Minnesota Timberwolves: Is it time for Taylor to sell the team?

With Minnesota Timberwolves managing owner Glen Taylor seemingly on the hot seat constantly with fans, is it time for him to consider selling the team?

The parallels between the Minnesota Timberwolves and New York Knicks continue to grow deeper.

They both have had prolonged failures as two of the three worst teams over the last 20 years with respective fanbases that have intense hate their owners.

The problems for Wolves owner Glen Taylor arguably began in 2009, when he hired former Indiana Pacers executive David Kahn to be the new GM of the then-struggling franchise.

Kahn had found success with the Pacers, missing the playoffs just once in his eight-year career. After being released in 2004, Kahn went on to run a few G League — then the D-League — teams before landing in Minnesota.

While the hiring might have seemed promising at the time there was one thing that Taylor hadn’t thought about. There wasn’t a huge amount of precedence for successful Kahn moves. Reggie Miller was on the team when Kahn came in, and Al Harrington and a nearly-done Tim Hardaway were the biggest names Kahn managed to land, outside of Jalen Rose.

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There was also precedent for Kahn being questionable in the draft, and in his decision of who he kept on the team. In 1995, Kahn let Sam Cassell walk, and Cassell would go on to appear in the 2004 Western Conference Finals with the Timberwolves; the same year that Kahn was let go by Indiana.

Another poor trade happened in 2001 when Kahn traded Jalen Rose to the Chicago Bulls for Ron Mercer and Ron Artest, who now goes by Metta World Peace. While both guys were solid players, neither were on the level of Rose, who went on to have some of the best years of his career in Chicago.

Needless to say, Minnesota and Indiana were not in the same place when they hired Kahn.

Soon, the Timberwolves coaching staff were being overturned, and players like Steph Curry and DeMarcus Cousins were being passed upon in place of players like Johnny Flynn, Wayne Ellington, Ricky Rubio, and Wesley Johnson.

The troubles continued in 2012, when Kahn, in unison with Taylor, declared that Timberwolves franchise player Kevin Love wasn’t a max player, and refused to offer him the five-year deal that he deserved. Love would leave the team via trade, and go on to win a championship with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016.

In 2013, Taylor brought in Flip Saunders to replace head coach Rick Adelman and, according to a Q&A he did in 2016 with TCB Mag, replace Taylor. The idea was that Saunders would put together a consortium of buyers, including a rumored Kevin Garnett once he retired and Saunders would replace Taylor as the majority owner.

Tragically, though, Saunders died suddenly mere days before the 2015-16 season was set to start.

In that same Q&A, Taylor vowed to keep Saunders staff the way it was:

"Flip’s health became precarious at the dawn of last season. How did you decide how to handle that season?I knew I had a big problem. Flip was everything, and I had no one else in place but myself. I felt I had no choice but to stick with Flip’s structure. I knew [coach] Sam [Mitchell]. I told him he would coach the whole season, whatever happened. I didn’t feel he could function effectively in the role without that commitment.How did you make the assessment of Flip’s lieutenants?It is like any business. You can have successors at No. 2, or you can surround yourself with people effective at implementing your vision. Flip came in to run it and brought in people loyal to him who he felt were effective. He was not at the stage to think about succession planning."

While it’s not implicitly stated that Taylor promised to retain those Flip brought in, and if there was it would benefit Taylor not to mention it, according to Kevin Garnett, there was a feeling that a promise had been broken.

KG talked in an interview with the Associated Press‘ Jon Krawczynski back in 2017 about how, even though he liked the people Taylor brought in, Garnett felt like the owner was hurting those who had been loyal to the team and Flip, and Garnett proceeded to orchestrate a buyout to leave the team.

Relationships between The Big Ticket and the Timberwolves, mainly Taylor, have been strained ever since. Then, the unthinkable happened.

The Boston Celtics announced that they would be retiring Garnett’s number, something which the Timberwolves have yet to do. The move makes the front office and the ownership look pettier than before and shines a negative light on Minnesota’s relationship with the best player in franchise history.

Following the death of Saunders, the Timberwolves organization began to catch some more negative press due to their seeming acceptance of the numerous people associated with the organization who had been accused of sexual assault or domestic violence.

This issue was first brought to light by SB Nation’s Canis Hoopus in a letter in which they pleaded with the organization to address those associated with the issues and handle them appropriately.

While the letter didn’t originally name any of the members of concern, SB Nation wrote a follow-up after a year of no response in which they named players like Derrick Rose, Jordan Hill, Lance Stephenson, and assistant coach Rick Brunson. The Timberwolves have yet to address the issues publicly, though none of those accused are currently with the team.

Taylor then received criticism for his handling of the Tom Thibodeau/Jimmy Butler era. Even though Butler had requested a trade after just one season, Thibs convinced Taylor to keep him on and try to turn things around with him. That didn’t end up working out, and soon Butler and Thibs were both gone.

These issues all beg the ultimate question: Is it time for Glen Taylor to sell the team?

The major problem is that Taylor seems incapable of picking the right people to put in place to build a winning organization. He wasn’t able to do that with Kahn. He wasn’t able to do that after the passing of Saunders, and he so far hasn’t been able to do that with Gersson Rosas.

True, it’s still early in the run, and there’s plenty of time to turn things around, but that seems unlikely with how involved Taylor is with the player decisions.

Remember, Taylor was the one who ultimately decided that Butler could stay. It was his choice to sign Andrew Wiggins to a max contract way too early, it was his and Kahn’s decision to let Al Jefferson leave, and it was he and Kahn who decided Love wasn’t worth backing as the team’s primary player. They wanted to back Rubio instead, even with his struggles shooting the ball.

Taylor was one of the driving voices behind the acquisition of D’Angelo Russell, but he still has yet to put somebody in place that can be the best player on a Finals team since Minnesota drafted Kevin Garnett, raising the question of whether he’ll ever be able to build a contender with a track record that doesn’t suggest so.