NBA: Glen Taylor And The Sound Of Bad Ownership

Glen Taylor, the owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves, went on a delightfully passive-aggressive rant about his former superstar, Kevin Love, on Tuesday.

Taylor told ESPN 1500 in Minneapolis:

"“I question Kevin if this is going to be the best deal for him because I think he’s going to be the third player on a team. I don’t think he’s going to get a lot of credit if they do really well. I think he’ll get the blame if they don’t do well. He’s going to have to learn to handle that.“I think he’s around a couple guys are awful good. Now I’m not saying that Kevin’s not good, but I think where maybe he got away with some stuff, not playing defense on our team, I’m not sure how that’s going to work in Cleveland. So I would guess they’re going to ask him to play more defense. And he’s foul-prone.”"

About the only thing missing is Comic Sans.

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It’s chic to rip Love’s defense—all the cool kids are doing it, after all—but to call him foul-prone is just showing how out of touch Taylor is with his players (former players, in this case).

One of the criticisms about Love’s defense is that he tries so hard not to commit fouls that he will give up easy, sometimes uncontested, baskets.

He’s never averaged more than 2.8 fouls per game—he did average 3.6 per 36 minutes as a rookie, but he was a rookie—and last year averaged 1.8 fouls per game.

So, yeah, not so much with the whole foul-prone thing.

About the only thing Taylor was missing was taking a swipe at Love for a bad hair cut or his taste in clothes.

But that’s what bad owners do when they screw up a good thing and this is the second time Taylor has screwed up a good thing in Minnesota.

In 25 NBA seasons, the Timberwolves have had two superstars—Kevin Garnett and Kevin Love—and the franchise has accomplished the sum total of squadoosh.

Taylor and the T-wolves wasted most of Garnett’s prime without ever really giving him a decent supporting cast and David Kahn and company never put anything remotely close to a good team around Love.

And here’s the thing: You never heard Red Auerbach or the Dr. Jerry Buss ripping on a player because he decided to leave that team while he was in his prime.

You know why? Because good/great players don’t leave well-run franchises on their own while they’re in their prime.

So how can I say Glen Taylor is a bad owner? You mean, besides looking at the Timberwolves’ results?

You can tell because he takes the time to bad mouth the only great players he’s had after they’ve forced their way out of town.

Garnett spilled his guts for the Minnesota franchise for a dozen years and got a “he didn’t try very hard at the end of the season” thrown at him by Taylor as he was on his way out the door to Boston.

And now Taylor decided to get passive-aggressive with Love, the only player he had who was really worth watching for the last six years (besides Ricky Rubio, as long as you close your eyes when he shoots … seriously, nightmare-inducing stuff there).

If there had been decent ownership/management in place in Minnesota, Love wouldn’t have forced his way out.

I mean, he gave up the land of 10,000 lakes for Cleveland.

If Taylor had a self-aware bone in his body, he might start to look in the mirror when trying to figure out why no one wants to come to Minnesota and why—when he does get a great player—they don’t want to stay there.

But, nah, that will never happen because in the owner’s suite in Minnesota, it’s always someone else’s fault.

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