About 24 hours ago (at least at the time of posting this), the Timberwolves embarked on a thorough 108-86 victory over the LeBron-less Lakers, one of their most impressive performances from start to finish this season. And about an hour after it ended, word emerged that the head coach of the team had been fired.
To understand the sequence of events that led to the departure of Tom Thibodeau and to sort out what we might expect from interim head coach Ryan Saunders, though, we need to look at the organization’s big picture. Here are five things about the change, including some tidbits from Monday’s media availability with Saunders and key Wolves players:
1) Multiple people in the organization have said Thibodeau was notoriously bad at delegating tasks to assistant coaches and seldom took a collaborative approach to problem-solving.