It always seemed a little too good to be true. The kid who fell asleep on the couch in his old man’s office while he watched film, the ball boy who rebounded Kevin Garnett’s shots after practice, the young assistant who contemplated leaving the profession after his dad passed away, getting the chance to walk in his father’s footsteps and turn around the reeling Minnesota Timberwolves.
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Like so many things in this woebegone franchise’s lackluster history, Ryan Saunders’ fairy tale turn as Timberwolves head coach proved to be exactly that. Saunders had known for several weeks that he was in trouble as the losses mounted, sources told The Athletic. Players openly wondered about Saunders’ job security and it only seemed to be a question of whether he would make it to the end of the season. The answer came not long after a 103-99 loss to the Knicks in New York on Sunday night in a meeting with Wolves President of Basketball Operations Gersson Rosas.
In the wake of considerable fan criticism of Saunders, Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor had resisted calls to fire the coach while star Karl-Anthony Towns was out of the lineup with COVID-19. Taylor felt that Saunders deserved a chance to coach a team built almost entirely around Towns’ versatility before making such a big decision, sources said. But the Wolves were 1-7 since Towns returned Feb. 10, prompting Taylor to sign off on the move.
The loss dropped Minnesota to a league-worst 7-24, so the firing could not be considered a surprise. But the news that the Rosas planned to hire Chris Finch away from the Toronto Raptors bench as the permanent replacement caught many off guard. Rosas and Finch have ties dating to their days running Houston’s G League team, but it is exceedingly rare for an assistant coach from another team to be plucked midseason.
In a cruel twist of fate, Saunders coached his last game against the man he replaced, Tom Thibodeau. At the time of Saunders’ hiring, he was touted as a player-friendly alternative to the overbearing Thibs, whose intensity sucked the life out of the organization even after he delivered the team’s first playoff appearance in 14 years. Saunders’ open-door policy was preferred by Towns, Andrew Wiggins and Tyus Jones, and his young energy was a calculated pivot from Thibodeau’s old school gruffness. There was also the belief that taking that weight off of the organization’s shoulders would allow the team to finally take off.
For a variety of reasons, including roster upheaval, injuries, illness, the pandemic and Saunders’ own shortcomings, that never happened. Saunders went 43-93 in his Wolves tenure, but that woeful record needs some context added to it:
- When he took over for Thibodeau in 2019, Saunders led the Wolves to a 17-25 finish. But he did not coach Robert Covington, arguably the team’s second-best player behind Towns, at all that season. There was also a revolving door at point guard while Jeff Teague, Derrick Rose and Jones battled injuries, and Saunders often had to play the likes of Cam Reynolds, Keita Bates-Diop and Jerryd Bayless significant minutes.
- Rosas was hired in the summer of 2019, conducted a coaching search and named Saunders the permanent head coach. But the season started with a system being installed that emphasized 3-point shooting despite a roster that had almost no 3-point shooting. Rosas made major moves near the trading deadline, bringing in eight new players, including D’Angelo Russell and Malik Beasley, to add some shooting to the mix. But Towns was injured after just two games and the season was called after only 14 games.
- The Wolves did not qualify for the Orlando bubble, so a young team that had barely played together went nine months without playing a game before jumping into the 2020-21 season. Towns was still mourning the death of his mother from COVID-19, and he missed six games with a wrist injury and another 13 with COVID-19. Just as Towns returned from illness, Russell went out with knee surgery that will keep him out for four to six weeks.
- The most staggering stat: Towns and Russell, billed as the two cornerstones this franchise was building everything around, have played just five games together in more than a calendar year and never three in a row.
All of those injuries and bad luck made it very difficult for Saunders to establish any kind of continuity while he was coaching the youngest roster in the league. But that doesn’t absolve him from blame for the team’s troubles. There have been questionable rotation decisions, including leaving a struggling Ricky Rubio in over a more effective Jordan McLaughlin down the stretch in a loss to the Raptors on Friday, stunning collapses against the Orlando Magic this season and the Sacramento Kings last season that called into question Saunders’ game management, and an offense that at times appeared to be too disorganized and unstructured for a roster that needed more guidance.
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The fit between Saunders and Russell appeared to strain as this season went along, with Russell jawing at his young coach during some games. Perhaps sensing that the hammer was getting close to dropping, Saunders made some changes to the offense two weekends ago in an effort to jumpstart a unit that ranked 28th in the league in offensive efficiency.
