Kevin McHale: Gone but Not Forgotten

Apparently, it’s hard not to like Kevin McHale.

His players liked him. People who interviewed him liked him.

And for a long, long time, his boss, Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor, really liked him.

But if you’re a Wolves fans who followed the team through McHale’s 15 years with the organization, finding a few unkind words to describe the man they called “The Ostrich” might be a little easier.

As a GM, he spent first-round picks on milk-carton cases like Paul Grant, Will Avery, and Ndudi Ebi.

He came out on the wrong end of two draft-day swaps, shipping out Ray Allen in favor of Stephon Marbury (who later forced his way out of Minnesota), and flipping Brandon Roy for Randy Foye.

He presided over the worst front-office scandals in sports that nobody talks about: The 2000 debacle in which the league stripped the Wolves of five first-round picks (one of which was later restored and turned into Ebi) after discovering that the team had an under-the-table deal to offer a huge future contract to...Joe Freaking Smith.

He paid the Clippers a first-round pick to take a disgruntled Sam Cassell off his hands, giving six years and $38 million to Marko Jaric in the process. He threw six years and $34.6 million at Troy Hudson after a single productive playoff series.

He signed Michael Olowokandi—on purpose.

When these moves somehow failed to produce a consistent winner, McHale took three different coaches to the chopping block. He axed Flip Saunders a season after his run to the Western Conference Finals and took over himself.

He hired Dwane Casey for a season and a half. Discontent with the team's 20-20 record, McHale whacked him too. McHale opted instead for Randy Wittman, who went 12-30 the rest of the way, en route to a 39-115 showing over a season-plus at the helm.

Wittman and McHale also presided over the club’s defining moment of the post-Garnett era: An April 2006 tank job against Memphis in which backup center Mark Madsen went 1-for-15 from the floor (and 0-for-7 from behind the arc) to secure a loss for draft position purposes.

When it came time to fire Wittman after a 4-15 start last year, McHale somehow managed to convince Taylor that the three coaches he had hired and fired—not the GM who had hired and fired them—were the real problem.

Back to the sidelines McHale went, losing eight straight games before going on a 13-10 "tear". That was just enough to ruin the team’s draft position in a season wasted by injuries to Foye, Al Jefferson, and Corey Brewer.

After enduring a 5-25 start, fans got to sit through an 8-28 finish. Minnesota posted the worst record in the NBA in three of the season’s five full months (December, February, and March).

It’s not surprising that new Wolves GM David Kahn decided to part ways with McHale going forward—It’s surprising that it took him three different meetings to make the break.

Keeping McHale in the fold would have been a slap in the face to the dozen or so Minnesotans who haven't left this team for dead yet. Letting him go is the first step toward putting the past few years of misery in the rear-view mirror.

McHale told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that Kahn “didn't really give me any reasons” for the decision.

We can think of a few.