As Randy Wittman has his tenure in Minnesota cut short, the Wolves vice president of basketball operations, Kevin McHale will be his replacement. This won’t be McHale’s first foray into NBA coaching, and he’s not the first former Celtic to sit on the bench in a suit (or turtleneck). So which one was the best?
As we know, McHale is no stranger to the Minnesota bench. He took over in the 2004-2005 season after canning Flip Saunders (who led the team to the Western Conference finals in 2004), and guided the team as the interim head coach to a 19-12 record. But that team had the likes of Kevin “The Big Ticket” Garnett, Sam “Alien” Cassell, Latrell “Spree” Sprewell and Wally “World” Szczerbiak. A far cry from this years Al Jefferson, Randy Foye, Rashad McCants and Mike Miller (I think Miller is an upgrade from Wally World).
One man alone deserves the credit for building this kind of organization-wide success
Former celtics have had a nice run as head coaches as the list below notes. The one noticeable omission from this list is Doc Rivers with his recent success and 2008 championship, but he is still an active head coach. So if this is any indication of what McHale has to look forward to, he’ll be in good shape.
- Larry Bird 147-67 .687
- Tommy Heinsohn 427-263 .619
- Kevin McHale 19-12 .613
- Danny Ainge 136-90 .602
- Rick Carlisle 292-219 .571
- Bob Cousy 141–209 .403
- Dennis Johnson 8-16 .333
- M.L. Carr 48-116 .293
- Quinn Buckner 13-69 .159
Bottom line, the team is looking for a change and cited McHale’s 30-year involvement in the NBA game, his teaching ability and his wealth of basketball knowledge. But these aren’t new. He’s been sharing these with the team since he arrived in Minnesota.
We’ll have to wait and see how this particular coaching change to a former Celtic will work out, but some Minnesota players may already be looking in a different direction.
Al Jefferson said, “It starts in this locker room with us. They could have Jesus Christ himself come and coach us, but if we don’t go out there and play hard and play together, it won’t mean nothing.”
Sounds to me like Al would rather have Basketball Jesus, another former Celtic, at the head of their bench.
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