With Wolves a team of the future, Saunders remains coach at present
With almost his entire existence focused on the draft, it appears Flip Saunders will honor his "I'm the coach till I say I'm not" proclamation for at least another year.
But the Timberwolves' single-most powerful front-office executive is also on record saying "I keep my eyes peeled." And while there's a strong candidate pool this offseason, Saunders doesn't appear all that interested in getting his feet wet.
When the 2015-16 season tips off, he'll have the reigning rookie of the year and two more No. 1 overall draft picks on his roster. That's a hard haul of talent to just hand off mid-development. And if Saunders were to hire anyone from the outside, he'd have to convince a proven winner to take on a rebuilding project.
That's something the likes of Tom Thibodeau and Mike D'Antoni might not be interested in. And even if they were behind the scenes, Saunders can sell -- and hide behind -- the perception that veteran coaches would rather work with playoff-ready rosters.
For now, anyway.
"When you're coaching, you have two years to get paid, you have a tendency to be a little bit more selective in what you do," Saunders told KFAN 100.3 recently. "So from that perspective, they want the right situation. I think a lot of people look at it as we are a team of the future, but we're probably a year away from that type of situation."
Saunders missed out on the chance to lure old friend and former Wolves player and personnel guy Fred Hoiberg from his beloved Ames. The Wolves tried to woo him last summer after Rick Adelman retired, but The Mayor stuck around at Iowa State for one more year before taking over a Bulls team that reached this year's Eastern Conference semifinals.
But what about Thibodeau, the guy Hoiberg replaced? The guy who sent three dozen roses for the funeral of Saunders' father last month? The guy who broke into the NBA coaching ranks as an assistant on the first Wolves teams?
Or Scott Brooks, whom the Thunder fired and replaced with Billy Donovan (another coach who spurned Minnesota last year)? Brooks played for the Wolves from 1990-92.
Probably not going to happen, Saunders says. Brooks coached in the Western Conference finals last year. Thibodeau tasted the Eastern Conference finals in 2011 and the playoffs' second round two of the past three years.
It's the same with former head men Larry Drew, Mike D'Antoni, Tyrone Corbin, Mark Jackson, Michael Monty Williams and Mike Malone (who spent some time shadowing Saunders and his staff last season), all of whom are currently without a team. Saunders' friend Tom Izzo is still a back-pocket possibility, but he becomes more and more tied to East Lansing the more his Michigan State legend grows.
But the relevance of such possibilities is diminished when it's apparent Saunders doesn't have much of an appetite for searching right now. Once the core group of Wiggins, Zach LaVine, Shabazz Muhammad, maybe Ricky Rubio and whomever the Wolves draft first overall June 25 is more established, it'd be easier to walk away and return to solely front-office duties.
And, of course, hire someone who's the "right fit" Saunders and owner Glen Taylor said they couldn't find externally when the former appointed himself head coach last summer.
"When I find someone that I'm extremely comfortable with and what we're doing and progressing," Saunders said, "that's what we're going to do."
Follow Phil Ervin on Twitter