The Wolves had shown some progress in February by playing close games as opposed to the blowouts they were suffering earlier in the season. Their last 10 losses have all been by eight points or fewer, but the inability to finish games, like the one on Sunday night against the Knicks, may have been the final straw. The Wolves trailed New York by as many as 21 points earlier in the game, but Towns scored 15 points and grabbed nine rebounds to lead a charge back in the fourth quarter. The Wolves led 98-97 with 32 seconds to play, but once again faltered down the stretch.
The Raptors were in Minneapolis on Friday night, and Rosas was seen chatting with his longtime friend Finch before the game. That was nothing unusual. Rosas was the GM of the Rio Grande Valley Vipers in the Rockets organization when Finch was the head coach when they won the G League title with an envelope-pushing style in 2010. All 3s and layups, the approach would eventually transplant to the Rockets under Mike D’Antoni, with Finch as an assistant.
But when word started to circulate that not only was Saunders fired, but also that Finch was being hired as the permanent replacement, the timing of both moves was called into question. Rosas decided against promoting associate head coach David Vanterpool for an interim run to finish the season, even though such promotions are a standard move for a midseason firing. It is the first time an assistant from another staff has been hired as the permanent replacement in-season since the Memphis Grizzlies hired Bucks assistant Lionel Hollins in 2009.
Make it make sense. Respectfully. https://t.co/4crtNzWV0W
— CJ McCollum (@CJMcCollum) February 22, 2021
Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum are two of Vanterpool’s biggest supporters from their time together in Portland. But the hiring process will also no doubt draw scrutiny for the apparent lack of consideration of other candidates of color. Finch was interviewed for the job in 2019 before Saunders was hired, as was Vanterpool and several other minority candidates, including Juwan Howard and Darvin Ham. But this time around, there does not appear to have been any real interview process, which has long been a concern for minority candidates.
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In making the move for Finch over Vanterpool, it is clear that Rosas believes, right or wrong, that Finch is the more qualified candidate. It has been speculated in league circles over the last two years that Finch has been atop Rosas’s wishlist should he ever have to make a coaching change. By hiring him now, Rosas avoided any potential bidding war with other teams in the offseason, which appears to be motivation enough to weather the storm that will come from those in the coaching fraternity who believe something was in place with Finch before Saunders was dismissed and from those advocating for more opportunities for coaches of color.
Saunders heard similar cynicism when he was was thrust into his father’s chair earlier than anyone anticipated when Thibodeau was fired midway through the 2018-19 season. The Wolves were suffocating under Thibodeau’s grinding leadership, and elevated Saunders to the interim head coaching position because they were looking for a full departure from the Thibs ethos.
There were skeptics when the move was made, but there was hope as well. Saunders had connections to the only period of success in the franchise’s history, the son of the man who was starting to breathe some optimism back into the franchise before his death in 2015. He couldn’t have gotten off to a much better start, when the Wolves responded to the move with a euphoric win over Oklahoma City in his first game. It made long-suffering Wolves fans hopeful that maybe Saunders’ more open style would make him the coach to finally get through to Wiggins. Towns made it clear from the start that is who he wanted, and in a star-driven league, that was a big part of the calculus that Taylor and Rosas went through when they decided to make him the full-time coach before last season.
But there was no storybook ending to this pairing. He departs with the team once again in dire straits. The Wolves rank near the bottom of the league in offensive (28) and defensive rating (23) and net rating (29).
What hurts the most, in this case, is the knowledge of how deeply Saunders cared about this job. Flip Saunders teamed with Garnett and Kevin McHale to put this franchise on the map in the late 1990s, leading it to eight straight playoff appearances and a Western Conference finals in 2004. Flip returned as team president in 2013 after David Kahn’s disastrous run and helped assemble a roster with some promising young talent in Wiggins, Towns and Zach LaVine. His death in 2015 sent the franchise, and the family, into another tailspin, and Ryan Saunders was determined to be the one to pull the Wolves out of it.
Now Saunders returns home to a wife who is due with the couple’s second child any day now. He will turn 35 in April and still has his whole coaching life ahead of him. But there are jobs, and then there is the job. As crazy as it sounds, the Timberwolves job was the job for Ryan Saunders.
He poured his heart and soul into this job and also played a crucial role in the Timberwolves’ response to George Floyd’s death and the summer of civil unrest that followed in Minneapolis. Through all of the ups and downs, mostly downs, he held his post with honor and dignity. But the losses just got to be too many. He had so many people rooting for him, but that wasn’t enough. In professional sports, it never is.
(Top Photo: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)
