Valentine’s Day message for Ryan Saunders
Roses are red
Violets are blue
The team is spiraling
And we’re moving on from you.
Over the past few years, there haven’t been too many people who have been more vocal supporters of Ryan Saunders than I’ve been. It’s a tough job, coaching a team through a rebuild after their star player at the time had totally eviscerated their culture in the media. Truthfully, he seemed to have a pretty good handle on things at the beginning.
However, if there’s anything this season has shown, it’s that Saunders doesn’t really know what to do when real adversity hits his team. Despite some major losing streaks, the Timberwolves have never been hit with an injury/illness bug like they have been this year. With key players like Karl-Anthony Towns, D’Angelo Russell, and Josh Okogie missing large portions of time, Saunders has had to revamp the rotations on the fly, and he’s done a less-than-acceptable job, to say the least.
For one, Saunders insistence on playing a few guys (such as Juancho Hernangomez and Ed Davis) over others (like Jared Vanderbilt and Jayden McDaniels) has been baffling at times, and his reluctance to stagger the top-tier players as opposed to playing them all at the same time raises some serious questions.
The danger with getting rid of Saunders is that, well, the team loves him. All of the top guys on the squad have spoken out in favor of him, and President of Basketball Operations Gersson Rosas has talked in the past about how much respect he has for Saunders.
Still, respect and admiration (and likely a bit of nostalgia for the Flip Saunders era) can only go so far. If Saunders can’t turn the team around soon, he may have dug a hole too deep for himself to climb out of.