Clik here to view.
One stands above all the rest, but others contributed to his downfall in Minnesota.
Tom Thibodeau was fired by the Minnesota Timberwolves on Sunday with the team two games below .500 and two games outside of the NBA playoffs bracket in the deep, difficult Western Conference. Thibodeau had two jobs with the Wolves: head coach and president of basketball operations. He lost both gigs.
The last president-coach standing in the NBA — maybe the last ever? — is Gregg Popovich, and Pop really does leave a lot of the player-personnel decision-making (as far as we can tell) to R.C. Buford.
So in a way, Thibodeau’s exit represents the end of an era. Scott Layden remains as the Wolves’ general manager, with Ryan Saunders taking over as interim head coach. (Saunders, at age 32, is the youngest NBA head coach in decades, according to my admittedly brief and fallible research.)
Don’t cry for Thibodeau: he’s still due about $20 million in salary from the Timberwolves, and he doesn’t even have to watch Andrew Wiggins anymore. In that spirit, it’s worth listing out why Thibodeau’s tenure with the Wolves failed.
So here are the top five reasons Thibodeau was fired, from the perspective of an outside observer.
5. Bulls fetishism
The whole Timberbulls thing is a good joke, but it’s also an indictment of Thibodeau’s lack of creativity. The fact that Minnesota under Thibodeau has signed so many old former Thibodeau-era Bulls is a symbol of the coach’s reliance on familiar crutches instead of bold imagination in chasing supplemental free agents and trade targets.
Signing Derrick Rose in 2017-18 and playing him ahead of young players with growth curves was embarrassing, even if Rose has played well this season. Trading for Butler is a whole ‘nother matter (see No. 4 on this list), but then adding Taj Gibson (a great dude and solid role player who didn’t seem to make a lasting impact) and Luol Deng was just silly.
Roster spots are valuable commodities in today’s NBA. Thibodeau never really seemed to respect that.
4. The initial Jimmy Butler trade
Few things are solely good or solely bad in this world. So it goes with the initial Jimmy Butler trade.
The Timberwolves sent Lauri Markkanen, Kris Dunn, and the opportunity to pay Zach LaVine large sums of money to the Bulls for Butler and Justin Patton. Patton has played four NBA minutes, and Butler lasted a scratch more than one season before forcing his way out. That season did include a rare Minnesota playoff berth, and the Wolves do now have Robert Covington and Dario Saric to show for it.
Would you, as a team on the edge of the playoff race, rather have Markkanen on a rookie deal, or Covington and Saric? Many teams would probably take Markkanen since he has a shot at being a star, but probably not all of them.
The fact that the Wolves gave up something of real value for Butler to only keep him for a year matters in grading Thibodeau’s legacy.
3. Andrew Wiggins’ contract
It’s hard to know how much Thibodeau is to blame for Andrew Wiggins’ five-year, $148 million contract in the summer of 2017, since we know franchisee Glen Taylor was involved in the Wiggins negotiations in some fashion. But Wiggins is on one of the single worst contracts in the entire NBA, and it was signed on Thibodeau’s watch as president of basketball operations.
Further, Wiggins has obviously regressed since Thibodeau arrived in 2016. He’s the rare lottery pick who got worse as his rookie deal progressed.
The problem with being in charge of everything is that everything is your fault, one way or another. Player development? It’s on you. Cap management? It’s on you. Roster fit? It’s on you. Whatever you choose to pin as the reason Wiggins is on one of the worst deals in the league, it’s on Thibodeau. He was responsible for all of it.
2. Defense is dead
Thibodeau’s calling card and claim to NBA fame was always defense. That’s how those Bulls teams won games and playoff series: by starving the opponents of points.
Here’s where the Wolves ranked in points allowed per 100 possessions in 2016-17, 2017-18 and as of Jan. 7 this season: No. 27, No. 25, No. 17.
That’s honestly the most shocking thing about Thibodeau’s tenure in the Twin Cities: he never got the defense together, even with Butler around. Part of that is on the players — defense is not Towns’ strength, Wiggins hasn’t reached his potential on that end, and replacing Ricky Rubio with Jeff Teague was a defensive downgrade.
But it’s pretty clear that the new NBA offensive reality has rendered Thibodeau’s defensive system weakened and perhaps dead. If a Thibodeau team can’t defend well, what’s the point of all this? This is part of the problem with having such a clear identity and calling card: when it falls apart, you’ve got little to fall back on.
Minnesota had a really good offense in 2017-18 with Towns and Butler, but that feels more like talent than scheme, a fact backed up by the Wolves’ slipping offense this season without Jimmy.
1. The Jimmy Butler saga
All other reasons shrink in the shadow created by Thibodeau’s awful handling of the Jimmy Butler saga.
To recap concisely:
- Butler declared he would not re-sign with the Timberwolves in 2019 and was held out of training camp, preferring a trade.
- Thibodeau, convinced he could convince Butler to change his mind now or next summer, let it happen while trying to get Butler to camp.
- Butler eventually showed up for a practice, only to embarrass Towns and Wiggins as a prelude to an incoherent ESPN interview that made it appear Jimmy was mad the Wolves didn’t blow up their roster to give him a balloon raise before free agency hit.
- Thibodeau never seemed to push back against Butler or defend Towns, the franchise’s true centerpiece, and eventually traded Jimmy to the Sixers.
It was an open question during the saga as to whether Thibodeau was willing (or even trying) to get fired over Butler. The answer seems clear now: yes on the first count, quite possibly on the second.
Thibodeau, reputed as old school and a hard-ass, let Butler dance all over him for months, and then gave Butler what he wanted. The whole basketball world saw how this was going at the beginning of the saga. Once Thibodeau started trying to dance with Butler, the ending of all of it came into view. Sunday presented the fruit of that disaster with a boot out the door.
Thibodeau deserved to lose his job with the Timberwolves over his complete mismanagement of the Butler saga, and on Sunday he did. It may not have been avoidable, but it sure was predictable.