly, by coming to a loosing franchise with a bizzare management.

From my opinion, his record does not proove much, besides that a young coach was given charge of bad teams. That nearly always results in such numbers. That is why I say: Give him a fair try with a full season to see what he can do, because we won't get a much better coach to come here soon anyways. And if we want him to relate in some way to the players to generate any success at all, he needs contractual security, for which three years is still a short amount of time.