Kevin McHale and Flip Saunders Discuss the 2001-02 Timberwolves Season
April 30, 2002
Timberwolves Vice President of Basketball Operations Kevin McHale
"From our standpoint, I run the basketball department, and it's my responsibility to makes sure we set goals and that we receive those goals, so my responsibility didn't happen. We have to now look at what we're going to do to improve and look at the directions we've got to go, things that we've got to change from a personnel standpoint, possibly, but also from a way that we approach it, the way that we teach it everything we do, we've got to look at and say we've got to get better. The thing about this business is it's all about challenges. If you don't like challenges, you're in the wrong business."
"On a positive note, we started off very well this year. There were some very good stretches of play. There were times when there was a lot of optimism involved in the team, because of stretches we had and things we were able to accomplish. Unfortunately, the last couple of months, it was really kind of a downer. The loss to Dallas, to me, was not unexpected, the way we played. Very seldom do you play poorly and then find it in the playoffs. That just doesn't happen. Under the scrutiny of the playoffs, you don't find your game. You've got to find your game long before you get to that. So that was not surprising, the way the season ended. Disappointing, but not surprising, considering the way we had played going in. "
"We have a lot of work to do. It was a disappointing end to a season that started off with some real promise. That's the tough part. I think had the season been in reverse order started off poorly, ended very well, and made a playoff run I think everybody would be feeling a lot better about it."
"People said, 'Are you going to blow it up?' Well, we had the (sixth)-best record in the league and so I don't think that blowing everything up is the answer, either. I was here when you won 20 when I took over, I think we won 19 games or 20 games. That's no fun. That's a heckuva lot less fun than winning 50, I can guarantee you that much."
"I say overall, in summation, it was a disappointing year because we didn't achieve our goals. But, like I said, inside that, there was some optimism and some good times early. I think some guys played well. I thought we had some individual guys play better than they had last year and improved. But it really is all about a team improvement. You're judged on winning and losing. That's the way it should be. That's the way I like it. At the end of the game, you've either won or lost there's not a lot of gray area. And you've got to win when it matters. You've got to have a team that's put together that's tough enough to go in playoff series, and to go into hostile environments and win games. That's what it's all about in our league. And you are judged on how you do in the playoffs. Right now we're three and out, so we should be judged pretty harshly."
"Who starts these trade speculations? We're going to look at doing everything. To say that we're just going to target one guy... no, that's not the case. We'll talk to every team, see what their wants and needs are, see what we've got to improve. We're going to try to as we do every year talk to every team, and at some point you've got to come down to a decision. Again, I don't think it's wise to make trades just for trade's sake. You've got to look and say, I think we're going to improve by doing this."
"I would say no, there isn't any player that is untouchable. It depends on the deal. You can make deals, but the object is to try to make good deals. You've got to assess everything and say, 'is this going to improve our team or not?'
[tongue-in-cheek] "You guys (the media) will be the first ones I tell, before I call those people (who are involved in trade talk). You're not talking baseball cards, you're talking people's lives. Are we going to try to improve the team? Absolutely. But am I going to to be saying, 'this guy's on the market, that guy's on the market'? No, that's not fair to the person. That's just not the right thing to do, and I'm not going to get into that. But am I going to try to improve the team? Absolutely. If something really big comes along that I think is an improvement, absolutely. But I'm not going to sit here and say I'm trying to run this guy out of town or that guy out of town. These are people with feelings and families. If you guys have never been involved in it... as a player, I was involved in it. It's a very uncomfortable thing, and I wouldn't do that to our guys. These are human beings; they're not baseball cards. If these were baseball cards, I'd hold them up here and say, 'who wants this guy?' But these are people with personalities. That's not how you do business. Are we going to try to make improvements? Absolutely. Is it going to be big? It could be. You've just got to wait and see."
"You never think you have good chemistry when you get swept. When you win, everything is good. When you lose, everything is bad. I don't think our chemistry is really bad. I don't think it's great. I think we're somewhere in the middle. I think that when we're moving the ball and playing well, our chemistry works very well. Sometimes we get one-sided with the ball. Sometimes the ball doesn't move enough. I think that tends to frustrate people. I think that's when there's some frustration involved. Chemistry is a product of winning. Right now you're going to have eight teams advance, four in each conference. And all the teams that advance are just feeling, 'man, our chemistry is unbelievable.' Talk to them when they lose after the next round. They (the Mavericks) were better than us in that series, no question about that. I don't know if that includes chemistry."
Timberwolves Head Coach Flip Saunders
"When you're in a league as competitive as our league, we're in a situation where we've got 23 teams chasing us and we're basically chasing four teams. In order to catch those four teams, as Kevin mentioned, we've got to look to explore every opportunity to improve our personnel, and that includes the situation with Terrell (Brandon) and not knowing whether Terrell... is he going to be available when the season starts, or when is he going to be available? I think right now we have to go forth with the idea of the unknown. We don't have him right now."
"When we lost him, did it hurt us during the season? There's no question. I think it hurt some of our role-type players like Joe Smith, players that played off of Terrell. We play different with Terrell than we do with Chauncey (Billups). Chauncey is more of an aggressive point guard looking to score, where Terrell looks to maybe get some other people involved. So from a personnel standpoint, I think, starting this summer, we'll bring a lot of people in. We'll work some guards out, take a look at everyone that's available, to make sure that we do have some people there in case things do fall through that he's not available, someone there to run our things. It'll change maybe a little bit of what we do offensively. We've been very much a point guard-oriented offense, where our point guard has really done a lot as far as triggering the ball. We might do more things to try to open up, to take some pressure off of that one guy to let other people utilize their skills and use the ball a little bit more."
"For anyone thinking that us, the organization, or everybody is satisfied with getting beat six straight times in the playoffs, we're harder on ourselves probably than anybody. I think because of that, we're willing to adapt and adjust and change things to try to get over the hump. We're trying to catch four teams. As Kevin mentioned, we have the sixth-best record in the league. We won 50 games that was a success, from that standpoint. But it was not a success because what our goals were: advance in the playoffs."
"Right now we've got to catch four teams. The four top teams in the league happen to be in our conference, and we've got to catch those teams. We know that we've got to get better. Everywhere players, coaches, staff, in-arena, you name it. We've got to get better. In order to do that, we have to be willing to adapt to change. And with adapting to changing comes a lot of a lot of work, a lot of hours. We're willing to do that, because we know in order for us to get where we need to get, that's what we've got to do."
"We have been proactive in what we've done, and we're going to continue to be proactive. Have they always worked out? No, they haven't always worked out, but we've always been proactive when we've been in situations where we've been able to trade. Sometimes you can do it, and sometimes you can't. So everyone can speculate about doing those things, and we sat in the office many times and went through every opportunity. We're going to do it again this year as we've done every year."
